Facebook: Building a Community “In Real Life”
While Facebook continues to go under fire about their recent issues with user privacy and data, they have plans of creating an expansive housing community surrounding their headquarters in Menlo Park, CA. The changing landscape of tech and the growing need to create adequate housing for their employees raises concerns for local residents who already find it hard to find adequate housing. Critics have dubbed the project “Zucktown” after the CEO now under scrutiny, Mark Zuckerburg.
The project’s details involves “eight acres of parks, plazas and bike-pedestrian paths open to the public. Facebook wants to revitalize the railway running alongside the property and will finish next year a pedestrian bridge over the expressway. The bridge will provide access to the trail that rings San Francisco Bay, a boon for birders and bikers”. When a tech juggernaut like Facebook has the ability to buy out local real estate as well exude political pull of small town communities, where should the line be drawn? Can the future of housing be good or bad when is being developed by a corporation?
For the full New York Times article, click here