This. I grew up in Los Gatos, but now live in London. Virtually anywhere in the city there are decent shops within a 5-10 minute walk; this fact alone makes London vastly more liveable than 95% of Silicon Valley. This is only viable with mixed-use zoning and a certain minimum density. This in turn makes public transport more viable, further increasing the quality of life. Done right -- and it really isn't that hard to do it right -- high-density mixed-use development produces a very virtuous feedback loop.
Major European cities have had centuries to develop, and were built in large part before automobiles existed, which necessitated density and walkability. Silicon Valley, by contrast, was largely agricultural or undeveloped even 50-60 years ago, and development of suburban housing represented a significant increase in density (and automobile transportation was cheap and fast then, so relatively low density housing made sense).
Now, we are left with the problem that the suburbs aren't going anywhere for the most part, due to lack of political will, and lack of a reasonable market-based solution -- single family homes are often in the $1-1.5 million range for ~1/8 acre lots in less desirable areas, and redeveloping even a relatively small subdivision would be extremely expensive, even if you could get everyone to sell (they wouldn't), and get permission from the city. Redevelopment is limited right now to the commercial corridors, such as El Camino Blvd, and existing commercial/industrial/business districts, all of which are undergoing pretty heavy redevelopment in much of Santa Clara County. Transportation infrastructure including both public transportation and public roads are also undergoing multi-billion dollar improvements, though some of the work may take a decade or more to complete.
source: I have lived in the Silicon Valley area for over 30 years -- its changing faster now than at any point I can remember.
This has been causing me more and more despair the more I think about it. I feel like the US had one chance to decide how most of it's cities were, fundamentally, going to be, and that chance ended about 50 years ago. The choice made was "design everything around cars". This now looks like a disaster on a near cosmic scale. Even worse, it's almost impossible to reverse.
That is exactly why urban planning needs to be from the top down, at least for high level activities. Arranging for an entire area to be re-developed at once is a top down planning activity.
Conversely, the precise details of what goes in to an area should be 'bottom up', but within zoning policies similar to how Japan does it.
Support Scott Wiener's SB827, which will require zoning restrictions to be relaxed around California metro public transit stations. Currently many BART and other subway stations in California are in neighborhoods where you can't build anything other than single family, 2 story houses.
