As new innovation centers arise and potentially surpass Silicon Valley, too few of them seem to be asking what we got—and continue to get—wrong here.

Consider, for example, that 30 percent of Silicon Valley’s public-school students are on free or reduced lunch. Or that rents are 227 percent higher than the national average, contributing to the region’s severe affordable housing crisis. Or that the “awful” treatment of women by our top employers has become infamous. Silicon Valley may indeed be trying to make the world a better place—just not the parts of the world that happen to be located in Silicon Valley.

Solving our own problems in Silicon Valley should, theoretically, be simpler than curing death or colonizing Mars.

Poor development and planning decisions don’t just aggravate the region’s housing problem: They contribute to Silicon Valley’s growing empathy gap. In a region built on weak ties and networking, it’s surprisingly difficult to find vibrant public spaces to meet and engage diverse people as equals outside of a Costco parking lot. So, even those seeking to genuinely make Silicon Valley’s world a better place may struggle with engagement in our bumper-to-bumper, disconnected autoscape.

Read the full article by Daniel Harris at CityLab