Google is headquartered in an artistically funky but still fairly ordinary office complex in Mountain View, California. Like every other office park for miles around, there are a few fairly low-rise office buildings surrounded with parking and atop more parking. There’s nothing but swamp, an amphitheatre (surrounded by lots of parking) and more office buildings for miles around.

There’s also a large and mostly unused Federal property, NASA Ames Research Center, located on a former Air Force Base at Moffett Field. Google has been collaborating with NASA on projects; last year the relationship also made news when NASA allowed the Google founders to land their private jet at the base.

Yesterday, Google and NASA announced plans to build a huge new campus on the site starting in 2013. But unlike the typical office park, this project plans “1.2 million square feet of offices, research and development space, company housing, recreation—and possibly even retail shops for Google employees.” A local environmental group praised the mixed-use aspect of the project.

Google currently operates a fleet of shuttles to help employees get to work without all using single-passenger vehicles, but actual mixed-use development would be even better. The SF Chronicle wrote back in 2005 that any development on the site would require housing by law.

Whether Google is doing this out of obligation or desire—almost surely both—it’ll be nice for at least a tiny part of Silicon Valley to become a tiny bit less sprawly.

Update: Commenter Mike points out that the FAR of the complex (floor-area ratio) will be 0.55, which is low. According to Christopher Leinberger, walkable urbanism occurs in areas with an FAR of 0.8 and up; “drivable sub-urban development” usually has an FAR of 0.005 to 0.3. In between is what he calls “neverlands,” areas with higher density but little street life, largely found in the United States as depressing mid-twentieth century housing projects.

Valleywag, the Silcon Valley blog whose schtick is never being positive about anything, has a critique of the plan. They don’t mention the mixed-use housing at all, but do discuss the inaccessibility to public transit of the site (a sad trait shared by most of the office space in Silicon Valley) and argue Google ought to be expanding in San Francisco instead.

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Tagged: california, development, google, san francisco, silicon valley, sprawl, technology

David Alpert created Greater Greater Washington in 2008 and was its executive director until 2020. He formerly worked in tech and has lived in the Boston, San Francisco Bay, and New York metro areas in addition to Washington, DC. He lives with his wife and two children in Dupont Circle.