2012June
"The Way We Live: Drowning in Stuff"
From 2001 to 2005, a team of social scientists studied 32 middle-class families in Los Angeles, a project documenting every wiggle of life at home. The study was generated by the U.C.L.A. Center on the Everyday Lives of Families to understand how people handled what anthropologists call material culture — what we call stuff. These were dual-earner households in a range of ethnic groups, neighborhoods, incomes and occupations, with at least two children between the ages of 7 and 12 — in other words, households smack in the weeds of family life.
...More"Tech Boom Hits San Francisco Rental Prices"
Prices Soar as Well-Paid Tech Workers Stream Into City After a Long Exodus
SAN FRANCISCO—The latest technology boom is helping to stem a decade long exodus of residents from San Francisco, but the influx of well-paid workers is driving up already-high housing costs and straining public resources.
The promise and perils of the boom are evident in the experience of Genevieve Sheehan and her husband, who are relocating from the Boston area for her new job at social-games maker Zynga Inc. They have endured a grinding hunt for a home.
...More"Dolby Laboratories Moving Head Office to Mid-Market"
Dolby Laboratories says it will move its headquarters to the Mid-Market neighborhood, continuing the tranSFormation of a neighborhood that is becoming a new technology hub.
The audio technology provider said Tuesday that it plans to purchase the building at 1275 Market St. from DivcoWest. The purchase price is $110 million.
The building, which sits a few hundred feet from the new Twitter headquarters near Ninth and Market streets, was formerly occupied by the State Compensation Insurance Fund. DivcoWest and TMG Partnersacquired the 354,000-square-foot building from the fund in October for $44 million, according to the San Francisco BusinessTimes.
Representatives said the new sale price reflects a retrofitting of the building that is under way.
...More"Mid-Market Flooded With New Investment"
Twitter moved into its grand new headquarters in Market Square this month, and other tech companies like Yammer and One King’s Lane are right behind it. Their arrivals herald a turnaround for some of the most deteriorated stretches of Market Street — but others still languish.
The catalyst for much of the new investment in the area was Twitter’s decision to move to Market Square and the city’s creation of a payroll tax exemption to lure other tech tenants as well. Since April 2011, when Shorenstein Properties finalized the 215,000-square-foot lease with Twitter, investors have spent more than $500 million in the neighborhood.
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