Go to any town or city square in Europe or Asia and you would be hard pressed to find silence. Normally situated at the heart of human happenings, it should be a life sign of a healthy community. So what does it mean that the new town square, erected as part of the City of Sunnyvale downtown redevelopment plan, is mostly a lifeless dead-zone.

Having lived and work from home and in the immediate community for some years, I have ridden my bike around most of this city and downtown is one of my favorite places to be. Mainly I frequent Coffee&More on Murphy street, but today for the first time I took a walk down one block to sit in the new town square. I have ridden my bike past this place many time, but rarely does it ever have more than a handful of passersby, or a gaggle of boys skating.
It seems to me the local economy is not too healthy. During the day, the population of Sunnyvale probably completely turns over to Tech professionals that live elsewhere. There are stay and home moms that push strollers and frequent the coffee shops, and a few visible older adults. But none of them are here, in the meeting place of the people.
It has a strange feel walking across a sterile expanse of newly laid stone, steel, and small trees propped up so they don't fall over. It sits directly behind the main street of businesses, so all you can see is the bare backs of buildings with delivery trucks outside. Business it seems, has a face, and community is at it's back.
That was a little harsh, but I had to run with it. The truth is, I look around Sunnyvale and see that it is no different than a lot of city's around here. The Local economy has been pushed out by large multinational corporations and the living paterns that trail in their wake. They are great for the city to build community infrastructure with tax revenue, but it seems to be at the expense of community's culture. We can build all the meeting spaces we want, but if no one can show up we've lost our pulse. If the enterprise business model stifles culture with things like transportation patterns, energy production, family care outsourcing and goods production, than I believe we need to look for a new model.
I believe that it will also be a large multinational corporation that resuscitates community. I envision a cooperative non-profit corporate model, distributed across millions of nodes, or administration centers. around the world. With smaller constituents, I see potential for more autonomy, and freedom of will. In Open Source software infrastructure, I see more freedom of speech, press and an empowered community with more individual voice and direction.
I push this idea around a lot, and it seems that if something like this were to pass, the very business model that thrives would have to have pulled the people up out of the current model. It would have innovated social and business mechanisms for seamlessly attaching itself to communities, advocate to, and received the people. In a cooperative non-profit foundation, I believe we would find a healthy global economy commanding less resources(especially energy) and living a happier healthier lifestyle, together.
I value culture and cultural diversity. For this to flourish, we must reteach ourselves what it is to truly mix with each other, talk to each other, and share our lives together.