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Comment by patrickg_zill | Hacker News Reader

In the 60s or 70s, IBM made all their plastics, worldwide, for their machines near Boulder, where SparkFun is based.

As a result of that, when IBM moved production elsewhere, much of the talent stayed in the area - now there are a lot of high quality smaller companies with injection molding and other plastics experience etc. in the area.

Another area in business where the high rents and "you need a VC" mentality would have worked against real world success.

CO attracts high quality people - although the housing prices skyrocketing is going to affect whether the younger people who are less financially established, will come in the same numbers as before.

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> although the housing prices skyrocketing is going to affect whether the younger people who are less financially established, will come in the same numbers as before.

But at least you can just go East here. The towns surrounding Boulder--Superior, Louisville, Lafayette, Longmont, etc.--are great places to live, costs are far lower than in Boulder proper, and your commute is still only 15-30 minutes. I live in Lafayette and commute into Boulder; it takes 20 minutes and it's mostly on 2-lane roads going past farmland.

And as an added bonus, when I'm missing a part for one of my electronics projects, I can always stop by SparkFun. :)

It strikes me as something of an "own goal" that the "green belt" in Boulder has had the effect of putting a lot of people in that area out of reach of public transportation or bicycling as viable transportation options, requiring more cars and parking and traffic and pollution. Instead of growing out a little bit (god forbid they build 'up' or 'in'), people just drive even further out.

The green belt worked in Boulder's early days before many people commuted in. Unfortunately, Boulder's anti-growth mindset these last few decades has priced people out, forcing them to "jump the gap" in the green belt. I think the green belt is a really good thing for Boulder to prevent sprawl (and traffic), but it needs to be coupled with a pro-growth mindset.

There are shifting attitudes in Boulder as NIMBYs get more competition from younger people like myself. I hope it isn't too late because at this point, Boulder is in danger of turning into Aspen or Santa Barbara.

I get the reason for it and it makes sense to me - but the unintended consequences are causing problems. Oregon has a similar thing, the 'Urban Growth Boundary', but those expand over time so that cities can expand.

Agreed, I gave up on bicycling when I moved outside the Boulder green belt. Boulder has a ton of cyclists but, for whatever reason, refuses to build proper bike lanes. The major roads in/out of Boulder barely have shoulders in places. California, by contrast, has proper bike lanes everywhere--seriously, even Central Expressway in the bay area is safer to bike on than any of the major roads going in/out of Boulder.

I switched to a motorcycle as a result, and while it doesn't have the health benefits of bicycling, it's a good way to commute.

It must depend on where in Boulder you live and work. From my perspective in South Boulder, there are many bike lanes and bike paths. I don't even have to touch asphalt to get to work.

I started bike commuting to Pearl today from south Boulder and I never have to go on a road.

Boulder's bike infrastructure is pretty good for the US. The week I spent there, I got around by bike with no problems.

They've done a lot right there, it's the housing that's completely broken thanks to people like Mr. "No more jobs":

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/04/business/how-anti-growth-...

Having grown up in a place with its share of economic hard times, and having lived in Italy for many years, the idea of "too many pesky jobs" is... absolutely mind boggling. Like something from another planet.

That man is a colossal moron, which is part of why I love that article's line about how he too is a transplant.

"I'm here! Lock the doors!"

This is definitely true. I first moved to Boulder in a crappy small apartment, but when I wanted to buy a house, I moved way out east and commuted. With the housing market the way it is, I was able to sell that house in 3 years with a big profit and buy a house much closer back to Boulder.

How did that work? Wasn't your latest house even more expensive due to its proximity to Boulder?

Yea it was, but the down payment we were able to make from the huge profit we made from the last place meant the monthly payments were only a few hundred bucks more a month.

If the area grows, the commute won't be that good in the future.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, a lot of people in the Bay Area moved from the core Silicon Valley cities to some of the outlying East Bay cities like Dublin, Pleasanton, and Walnut Creek, where they could afford larger homes. The commute from those cities to the major job centers is much worse than it used to be.

Hey neighbor! I'm in Lafayette as well, over by the library. 20 minutes to Boulder, Longmont, or 30 minutes to Denver. It's a great location.

Agreed, it's awesome here, though the prices are going up pretty quickly. That said, so are the restaurants down Public! Great new options. :)

Did SparkFun re-open its retail business then? When I was there last summer on a tour, the retail storefront wasn't open. The facility is great, though.

Also: Don't forget TinkerMill in Longmont, a great hackerspace that doubles as an incubator. I just met someone today who is bootstrapping an educational toy company out of TinkerMill. The local start-up community is really quite vibrant.

> although the housing prices skyrocketing is going to affect whether the younger people who are less financially established, will come in the same numbers as before.

It's been mindblowing how much housing has gone up over the Front Range even in the last ten years (median price of a single family home in Boulder is now over $1M whereas ten years ago I think it might have been a third of that). Much of the affordable housing for northern Colorado means being all the way up in Larimer or Weld county if you're interested in a single family home. I think this is only going to get way worse, with a number of companies like Google and Amazon significantly growing their footprint around Boulder and Denver.

Weld county is affordable because it there aren't a lot of jobs there. As people move further and further out for cheaper housing, traffic gets worse and worse. The Front Range is basically like Nebraska: You can basically build in any direction without geographic limits. It that happens, the traffic will be worse than LA as people zig zag across the Front Range to commute to their jobs in different suburbs.

As a Boulder resident (renter), I think Front Range cities need to have a pro-growth mindset to allow people to live closer to their jobs. We shouldn't repeat the same mistakes as LA and Silicon Valley.

> As a Boulder resident (renter), I think Front Range cities need to have a pro-growth mindset to allow people to live closer to their jobs. We shouldn't repeat the same mistakes as LA and Silicon Valley.

Bingo! My near-miss with Boulder is what got me interested in how cities (don't) work in the US and the people interested in fixing them. It's a pretty interesting movement, with people all over the ideological spectrum, from environmentalists to libertarians. Since it's local, I think it's possible to make more of a difference than with national politics.

Here are some good ones:

* http://www.sfyimby.org/ & https://www.yimbydenver.com/

* http://www.strongtowns.org/

* http://marketurbanism.com/

IBM is definitely not the only reason there is so much talent. Don't forget about the numerous government research centers.

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