In California’s Silicon Valley, some residents lament the ways industry giants like Facebook and Google are dominating suburban communities like Mountain View, Menlo Park and Palo Alto, by altering the housing markets, creating traffic problems and bringing in a monoculture of tech workers. Special correspondent Spencer Michels reports.

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Spencer Michels:

A so-called company town like Detroit can be dominated by one industry, like automobiles, says Stanford law professor Michelle Wilde Anderson, who has been studying tensions in Silicon Valley.

Michelle Wilde Anderson:

The anxiety about a company town comes from two things. One is a worry that we’re going to over-rely on single companies or single industries. That’s kind of a Detroit fear. I think part of it is just the fear that Silicon Valley’s people themselves will become a monoculture of tech workers.

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Spencer Michels:

But making sense in a dynamic economy is tough, says Stanford’s Anderson.

Michelle Wilde Anderson:

People miss a more humble version of Silicon Valley, but the problem is that you can’t have it both ways. We can’t both allow all of this commercial development and these high tech campuses, and not permit the housing, because it falls down hardest on lower paid workers.

Spencer Michels:

She says high tech companies need to explore building far outside the expensive metro areas, and they also have a responsibility.

Michelle Wilde Anderson:

In the modern condition of American inequality and lower- paid workers and super- concentrated wealth, do they have a moral obligation to start really trying to address some of our social problems? Yes. And most importantly they have tremendous capacity to be part of the solution.

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