Silicon Valley: Lessons in urban planning

ROBERT Metcalfe, an inventor of the Ethernet, once wrote: "Silicon Valley is the only place on earth not trying to figure out how to become Silicon Valley." Every year, hundreds of people, tourists and entrepreneurs alike, come to the Bay Area hoping to "see Silicon Valley".

So much so that an article in The Mercury News last year suggested that the Valley is giving Alcatraz, the Golden Gate and the Bay Area's other tourist attractions a run for their money.

But what does Silicon Valley look like? Where could one send tourists - or even locals, for that matter - hoping to "see" it?

The HBO show Silicon Valley solves this problem by depicting the Valley as an animated graphic of clustered corporate campuses. Still, what would a technophile in search of the holy grail seek out? The my…