Unlike polluting industries of old, billionaires want to live next to their modern day tech factories. Thus their headquarters are a short drive away from their minimum 3 million dollar ranch homes in Palo Alto, their town councils demand low growth to keep the traffic down and the feeling suburban and all the worker bees must commute in from someplace uglier where poor people may live. Seriously, this is why all this is happening. There is no other reason. Google is attempting to remedy this problem by building compact quarantined worker bee colonies that won't impact the multi-millionaire enclaves that management cherishes.

The peasants (reasonably well paid tech workers) flock to their wealthy patrons (billionaire CEOs).

Come now, they don't see themselves as peasants. They're getting paid to do what they love! What more do they want? They should feel lucky that their rich patrons deign to pay them for doing something they're so passionate about.

(This comment is a sarcastic commentary on attitudes in this industry.)

The last time that didn't end very well

Don't expect change to come from the peasants. They have bulwark of conservatism throughout history.

> It all seems to be driven by the billionaires who just love their city

I think it's more on the workers than anything else. The types who flock to Google, Facebook, etc. are mostly urbanites who'd sooner die than live anywhere outside of the coasts. So, you put your offices where your target demo of workers want to live.