My phone connection kept dropping out, which didn't make sense because I was in the heart of Silicon Valley.
It turns out that poor cellphone reception has been a problem for years in downtown Palo Alto, which has a relationship with technology that is decidedly mixed.
我的手機收訊一直中斷，這毫無道理，因為我位在矽谷的心臟地帶。
實則帕羅奧圖市區多年來一直有手機收訊不良的問題，這個城市與科技的關係無疑是亦敵亦友。
Here in the city where Facebook and Google grew into the world famous companies they are today, many homeowners passionately oppose new cell towers in their upscale neighborhoods, complicating connections.
Palo Alto residents also gripe about traffic. But overall the city has problems the rest of the country would love to have. Startup technology companies are clamoring for the prestige of a Palo Alto address. The vibrancy of Stanford University keeps the city young and humming.
就在這個城市裡，臉書和Google茁壯為今天舉世聞名的公司，市內許多住宅的屋主強烈反對在他們的高級住宅區設置新的手機基地台，提高了改進收訊的難度。
帕羅奧圖市居民對交通問題也有抱怨。但整體而言，這個城市的問題卻是這個國家其他城市求之不得的。新創科技公司爭相設在這個名聲響叮噹的城市。史丹福大學的活力使這個城市保持年輕和活潑。
In an election year, with nearly constant squawking from presidential candidates about well-paying jobs, the mayor of Palo Alto has an unusual message for some of the cash-flush tech companies based here: Go away. Please.
"Big tech companies are choking off the downtown," Mayor Patrick Burt said. "It's not healthy."
在選舉年，總統候選人不斷叨唸高薪工作，帕羅奧圖市市長派翠克．柏特卻對一些總公司設在這裡的現金滿滿的科技公司發出不尋常的訊息：請離開。
柏特市長說：「大科技公司使市區窒息，這不健康。」
As one walks down the sidewalks in residential areas, shaded by mature trees and basking in the city's sunny, mild weather, it's not too hard to understand why homeowners are trying to keep Palo Alto small despite its reputation for giving birth to the world's next big thing.
Last year, the city of 66,000 people set a cap of less than 1 percent a year on the growth of office space in most of its parts. In the charming downtown, where battalions of tech workers from companies like Amazon stroll the streets, their eyes often glued to their smartphones, the mayor is looking to enforce, in some form, an all-but-forgotten zoning regulation that bans companies whose primary business is research and development, including software coding. (To repeat: The mayor is considering enforcing a ban on coding at ground zero of Silicon Valley.)
走在住宅區的人行道上，大樹成蔭，陽光普照、氣候溫和，不難了解為何屋主們努力不讓帕羅奧圖市這個小城市變大，雖然它享有催生世界下一個偉大事物的名聲。
去年，這個有6萬6000居民的城市為大部分地區的辦公室空間設限，每年成長不得超過1%。在迷人的市區，亞馬遜等公司的科技員工成群結隊在街上逛，眼睛通常盯著手機，市長想用某種方式執行一種幾乎已被遺忘、限制土地用途的分區法規，禁止以研究與發展，包括軟體程式設計為主要業務的公司在此設籍。（重複一遍：市長考慮執行禁令，禁止在矽谷的中心點寫程式。）
"This is crazy," said Kate Vershov Downing, a lawyer who lit up the internet this month when she announced that she was quitting the city's planning commission because she was moving someplace cheaper. "This is Silicon Valley. We've been writing code here for decades."
律師凱特．佛休佛．唐寧說：「真瘋狂，這裡是矽谷，我們已在這裡寫程式寫了幾十年。」她本月宣布因為將要搬到較便宜的地區而辭去市政府計畫委員會職務，在網路上引起熱議。
譯/田思怡
