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I'd love to see some of the enthusiasm for science and technology that's prevalent along the west coast spread to the south. I always find it interesting when
by Xcelerate 11y ago
I'd love to see some of the enthusiasm for science and technology that's prevalent along the west coast spread to the south. I always find it interesting when I read an article about San Francisco locals becoming "annoyed" with the huge number of tech workers taking over the city. Where I live (Knoxville), I find that most people are relatively uninterested in discussing technology.
But I think that's changing. Chattanooga was the first city in the US to offer gigabit internet to its residents, and the city is working hard to incentivize tech companies to locate there — for a startup, high-quality internet and cheap office space are hard to pass up. Also, a lot of the region's natural beauty is attractive to programmers who are able to work remotely. Consider a city like Asheville — hardly any tech there, but there is a great little food scene and the city is surrounded by beautiful mountains. Research Triangle Park in Raleigh-Durham has a fair number of tech companies, but that region is still a little too vanilla/corporate/suburban for my liking. I think that's changing as well though.
The biggest problem is that people are always going to locate where there peers are and where the resources are located, and Appalachia currently has very few tech resources. I read recently that 25% of all the world's venture capital is located in the Bay Area. Like-minded people tend to congregate near each other to share and debate ideas. After SF/SV, the biggest tech cities in the US are New York, LA, Seattle, Boston, and Austin. The southern United States still has a long way to go before they acquire a critical mass of people who are interested in technology, and it's difficult to build momentum. I was speaking to my uncle (who has worked at Georgia's department of economic development), and he said that one of the big problems for technological development in Georgia is that companies that are founded there tend to move to California once they become successful. The question is: how do you make it attractive for them to instead stay in Atlanta?
- shas3 11y agoI think one of the 'problems' in viewing the South as a homogeneous whole is that it is so huge and so sparsely populated. Austin, Dallas, and Atlanta (and to an extent, Houston) are pretty tech-y, but they are all so far apart, unlike the Eastern Seaboard, SF-SV, SoCal, or Portland-Seattle. Mid-west has Raleigh-RTP-type pockets of science/tech in Minneapolis and Chicago, otherwise expanse is a problem in Dakotas, Iowa, etc. too. This expanse should be less and less of a problem as telecommuting becomes more prevalent. But geography is still a pretty big challenge to overcome.
- bluedino 11y agoRaleigh, NC is in the Midwest?
- sremani 11y agoHe said Mid-west has Raleigh RTP type pockets.
- jacobolus 11y agoThe South isn’t really sparsely populated by US standards. Here’s a choropleth map of 2010 population density by county: http://ecpmlangues.u-strasbg.fr/civilization/geography/maps/US%20Population%20density,%202010.png http://ecpmlangues.u-strasbg.fr/civilization/geography/maps/...
- shas3 11y agoGood point, there are two notable contiguous bands: Atlanta-Greenville-Charlotte-RTP and Florida Atlantic coast. A couple of things to add: in the south, distance between dense counties is large elsewhere- not too many contiguous regions/clusters. Then, there's also the question: is density sufficient to create a tech hub? Density is surely a factor, but far from sufficient. Edit: I feel compelled to add this image from Wikipedia: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/MapofEmergingUSMegaregions.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/MapofEme...
- blahedo 11y agoThe map is slightly deceptive when it comes to Virginia; here the cities are independent of the counties that often completely surround them, and so "city or county" is an equivalent-level government. So you see all the darkest-red dots running up the western part of Virginia? If the population in those cities were shared with the surrounding county and the density recalculated, you'd get a lot more of the middle-reds you see in western NC and SC. So the "Atlanta-Greenville-Charlotte-RTP" band that you see really continues all the way up to DC (where it becomes even denser and turns in to the Northeast Corridor Metroplex).
- beatpanda 11y agoIts not that the cities aren't attractive, its that VCs force their portfolio companies to move to SF/SV, mainly because of the financial interests of the VCs. There are a lot of companies that would happily locate somewhere else if their funders would let them, and once we get done with this "market correction" it would be neat if the tech industry could get together and agree on a model that doesn't involve making life miserable in the Bay Area for everyone who isn't a software engineer.
- duaneb 11y agoIndeed. There is always pressure to move where the talent is—funders want to grow.
- disposition2 11y agoQuite the contradiction to have a government, both state and local, that is always pontificating pro-business while at the same time suing local municipalities for attempting to provide a superior product (reliable, uncapped, fast internet) to that of a monopolized national corporation. Outside of Chattanooga, TN lawmakers are quite eager to please Pennsylvania's Comcast at the expense of its citizens. I imagine they (said lawmakers) are all wondering why there isn't a greater startup or tech-centered small business culture while they continue to chain it down while exclaiming how much they support free enterprise. Just looking at UTK, UTK Hospital, TVA and Oak Ridge...with that amount of engineering / medical / educated talent, East Tennessee should be at a minimum competing with Raleigh-Durham/Charlotte...especially with the Smokies and cost of living, but it feels more like a few companies pulling the rest of the area up a hill with the rest digging in where they are now. Sorry for the rant.
- forrestthewoods 11y agoI wish the internet cared about getting rural folk to code as much as it cares about getting more women to code. =[
- douche 11y agoA rural coder's initiative wouldn't do much for the racial imbalance, though. The brain drain away from rural America is pretty alarming. The best and brightest leave for the cities, and they don't often come back. Throw in the burgeoning heroin epidemic, and things are pretty grim.
- matwood 11y agoDefinitely changing, but it takes time and work. See here: http://www.fastcompany.com/1839445/introducing-silicon-harbor-charleston-sc-home-twitpic-and-amazons-createspace http://www.fastcompany.com/1839445/introducing-silicon-harbo...