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For what it's worth the submission title here ("Turning small towns into tech hubs isn't working") doesn't appear in the article. The basic reasoning of the ar

For what it's worth the submission title here ("Turning small towns into tech hubs isn't working") doesn't appear in the article. The basic reasoning of the article: ...the high-tech industries powering the economy today don’t have much need for the cheap labor that rural communities contributed to America’s industrial past. They mostly need highly educated workers. They find those most easily in big cities, not in small towns. In a report published in November, Mark Muro, William Galston and Clara Hendrickson of the Brookings Institution laid out a portfolio of ideas to rescue the substantial swathe of the country that they identify as “left behind.” They identify critical shortages bedeviling declining communities: workers with digital skills, broadband connections, capital. And they have plans to address them: I.T. training and education initiatives, regulatory changes to boost lending to small businesses, incentives to invest in broadband. ...the authors concede that they may not be up to the task. “I don’t know if these ideas are going to work,” Mr. Galston acknowledged when I pressed him on the issue. “But it is worth making the effort.” The article is essentially laying out the idea of encouraging the tech sector to develop in rural communities and says it might work, but notes that even proponents aren't certain. The pressure of agglomeration is high in the tech industry, and that concentrates jobs in big cities.

protonimitate 8y ago
If the idea is for the Tech Industry to 'revitalize' these small towns (which I'm not sure I buy into), then the only way to do is to incentivize companies to hire workers from these areas (i.e. better education and early awareness of 'tech jobs'), or incentivize companies to move existing employees to these areas and allow them to work remotely. > The pressure of agglomeration is high in the tech industry Which is for nothing. Old school business ideas and stubbornness is the only reason this is true. Keep your gaudy glass building in the hot new section of downtown if you wish, but let your workers choose where they live and work from.
- lotsofpulp 8y ago
  Reality shows it is for something. People must be getting something out of density, otherwise the most in demand people (i.e. highly paid) wouldn't be opting to live there. At the very least, trust is a very valuable thing and knowing people who know people is very valuable, which is much easier to accomplish in cities.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- hardolaf 8y ago
  The reality is that most cheap talent (i.e. early career engineers) want to live or work in major cities because there's things to do and the quality of life is simply unbeatable compared to living in even an average suburb of a major city let alone in the middle of nowhere. On top of that, it's much easier to attract top talent from other countries to cities with at least workable mass transit systems. In moving to Chicago from a large town, my quality of life easily doubled overnight. Grocery shopping is now only an extra 3 minutes out of my way on the way home from the train station instead of an extra 25 minutes out of my way. I don't need to maintain two cars for my wife and I because honestly, we barely drive because there is no need. I'm starting to consider just getting rid of my car entirely. If I want to go and see Broadway plays, I no longer have to travel over an hour by car, hunt for parking, and then walk 5-10 more minutes. If I want to eat out, there's over 100 restaurants just in my ward. It's just a better life overall.
badloginagain 8y ago
In theory all you need to make it work is good internet connection. Especially if its remote. If there was a serious offer from some company where for the same amount of rent in SF, I could have a mortgage on literal acres of land, thats attractive. Less attractive is the crumbling infrastructure, opioid wildfires, actual wildfires, and aggressively conservative culture. Gotta try something though, right?
- sidlls 8y ago
  People drastically understate the infrastructure and other issues you note in places outside of major urban centers of technology. My children do not have a net benefit from a huge home on a huge plot of land if the schools are garbage, there are few or no parks, the politics are very conservative, and diversity is lacking.
  - pastor_elm 8y ago
    A good school district in America is a bubble itself. The diversity is lacking and the politics are even worse than conservative. They're self-righteous.
  - TarpitCarnivore 8y ago
    > if the schools are garbage, there are few or no parks, the politics are very conservative, and diversity is lacking. But all of this exists outside of rural areas, and in fact in many areas close to metro hubs. Just because you're in a more urban environment does not guarantee you to have this utopian neighborhood.
    - sidlls 8y ago
      Of course it doesn't guarantee that; nothing is guaranteed. It comes down to likelihood: I'm more likely to find high quality education and diversity (cultural and recreational) in the Bay Area, New York, etc. than almost anywhere else in America.
  - badpun 8y ago
chocolatebunny 8y ago
It's weird that it kind of makes it a small town vs big city discussion. I think most of the big tech sectors seem to spawn near good universities. The universities supply the highly educated workforce for the businesses and the size of the city seems to play less of a role.
- dredmorbius 8y ago
  Look at University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. Supercomputing centre and home of Mozilla, but the talent and firms leave. And they don't head to Chicago either.
  - wenc 8y ago
    I was talking to UChicago prof who did his undergrad at UIUC, and he said a lot of money was spent to bootstrap the tech economy in Champaign-Urbana but even back then at the height of the dotcom boom, it didn't make sense to him because most people just did not want to live in the middle of cornfields. Rural colleges (even good ones) that are too far away from a city or a metropolitan area rarely have strong diversified economies because talent just doesn't want to live there. If they did, these places wouldn't remain small. Ann Arbor does reasonably well, but it is close to Detroit (which despite most people's mental images of blight, has a very large suburban population that isn't too different from that of other cities in America). Pittsburgh does reasonably well because it is itself a city. Off the top of my head I can think of many small college towns with good tech programs that have not managed to develop a strong diversified/tech economy: * Ithaca, NY * Providence, RI * West Lafayette, IN * Charlottesville, VA Madison WI does ok for some reason (it's a really idyllic place to live as a student), but even then outside of Epic and a few large employers, it's not really a talent magnet. Historically, the very concept of a university in medieval times arose due to urbanization. Outside of a few exceptions like Oxford/Cambridge, situating universities in rural settings is actually not the default idea. Thomas Jefferson famously despised city life and placed UVa in rural Charlottesville, and other colleges in America followed suit. But most European universities are usually located in cities or towns, and instead of sprawling bucolic campuses, they are spread out all over a city.
  - 8y ago
voodootrucker 8y ago
If I'm reading the latest LinkedIn workforce report correctly, the migration trends are actually from NY and SF to Denver, and from Denver to smaller cities: https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/blog/linkedin-workforce-report-december-2018-denver-co?lipi=urn%3ali%3apage%3ad_flagship3_detail_base%3bdfvfycz9tgwi%2bduloopk3g%3d%3d&licu=urn%3ali%3acontrol%3ad_flagship3_detail_base-link https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/blog/linkedin-workforce-report...
- sct202 8y ago
  It looks like that but the magnitude of inbound is 10x outbound.
davidf18 8y ago
"...The pressure of agglomeration is high in the tech industry, and that concentrates jobs in big cities." Well, this statement isn't true because otherwise there would be no outsource to India, etc. Taxing outsourcing and incentivizing the very firms that outsource to India and other places back to these underdeveloped areas could make a substantial difference. Besides, for customer service roles, you would have people with better communications skills who are easier to understand by and large. It is totally wrong to blame "hi tech" of firms such as Amazon and Google, and better to look at all of these outsourced service jobs. The question the reader should have is why the economists and the writers of the article didn't address the repatriation of service jobs back to the US.

protonimitate 8y ago

If the idea is for the Tech Industry to 'revitalize' these small towns (which I'm not sure I buy into), then the only way to do is to incentivize companies to hire workers from these areas (i.e. better education and early awareness of 'tech jobs'), or incentivize companies to move existing employees to these areas and allow them to work remotely. > The pressure of agglomeration is high in the tech industry Which is for nothing. Old school business ideas and stubbornness is the only reason this is true. Keep your gaudy glass building in the hot new section of downtown if you wish, but let your workers choose where they live and work from.

lotsofpulp 8y ago
Reality shows it is for something. People must be getting something out of density, otherwise the most in demand people (i.e. highly paid) wouldn't be opting to live there. At the very least, trust is a very valuable thing and knowing people who know people is very valuable, which is much easier to accomplish in cities.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
hardolaf 8y ago
The reality is that most cheap talent (i.e. early career engineers) want to live or work in major cities because there's things to do and the quality of life is simply unbeatable compared to living in even an average suburb of a major city let alone in the middle of nowhere. On top of that, it's much easier to attract top talent from other countries to cities with at least workable mass transit systems. In moving to Chicago from a large town, my quality of life easily doubled overnight. Grocery shopping is now only an extra 3 minutes out of my way on the way home from the train station instead of an extra 25 minutes out of my way. I don't need to maintain two cars for my wife and I because honestly, we barely drive because there is no need. I'm starting to consider just getting rid of my car entirely. If I want to go and see Broadway plays, I no longer have to travel over an hour by car, hunt for parking, and then walk 5-10 more minutes. If I want to eat out, there's over 100 restaurants just in my ward. It's just a better life overall.

badloginagain 8y ago

In theory all you need to make it work is good internet connection. Especially if its remote. If there was a serious offer from some company where for the same amount of rent in SF, I could have a mortgage on literal acres of land, thats attractive. Less attractive is the crumbling infrastructure, opioid wildfires, actual wildfires, and aggressively conservative culture. Gotta try something though, right?

sidlls 8y ago
People drastically understate the infrastructure and other issues you note in places outside of major urban centers of technology. My children do not have a net benefit from a huge home on a huge plot of land if the schools are garbage, there are few or no parks, the politics are very conservative, and diversity is lacking.
- pastor_elm 8y ago
  A good school district in America is a bubble itself. The diversity is lacking and the politics are even worse than conservative. They're self-righteous.
- TarpitCarnivore 8y ago
  > if the schools are garbage, there are few or no parks, the politics are very conservative, and diversity is lacking. But all of this exists outside of rural areas, and in fact in many areas close to metro hubs. Just because you're in a more urban environment does not guarantee you to have this utopian neighborhood.
  - sidlls 8y ago
    Of course it doesn't guarantee that; nothing is guaranteed. It comes down to likelihood: I'm more likely to find high quality education and diversity (cultural and recreational) in the Bay Area, New York, etc. than almost anywhere else in America.
- badpun 8y ago

chocolatebunny 8y ago

It's weird that it kind of makes it a small town vs big city discussion. I think most of the big tech sectors seem to spawn near good universities. The universities supply the highly educated workforce for the businesses and the size of the city seems to play less of a role.

dredmorbius 8y ago
Look at University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. Supercomputing centre and home of Mozilla, but the talent and firms leave. And they don't head to Chicago either.
- wenc 8y ago
  I was talking to UChicago prof who did his undergrad at UIUC, and he said a lot of money was spent to bootstrap the tech economy in Champaign-Urbana but even back then at the height of the dotcom boom, it didn't make sense to him because most people just did not want to live in the middle of cornfields. Rural colleges (even good ones) that are too far away from a city or a metropolitan area rarely have strong diversified economies because talent just doesn't want to live there. If they did, these places wouldn't remain small. Ann Arbor does reasonably well, but it is close to Detroit (which despite most people's mental images of blight, has a very large suburban population that isn't too different from that of other cities in America). Pittsburgh does reasonably well because it is itself a city. Off the top of my head I can think of many small college towns with good tech programs that have not managed to develop a strong diversified/tech economy: * Ithaca, NY * Providence, RI * West Lafayette, IN * Charlottesville, VA Madison WI does ok for some reason (it's a really idyllic place to live as a student), but even then outside of Epic and a few large employers, it's not really a talent magnet. Historically, the very concept of a university in medieval times arose due to urbanization. Outside of a few exceptions like Oxford/Cambridge, situating universities in rural settings is actually not the default idea. Thomas Jefferson famously despised city life and placed UVa in rural Charlottesville, and other colleges in America followed suit. But most European universities are usually located in cities or towns, and instead of sprawling bucolic campuses, they are spread out all over a city.
- 8y ago

voodootrucker 8y ago

If I'm reading the latest LinkedIn workforce report correctly, the migration trends are actually from NY and SF to Denver, and from Denver to smaller cities: https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/blog/linkedin-workforce-report-december-2018-denver-co?lipi=urn%3ali%3apage%3ad_flagship3_detail_base%3bdfvfycz9tgwi%2bduloopk3g%3d%3d&licu=urn%3ali%3acontrol%3ad_flagship3_detail_base-link https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/blog/linkedin-workforce-report...

sct202 8y ago
It looks like that but the magnitude of inbound is 10x outbound.

davidf18 8y ago

"...The pressure of agglomeration is high in the tech industry, and that concentrates jobs in big cities." Well, this statement isn't true because otherwise there would be no outsource to India, etc. Taxing outsourcing and incentivizing the very firms that outsource to India and other places back to these underdeveloped areas could make a substantial difference. Besides, for customer service roles, you would have people with better communications skills who are easier to understand by and large. It is totally wrong to blame "hi tech" of firms such as Amazon and Google, and better to look at all of these outsourced service jobs. The question the reader should have is why the economists and the writers of the article didn't address the repatriation of service jobs back to the US.