Because businesses have gravity and naturally condense into gravity wells. Why is the oil industry (executive and R&D) so heavily centered in Houston, or financ

Because businesses have gravity and naturally condense into gravity wells. Why is the oil industry (executive and R&D) so heavily centered in Houston, or finance so heavily centered in New York? Why don't some of those giant banks move their headquarters to (fill in your struggling town) where they need the jobs? The reason is that businesses aren't charities. The people who work in the industry benefit enormously from proximity to a bunch of other people in their industry. I grew up in the midwest, but I moved (with my family) to the Bay Area a couple years ago, and it's been like rocket fuel to my career and income. It's hard to even describe how advantageous it is when your social network naturally includes so many people in your industry - when your neighbor works at Google, and the other parents at your preschool work Stripe and Apple, and when your friends from the gym work at Github... etc. It's just nuts. Most people, once they've lived some place a little while and established a network, don't really want to leave. So then when they start their business they launch it with a few friends who are all here and either worked with them at their last business or are part of that extended social network, and of course they all live in the Bay Area already so they just stay because why move? I understand the frustration of geographic inequality of jobs, but honestly the hot startups are not who you should target if you want to inject some vitality into a struggling city. By far the better way forward is to combine a mix of training/education, public investment, and attracting some mid-size business to help seed the local market. As one example, this is roughly what they did in Chattanooga, TN, and have turned it into a small but nice little tech outpost.