The always insightful Ken Jarboe points to this New York Times article on technology and traffic in Silicon Valley:
Nir Zuk, its founder and chief technology officer,
notes that Palo Alto is synonymous with high-tech innovation, and he
was living there when he came up with the name. “But in Silicon Valley, you locate a company where the engineers are,”
he said. “You would never locate a networking company in Palo Alto.” … [A] look at the microclusters within Silicon Valley
demonstrates the business relationships, the social connections and the
seamless communication that animate the region’s economy. It also
suggests the human nuance behind the Valley’s success and shows why
that success is not easy to copy, export or outsource.
Jarboe adds:
Similar to the microclimates that determine the locations of the
wineries, these microclimates are a “collection of remarkably local
clusters based on industry niches, skills, school ties, traffic
patterns, ethnic groups and even weekend sports teams.”
All surrounded by the macroclimate of openness to new ideas and people of the greater Bay Area. It’s time to look more closely at the intersection of these micro- and macro-climates for creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship.
December 20th, 2007 at 7:24 pm
A related question (which I also recently sent you via email) is whether there are any effects (positve or negative) on a creative hub’s growth from being inside a megaregion (or, conversely, far from one).
December 20th, 2007 at 11:10 pm
Michael – I think being in a mega-region is a plus in general. NYC is the hub of Bos-Wash but Washington DC has grown in part as a “suburb” of NYC taking on business and professional functions that used to be done in NY. Then there is the question of Portland Oregon. I believe Portland benefits from being part of Cascadia, though technology companies can certainly be drawn into either Seattle or south to the Bay Area or Nor-cal mega. In general it is a plus, but it a city fails to develop a niche, its functions can be shifted up to the core city in the mega. And this is what has happened to virtually every smaller city in the Chi-Pitts mega.
December 21st, 2007 at 1:41 am
Is there any way to quantify how big of a plus it is (I notice that it isn’t a CC-index factor)?
I’m thinking of two cities in particular, Albuquerque vs. Tucson. They are very similar, but Tucson is part of the Phoenix mega-region, and Albuquerque… isn’t.
So far, I *like* ABQ slightly better, but I am wondering if I should be giving more weight to Tucson’s location in a mega (and if so, how much weight).
December 21st, 2007 at 3:24 pm
I lived and worked in the Valley 1995-2002 and while it is true there are definite clusters of companies as described in the article, my experience was that workers lived all over the place and commuted as necessary. Living in San Francisco and working in Santa Clara was a pain (you miss living in the city and then you have to get home after work, so it is hard to be a part of fun afterwork things in South Bay. Eventualy, I moved south, then moved west to the far off suburb town of Pleasanton to be able to afford to buy a condo. Then we moved back to San Jose which was almost like living in a city, although I drove to work in Sunnyvale and Redwood Shores every day.
I think the technology micro climates are more due to business factors than availability of workers–e.g. if the founders and core team are working at one chip company in Milpitas or Alviso, it is easier to find space nearby to spin out into than to go somewhere totally different further up the peninsula. People move around all the time–I had 6 addresses and 5 jobs in 7 years as a web developer/engineering manager. I knew people who commuted from all over the bay area. If you get to work before 7 and don’t leave until 9 or 10, you can avoid traffic. Yuck. No more.
December 21st, 2007 at 3:34 pm
Portland is always at risk of being subordinated to much larger Seattle or the Bay Area, but has found a few niches within the mega. Unusually for Creative Class cities, we have a growing manufacturing base. The Western suburbs are a manufacturing region for Bay Area and Japanese microchip makers — Intel makes most of its US chips here and does most of its research here. HP, NEC, IBM and others have plants here. There are also strong high-tech metals companies, Boeing plant, etc.
Portland’s current hip image and sustainability helps attract creative class for quality of life, even if they work for companies with headquarters elsewhere. We’re moving rapidly up the ranks of cities for new patents, lots of small business startups. I think #4 on Gary Gates latest gay index, and an influx of young creative class, immigrants and artists.
Unlike Tacoma or Memphis trying to figure out how to do it, Portland has done it — the question here is how do we keep, maintain and build on this? Fourty years ago Portland was a big lumber town with no university, a bankrupt transit system and almost no galleries, bookstores, etc. We’re all amazed to suddenly be considered a hot spot and wondering what to do next.
December 21st, 2007 at 5:10 pm
Dave – Touche. You are absolutely right. That’s why we like to think of regions, and in statistical terms we use the CMSA or consolidate metropolitan area. Heck, what is the google shuttle about – a way to move workers from around the region.
I re-read the Lohr article today. We are a day behind in newspapers here, and I read the original on-line. What struck me is that these micro-climates are what we used to call “neighborhoods” – duh:-) And Dave you are right every regional has residential neighborhoods and business neighborhoods or districts. The micro-climates of innovation are business and technology neighborhoods which are part of a much broader macro-climate of neighborhood diversity, economic diversity and human diversity.