USA TODAY: …The fact that so much tech growth now is happening in cities reflects the evolution of the Internet. The rise of social networking, online media and digital commerce is putting a premium on design and creativity, making workers at Internet companies more like the artists, writers and media professionals who have always gravitated to cities. In addition, old urban industrial spaces are better suited for Web-style collaborative work than tech’s traditional cube farms.
“For modern Internet companies, building in a multifaceted creative environment is crucial,” said Chad Dickerson, CEO of Etsy, an online marketplace for handcrafted goods. Etsy is headquartered in Brooklyn’s Dumbo neighborhood, across the East River from Manhattan. This area of old workshops and factories is a magnet for fashion designers, architects and ad agencies, and has become New York’s trendy, have-to-be-there tech hub.
For cities, tech expansion can be a gold mine. No less than 13 of the top 25 cities in the Milken Institute’s “Best-Performing Cities 2013” report are tech hubs. “These jobs pay as much as 20% greater than other starting salaries in our area,” said Aimee Quirk, an economic adviser to New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu… (more)
EDITOR: Many of these techies get married, have children, and are looking for a perceived safer and more wholesome environment to raise their children.
Lancaster is precisely that community with one big disadvantage…it is a distant suburb or Philadelphia.
But thanks to Amtrak availability, we are only an hour and a quarter from Center City and less than an hour to Paoli.
So do we capitalize on this major asset? No, we ignore it. Proof of this is the inadequate amount of parking space at the station. To rely on getting a space in order to commute to Philadelphia is to throw the dice each morning.
The lack of reliable parking is the choke hold on downtown Lancaster and the region. But our supposed leaders are either too benighted to understand this or too muted to work for a real solution.
Good fortune presents one. But just like with Lancaster Square East, government is blind to opportunities. And there is no big money to entice special interests. They couldn’t care less about the merits for the community.
