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Flywheels : how cities are creating their own futures / Tom Alberg.

by Alberg, Tom.

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Columbia University Press, 2021.

307.760973 A329f

Cities and towns -- Effect of technological innovations on -- United States.

Urban renewal -- United States.

Technology -- United States -- Sociological aspects.

Technology -- Sociological aspects.

9780231199544 (hc)

xii, 281 p. : ill. ; 23 cm.

"Columbia Business School Publishing."

Includes bibliographical references and index.

"Around the world, as cities try to solve the riddle of creating prosperous and equitable futures for more people, again and again, they find themselves competing for the Big Prize - often a tech-based corporate headquarters, data center or lab. And this does indeed work to a point -- building such places does encourage urban renewal -- but one look at skyrocketing real estate prices and homelessness in tech hubs such as Seattle and the California Bay Area show that it's not that simple. The author draws on his experience advising companies to propose a different way of looking at tech companies and urban renewal, based on the flywheel. Just as flywheels generate energy, so do tech companies energize local economies, and so do cities seek to reinvigorate themselves. While both sides have operated independently, in the future they must work in alignment with each other -- tech companies must contribute to their host cities' public infrastructure, while governments must create policies that encourage business while serving their constituents. Otherwise, there will be struggles with income inequality as in Seattle and San Francisco, or failed ventures like the Amazon facility in NYC that tried to ignore the will of the people. Alberg shows how Tulsa and Kansas City provide important lessons to other up-and-coming tech hubs -- like Cleveland, Indianapolis, Portland, St. Louis, Crystal City, Virginia, Nashville, and Austin. How Big Is Your Flywheel? explores this puzzle, offering a vision for our cities of the near future, where technology offers great opportunities from a practical standpoint as well as great dangers from a social one"--Publisher.

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