"Why the Future Looks Like Pittsburgh"

"The city’s rise as a global innovation city reflects decades of investment in emerging technology, a new Brookings report says."

"As cities around the country rush to respond to Amazon’s RFP for its new HQ2, it’s worth remembering that urban economies aren’t built by winning a contest; they are grown methodically by building on a region’s strengths.

Indeed, the race for long-term prosperity isn’t defined by the month-long sprint to lure $5 billion of investment from Amazon; the real game is the marathon of figuring out which cities will lead in the research, development, and commercialization of breakthrough technologies such as autonomous systems and genomics, which by some estimates may constitute one-third of global GDP by 2025.  

Brookings just released a report on Pittsburgh’s innovation economy that drives this point home. The city’s current position—as a center of world-class research institutions, technology-intense manufacturing, and high-skill workers—is the result of a decades-long process that began in small, niche research labs at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh and has grown organically into region-wide competencies, now attracting investments from major firms such as Google, Uber, and GE."

Bruce Katz and Scott Andes report for CityLab September 24, 2017.