Tech Companies Are Stepping into the Urban Fray. Here’s Why

It’s officially a mass exodus: Techies are decamping from “Nerdistan” and heading for the big city.
Thank Richard Florida, urban studies theorist and author of The Rise of the Creative Class, for this particular “–stan,” which he uses to describe the suburban office parks ringed with vast parking lots where tech companies have traditionally set up shop.
These isolated Nerdistans are declining in popularity, Florida and others have noticed, in favor of companies headquartered in urban centers — extra points if they’re within walking distance of public transit.
“Cities were always the cradles of innovation,” said Florida, as quoted in a recent Boston Globe article on the suburb-to-city trend. “Suburbanization was a deviation on the course of history.”
Take the Boston metro area, for example. Recent research from recruitment firm WinterWyman found that in 2013, 63 percent of available software jobs were in the urban core of Cambridge and Boston, and only 13 percent were located in suburbs Burlington, Lexington, and Waltham, where, back in the 1990s, the majority of such jobs were based when high downtown rents and space needs made the suburbs a no-brainer.
Why the flight from suburbia?
Now, software companies don’t need the square-footage that once held servers and other oversized equipment. And tech CEOs say they’re willing to pay cities’ higher rents when it means having a wider selection of top talent — including young urbanites eager to hold tight to their car-free commutes.
Other cities with high techie concentrations — San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, New York — are exhibiting similar patterns of urban migration.
Who knows, if Richard Florida is right, maybe the hours-long, smoggy suburban commute will soon be headed the way of the Commodore 64.

A Little Birdie Told Us That a Tech Giant is Building a Nest to Help the Poor

As we’ve said, income inequality in America is perhaps nowhere more evident than in San Francisco, where a renewed tech boom has dropped the unemployment rate to 4.8 percent, compared to the 6.3 percent national rate. Meanwhile, median rents have skyrocketed to a 40 percent share of the median income, leaving the one in five Bay Area residents who live in poverty sometimes literally out in the cold.
The stark differences between the lives of the tech-employed-haves and the have-nots have led some frustrated people to stage protests near the shuttle buses that ferry workers to Google and other tech companies. In contrast, however, is the action from one of the giants in social media.
Twitter has announced it’s going to reach out to the homeless and low-income families in the Tenderloin, the long-impoverished neighborhood near its headquarters. The company plans to collaborate with Compass Family Services (CFS), a nonprofit serving 3,500 homeless families, to create and run a family learning center called the Twitter Neighborhood Nest, which is projected to open in the summer of 2015. Company executives have pledged to chip in more than $1 million to the project.
The center will provide low-income people with access to computers, Wi-Fi, and other resources; volunteers from Twitter will teach technology classes to homeless families. Erica Kisch, executive director of CFS told Joe Garofoli of the San Francisco Chronicle, “This will be a major breakthrough for our families. To make it in the world today, just to make it through school, you need these skills.”
Twitter’s new nest certainly has the potential of helping low-income residents of San Francisco cross the digital divide. But we have a hunch that to be successful, they might need to use more than 140 characters.
MORE: San Francisco’s Tech Talent Lends A Hand to Help the Homeless
 

Why Vets Are Vital for the Tech Industry

Many programs that encourage companies to hire veterans emphasize the debt we owe these men and women for their service. But last week at Google’s New York headquarters Got Your Six, a nonprofit seeking to bridge the military-civilian divide, sponsored a presentation that suggested hiring veterans is not a feel-good philanthropic gesture, but a vital strategic move for tech businesses. The speakers pointed out the inventions and initiatives veterans have made for the companies they work for. For example, Google’s head of user operations is a veteran in charge of the company’s green energy efforts, and a former Marine leads Google’s Project Loon, whose aim is to bring Internet access to far-flung places through the use of balloons. Microsoft, AT&T, and other tech companies have stepped up their efforts to hire veterans in order to tap into their unique knowledge and experience.