Not all tech startups are flocking to Silicon Valley and the Bay Area. In fact, many are choosing college towns as the location of their offices since these areas are much less expensive than San Francisco, says CityLab's Richard Florida.
He writes:
America’s startups remain highly concentrated in a small number of hubs. In 2016–17, the five leading hubs—San Francisco, San Jose or Silicon Valley, New York, Los Angeles, and Boston—accounted for over half of all first financings. Meanwhile, the top 10—those five, plus Seattle, Chicago, San Diego, Austin, and Washington, D.C.—accounted for nearly 70 percent. And the concentration of first financings among these leading hubs has risen since 2009. However, within this leading group, L.A., Chicago, and San Diego accounted for the biggest relative gains over time.
There is some evidence of the rise of the rest outside this group of leading hubs. The lion’s share of them are not Rust Belt cities like Detroit or Cleveland, but rather college towns such as Boulder (home to the University of Colorado), Lexington (University of Kentucky), Durham-Chapel Hill (Duke and the University of North Carolina), Gainesville (University of Florida), Madison (University of Wisconsin–Madison), Raleigh (North Carolina State), and Ann Arbor (University of Michigan).
In the Midwest, Columbus (home to Ohio State University) also makes the list, as well as Indianapolis, another post-industrial economy, and Pittsburgh (home to Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh). Other rising hubs include Denver, Charlotte, and Houston in the Sunbelt, but also Philadelphia (home to the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel) and Baltimore (Johns Hopkins) on the East Coast’s Acela corridor.
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