Name of the Rose

San Diego's biotech cluster attracts hungry law firms, with mixed-results

Good article by Kellie Schmitt of The Recorder, posted to Law.com on June 11. "All's Not Sunny for San Diego Firms" provides an interesting look into a changing business ecosystem, from the standpoint of big corporate law firms.

Lawyers along with investment banks, advertising agencies, accountants, management consultants, and real estate brokers, form the core of the advanced services sector that provides the know-how to power modern enterprises.

In San Diego, law firms saw the rising of a biotech mecca. Parallels to Silicon Valley abound. Start-up activity is even concentrated in a place called Sorrento Valley. However, just as every business plan looks good on paper, law firms are finding stiff competition that makes San Diego not the Shangri-La they anticipated.

The region once had just two big law firms, but those firms have been absorbed by larger players. Big law firms from Los Angeles, to the north, moved in the 1980s and maintain large offices there now. Northern Californian firms, bringing the cache of Silicon Valley with them, also moved in. Plus other big players from across the country have sought to establish a foothold.

[Money quote by Frederick Muto, the partner in charge of the San Diego office of Cooley Godward Kronish, noting that competitors "see our success and say, 'There's the next Silicon Valley,' but there's only one Silicon Valley."]

One key problem includes a small pool of qualified talent. Apparently lawyers are jumping ship-to-ship-to-ship-ship, transferring from one firm to the next in a series of lateral hires, as the practice is known in the legal industry. Additionally, there are few large companies, and many small ventures--startups that can't afford the $500- to $600-an-hour billing rates of big law firms. And more big law firms are on the way, leading observers to predict a shake-out is eminent. GEO

21st Century City on Forbes.com

New special report looks at metros of tomorrow

On June 11, Forbes.com ran its special report called Twenty-First Century Cities. The micro-site on Forbes.com contains five articles on an array of topics:

"Two Billion Slum Dwellers : Cities are the future of the world, and slums are the future of the city."
"Snitchtown : In the brave new world of ubiquitous security cameras, universal surveillance is seen as the solution to all urban ills."
"In Defense Of Sprawl : Think the inexorable spread of cities is a bad thing? Think again. "
"Megacities Of The Future The demographic future belongs to cities like Mumbai, Shanghai and Dhaka. "
"Ghost Cities of 2100 Even as the world's urban population explodes, these eight cities face potential extinction. "

There's some good stuff here, such as the opener for the Megacities piece, "Paging Thomas Malthus: Your nightmare finally has arrived." The cheeky editorial by Cory Doctorow on the prevalence of surveillance cameras. GEO

Eponymously Yours

Naming tomorrow's mega regions

The name of a place provide its identity. As towns, cities, and metros shift and change, the names used to title them have to change with them. The current Minnesota state capital of Saint Paul was once Pig's Eye, taking its name from a tavern owner well-known in those parts to trappers, fur traders, and soldiers.

Many thinkers, writers and prognosticators looking at the future of urban America have sought new names to describe their research or forecasts. Below is a partial list:

Bajalta California [actual]
The combined international urban corridor stretching from Mexico's Baja (lower) California to the United States' Alta (upper) California. The term was coined by a pair of USC professors. The linchpin to the region is the San Diego-Tijuana Metroplex.

BAMA (Boston-Atlanta Metropolitan Axis) [speculative]
The term given to the Atlantic coast supercity, aka The Sprawl, that is the setting for parts of William Gibson's Neuromancer. Does not exist yet, but has potential as DC stretches south and the booming Atlanta metro stretches north. The architect turned sci-fi writer foresaw many of today's information technology innovations and is credited with coining the term "cyberspace."

Bosnywash [actual]
This chimerical name was coined by Jene Gottman to describe the contiguous archipelago of cities stretching from Boston to Washington, DC. Similar names include: The BosWash and Boshington. The corridor contains a majority of the population of the United States.

Cascadia megacity [speculative]
A greater Pacific Northwestern urban region.

ChiPitts [speculative]
A massive midwestern urban region.

San Angeles [speculative]
A sonorous name developed by the writers of the action flick Demolition Man to describe the continuous city stretching from Santa Barbara to Los Angeles to San Diego. The primary stumbling block to this becoming a reality is Camp Pendleton, the 125,000-acre Marine base buffering northern San Diego County from both sourthern Orange County and southern Riverside County. If the base is decomission and the land sold, and some experts believe it could be in the next 10 years, San Angeles will quickly emerge.

SanSan [speculative]
Created by Jene Gottman to describe a notional conurbation stretching from San Francisco to San Diego. This entity seems unlikely to materialize owing to the coastal topography of California which is broken up in various pockets by mountain ranges.

The Corridor [actual]
Refers to the 1,150-kilometer strip of land, stretching from Quebec City to Windsor, containing more than 56% of Canada's population and three of its four largest cities. It's analogous to Bosnywash in terms of concetration of people and resources. GEO