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

View from the Inside

Influential bloggers calls for downturn in Silicon Valley

Web 2.0, as the recent surge in Internet ventures has been termed, is re-igniting the innovation engines in Silicon Valley. But not everyone is happy with that.

Utilizing a new, flexible but powerful compilation of software programs, termed AJAX, new companies began popping up a few years ago. Michael Arrington, created a blog in 2005 called TechCrunch.com, to cover the then burgeoning trend. With insider insights and interesting companies to write about, TechCrunch became a massive hit and can claim close to 500,000 visitors a day.

On May 22, however, Arrington wrote that he missed the old days, circa 2004, where burgers, beer and backyard parties offered the setting for entrepreneurs to network. No longer is that the case. Easy capital has changed everything, he intones. Put another way, Web 2.0 has jumped the shark. [Money quote: "Times are good, money is flowing, and Silicon Valley sucks.” ]

He suggests Silicon Valley needs a good downturn to set things right again. Strangely, another blog superstar Robert Scoble, followed up with his own similarly-themed post "Why I'm in a malaise ..." [Money quote: "I too look wistfully back at the days when we had almost the entire Social Software industry in one little coffee shop back in 2002 — none of whom were talking about making billions of dollars. "] It's a strange call to arms, to be sure, but the insights they provide offer an insider's look into a boom as ownership is transferred from the innovators to the exploiters. GEO

Capitals of Clean

Regions vie for clean tech crown

Several months after The New York Times ran its piece , on May 24th, the Wall Street Journal offered its own take on Silicon Valley's drive to become the clean technology capital.

Although not news anymore, WSJ writers Pui-Wing Tam and Jim Carlton authored a more balanced piece on the subject.

NYT slanted its piece as if Silicon Valley's dominance is a foregone conclusion, but WSJ clearly spelled out the Valley has plenty of competition: particularly from Austin, Texas. Even citing a study by an independent research firm, SustainLane, in San Francisco ranking Silicon Valley, gasp, #2 behind Austin. (Click here for Google Map.)

The story was also more detailed, honing in on San Jose (the 1M person capital of Silicon Valley) and its efforts to lure a start-up solar power company called Nanosolar, Inc. Salient points: San Jose city officials scouted sites for a 647,000 s.f. building to save Nanosolar on real estate broker fees, offered expedited permits, and provided a $1.5 million grant to be used to retrain local workers. All of that to attract a facility that will create 200 jobs, which will hopefully grow.

Still, the article points out that San Jose is an expensive place to startup a business: average salaries are twice the national average ($66,200 v. $37,870) and other items, such as electricity costs, are high. However, there's plenty of money thanks to VC-extraordinaire John Doerr of KleinerPerkins, who's pushing clean tech. (Check out the excellent new Portfolio magazine for a profile of Doerr's efforts. Money quote: “When you get into energy, you’re going up against Exxon and Chevron and cattlemen and corn.”) And local techies like Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page are putting their own money into outfits, such as Nanosolar (which has raised $100M to date).

So far, reports the article, San Jose has 22 firms involved in researching and producing clean tech, an 83% jump from last year. One of which, SunPower Corp., has 300 employees and plans to double that workforce by the end of 2007. Austin, however, claims 50 such companies.

Other top spots for clean tech, according to SustainLane, include: Berkely, CA; Pasadena, CA; Boston, MA; and runners-up San Francisco, New York, Seattle, San Diego, and Houston. GEO