Plains’ high-tech potential hailed

Joel Kotkin’s theme sounded familiar: Talented people are leaving the East and West Coasts for the U.S. midsection because modern technology allows them to work anywhere and communities like Omaha can take steps to lure them.

Kotkin himself co-authored a 2001 study, "Knowledge-Value Cities in the Digital Age," that sounded a similar theme. That study, by the Milken Institute of Santa Monica, Calif., put Omaha on a list of "emerging technology cities" that blossomed as entrepreneurs and investors sought low-cost alternatives to better-known technology birthplaces.

Tuesday, Kotkin, now with the New America Foundation, told some Omaha business leaders that a number of factors are driving people to the geographic middle of America. One of them is the high cost of housing on the coasts, he said.

"The middle-class working population is being driven out."

What makes it possible for them to move here, he said in another recurrent theme, is that modern communications technology ties Nebraska to the global marketplace.

"I don’t think we intuitively realize how profound a change that is," he said.

Full Story: http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_pg=46&u_sid=2047597

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(Many thanks to the NASVF http://www.nasvf.org for passing this along. Russ)