well, definitely not on rock’n'roll. paul graham, the lisp guy, has an interesting essay that got posted to slashdot (some of the comments are good. obviously some of these people actually live in silicon valley) about “how to be silicon valley”. it covers a lot of things i’ve been thinking about over the past couple of years regarding how you could build a new city and what would i want it to be like. he’s actually more focused on creating another silicon valley type atmosphere for startups than purely creating a new city from scratch though. i suppose it’s a subset as a silicon valley type environment would be important. he also mentions my perceived big downside for silicon valley in that it’s a sprawling suburb.
boston may be looking better. startups, m.i.t., m.l.s., but is it possible to get over the accent?
what he doesn’t mention, and critical to any desirable city, is transportation. that includes both getting around, a reasonably dense city center, as well as getting into and out of the city, either trains or planes. birmingham is seriously lacking in this department. the situation in birmingham, at least the city center, is unlikely to ever change because the current government seems useless in the right areas and it’s not going to change unless a large enough percentage of people move in that then elect a new government (preferrably libertarian). california is obviously a blue state so democrats as a party are not the problem. i would think that the issue is that both republicans and democrats in alabama are still old school. both prefer keeping things the way they are instead of moving forward. as an interesting related note, compare the 2004 election breakdown for alabama to this map of the black belt. notice anything? likewise, it would seem that the majority of money in birmingham is old money or related to large corporations, not conducive to startups.
in the end, all blathering about attracting the “creative class” aside, the question to be answered is why stay and create something when you could actually move somewhere else. unless you start in your 20’s you probably aren’t going to see any benefit of a reasonable amount in your lifetime.
of course, i could be completely uninformed about some of these issues in birmingham as i’m only partially engaged.
