10 Dec ‘We need 10 more Madisons’ to foster tech growth in the heartland, Brookings and ITIF report says
To stop the divergence of U.S. cities where technology thrives, a concerted effort needs to be made to turn promising cities like Madison and Milwaukee in the heartland into tech hubs, according to a new paper from the Brookings Institution and Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.
“We need 10 more Madisons,” said Mark Muro, senior fellow in the metropolitan policy program at Brookings.
The Wisconsin capital ranked as having the highest potential on the paper’s listing of 35 promising metro areas for technological growth that could become the next San Francisco or Boston.
The paper, released Monday, proposes establishing a new competition by which eight to 10 areas with potential, not geographically close to an existing tech hub, would receive financial and regulatory support for 10 years to become a “self-sustaining” new innovation center.