From serving specialized industries to offering good-but cheaper--locations next to bigger cities, cities are finding ways to cash in on the "Information Age," transforming themselves into the places in which people want to live and work. Newsweek, in its April 30 online edition, profiled 10 case studies, most of which are not "Silicon Valley slick," but are savvy in reeling in high-tech workers. The cities are:
• Oakland, taking advantage of its proximity to San Francisco and lower commercial real estate prices
• Ventura Freeway Corridor, a chain of towns that transformed 1980s defense companies into servers and routers along the Information Highway
• San Diego, services world-class biotech firms
• Denver, which offers great "quality of life" and a huge, efficient new airport
• Tulsa, which had a major town employer, Williams Oil and Gas stay in town when it spawned it high-tech offspring, Williams Communications
• Dallas, which is halfway between the right and left coasts
• Omaha, which does the "blue-collar" high-tech work of handling fiber optics
• Akron, which parlayed the research industry left behind by the rubber industry into "Polymer Valley"
• Washington, D.C., metro area, which has attracted industries that know it's a good thing to "be close to the people who regulate you"
• Huntsville, Ala., which parlays its 1960s association with rocket scientists into preparing payloads for today's international space program.

The article's charts invite easy comparison among the 10 cities. The area with the highest percent of population on line? Ventura Freeway Corridor, with 70 percent. Area with the most venture capital last year? Denver, with $3 billion.

Copyright 2001 The American Institute of Architects. All rights reserved.