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Berg, Steven. "Twin Cities benefiting from change in where technology startup money is flowing." MINN Post. MINN Post, 21, April, 2014. Web. 24, April, 2014.

Wade, Matt. "Better public transportation makes for a smarter Sydney." The Sydney Morning Herald. Fairfax Media Network, 22, April, 2014. Web. 24, April, 2014.

Wassener, Bettina. " A Price to Hong Kong's Progress." International New York Times. New York Times, 27 March, 2014. Web. 24, April, 2014.

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Summary

This article takes a new perspective on Urban Trends, specifically in the I.T. Area. It was theorized that highly skilled workers in the technology field would move to suburbia. This theory was supported because people thought that since people in the technology field made a lot of money, they would choose to move to suburbia, since it is quaint, quiet an area that is suitable to families. Richard Florida theorized the opposite in that, highly skilled technology workers would move downtown because they would be able to meet new faces and interact with others just like themselves. Florida says that this is how people come up with new innovations and generate more ideas.

This article is about the U.S.A and was written on April 21st 2014. The U.S.A. is a developed country

Relation to Urban Geography

This article relates to Urban Geography because it talks about Recent Urban Trends

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"Follow the money" is good advice for investigators, and surely for economists who track the shifting fortunes of American cities. The latest shift is a migration of venture capital for technology startups from suburbia to downtowns and other dense urban-style neighborhoods.

From its initial boom in the 1980s, high tech favored the open landscape of Silicon Valley and settled into campuses alongside freeways on the far edges of Boston, Seattle, San Diego, Austin and other cities. But in recent years a massive amount of startup money has begun flowing into downtown San Francisco, Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Chicago Loop and other urbanized districts.

"This is a new development," says urban theorist Richard Florida, whose latest report, "Startup City: The Urban Shift in Venture Capital and High Technology," describes the changeover. Tech hasn't entirely forsaken suburbia, Florida concedes. But it appears increasingly to appreciate the energy, intensity and variety that cities offer - what Florida calls "the flexibility and affordability of older industrial-use spaces, the interactive quality of urban neighborhoods, and the role of density in innovation."

San Francisco proper drew more startup money in 2011 (nearly $7 billion) than the rest of Silicon Valley (nearly $4 billion), according to Florida's report. New York City, once a tech backwater, attracted more than $2.2 billion. Twitter, Tumblr and Yelp are among the hundreds of firms that have recently taken up urban-style digs.
Top 20 metro areas for venture investments in technology, 2011
The trend is less apparent in Minneapolis-St. Paul, where business recruiter Greater MSP does not track investment by location. Michael Gorman, however, managing director at the venture capital firm Split Rock Partners, sees some evidence to support Florida's observations. He listed three recent examples of tech firms making conscious decisions to choose downtown and near downtown Minneapolis over suburban locations: Calabrio, SPS Commerce and Code 42 Software.

"Density and access are valuable to workers in their 20s and 30s," Gorman said, citing especially the transportation options available downtown, including transit and bicycles, and the growing affinity among software design and other creative fields (art, advertising, etc.) that tend to prefer urban locations.

St. Paul's Lowertown and Minneapolis' North Loop seem especially suited for tech expansion, but Steve Cramer, CEO of the Minneapolis Downtown Council, also sees opportunities in the downtown core. "The real estate will be there soon and the price might be right," he said, referring to vacancies expected when Wells Fargo consolidates 5,000 employees in two new downtown office towers and TCF Bank's headquarters departs for suburban Plymouth. Much depends, he added, on how office space is redesigned and marketed, and whether downtown's transit options and walkable atmosphere continues to improve. The trend that Florida describes, Cramer said, "could be very big for downtown."

Oddball to orthodox

Florida, now a professor and researcher at the University of Toronto and New York University, is, of course, no stranger to the economic and social trends in urban geography. His 2002 book, "The Rise of the Creative Class," challenged the conventional wisdom that technology would erase the importance of "place" and hasten population dispersal. Talented people, it was thought, would pack up their computers, retreat to the woods, and make a living by remote control. But Florida predicted the opposite.

Technology would make "place" more important than ever, he said. Because talented people with computers could live and work wherever they wanted, they would gravitate to the most attractive places, especially energetic urban environments thick with people and ideas. It's face-to-face human contact that spurs the creativity and innovation that drives high tech success, he theorized.

Florida's ideas have since gone from oddball to orthodox. Now, the assertions he made in his 2010 book, "The Great Reset," seem also to be playing out. Recovering from a near-collapse of the economy in 2008, people appear to be adopting more efficient, more compact living and working patterns, just as Florida predicted. Since 2010, suburban growth has stalled while the nation's most popular cities have experienced a surge of development and population growth. Tech is apparently along for the ride.

Blue states do better

Why the shift? Florida claims to be careful not to confuse correlation with causation. His findings do suggest, however, some associations that might help to explain the shift in venture capital flow.

Tech funding seems tied to locations with large numbers of patents and concentrations of educated people, he notes. It flows to areas with relatively high wages, as well as to areas with high concentrations of artists, designers and other creative talent. High concentrations of immigrants tend also to be associated with tech growth, as well as tolerant social and political attitudes. Blue states do better than red states, he observes, and, within red states, liberal areas like Austin, Tex., and Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, N.C., stand out.

Tech growth is also increasingly associated with what Florida calls the "urban form and structure" most often found in cities and urban-style suburban centers that provide a walkable atmosphere and transportation options.

He acknowledges the push-back that urban tech has produced, however, especially in San Francisco and lower Manhattan, placing doubts on whether tech growth in ultra-expensive cities can be sustained. "The influx of startups, high tech companies and tech workers has provided a substantial backlash over rising rents and the growing economic gap between tech workers and everyone else," he notes.

Still, Florida's main point is clear: Venture capitalists are discovering that dense locations provide a creative edge and draw the young talent that make tech investments pay off.

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Twin Cities benefiting from change in where technology startup money is flowing

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"Follow the money" is good advice for investigators, and surely for economists who track the shifting fortunes of American cities. The latest shift is a migration of venture capital for technology startups from suburbia to downtowns and other dense urban-style neighborhoods.

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Summary

This article is about how countries that have an economy centered around 'knowledge industries' need good public transport. Countries that have a good transportation infrastructure will generally have a better economy and more highly skilled workers. Sydney has a bad transportation infrastructure. This is one of the reasons why Sydney is not a global economic center. Sydney is also experiencing agglomeration. This agglomeration helps the economy but this cannot go further because of Sydney's poor transportation infrastructure

This article is about Sydney, Australia and was written on April 23rd 2014. Australia is a developed country.

Relation to Urban Geography

This article relates to Urban Geography because it discusses the concepts of transportation infrastructure, Agglomeration and Urban growth.

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Better public transport makes for a smarter Sydney

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Sydney could pay a high price for its lousy public transport.

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Summary

This article is about an escalator that was put in place in Sai Ying Pun, an area in Hong Kong. The escalator was meant to give easier access to the hilly area nature of Sai Ying Pun. The escalator and its futuristic look however, attracted many western restaurants and businesses. The process was slow at first, one or two of the local, family owned businesses being replaced by a high-end western restaurant that not many could afford. But it became faster and more and more locally owned businesses were being replaced. Chinese culture was being lost in this process of urbanization. Also, the rent has nearly doubled in the past year and the cost of living in this area is on the rise.

This event took place in Hong Kong, China on March 27th 2014. This country is developing

Relation to Urban Geography

This relates to Urban Geography, because it is an excellent example of gentrification. Gentrification is the process of shifting toward wealthier businesses, residents and often times the increase of cost of rent. Sai Ying Pun is going through gentrification due to their outdoor escalator.

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HONG KONG - The streets around Centre Street, in the Hong Kong neighborhood of Sai Ying Pun, are a microcosm of the vibrant, small-business life that makes this city as colorful as it is. There are shops selling large, wobbling blocks of fresh tofu, bean sprouts and papayas. There are tiny stalls selling fish balls, pork, noodles or copy books to local schoolchildren. There are hardware stores, cheap clothing outlets and clattering car repair shops, whose shrines to the Chinese Earth God provide a colorful counterpoint to the oil-stained floors inside.

Much of this life, however, is in the process of disappearing, as a new architectural addition to Centre Street - an outdoor escalator that grinds up the street's steep incline under a modernist roof - takes its toll on the neighborhood's commercial ecosystem.

Hong Kong is an exceedingly hilly city. The high-rises that house its residents and the offices that have turned the former British colony into an international financial hub are wedged between the sea and steep peaks. In days of yore, wealthy residents had themselves carried in sedan chairs when they wanted to travel to the higher reaches of the city. In 1888, a tram began trundling up and down the steep incline to Victoria Peak.

More recently, urban planners hit upon the concept of outdoor escalators to make uphill districts more accessible, especially during the hot and humid months. A little over two decades ago, an escalator that winds uphill in about 20 segments and has become a tourist attraction in its own right began operations in an area now known as Soho.

That escalator brought more than just convenience. It quickly acted as a magnet for Western-style restaurants, bars, boutiques and wealthy residents - and helped gentrify the neighborhood around it.

"When they first built the Soho escalator, there was a lot of opposition because people didn't understand what it would do," said Wayne Parfitt, an Australian who founded a restaurant group that has outlets in Soho and now Sai Ying Pun. But, he said, the escalator gave the neighborhood an injection of energy. "Yes, you lose some character, but you also create something new."

What was lost was much of the area's old, Chinese feel: Many of the open-air food stalls and printing shops that used to thrive there are gone, squeezed out by soaring rents.

There is every indication that the escalator on Centre Street, which was completed late last year - and a new subway station that is due to open nearby later this year - is having a similar impact on Sai Ying Pun.

Within the past few months, High Street, which intersects Centre Street, has acquired an elegant French restaurant right by the new escalator, as well as half a dozen Italian restaurants and pizzerias, two Thai restaurants, a sprinkling of Indian, Japanese and Western restaurants and a wine shop.

Jaspas, which serves burgers and fusion food and is part of Mr. Parfitt's restaurant company, opened in February in a site once occupied by a store selling cheap clothing. A restaurant called the High Street Grill opened in December, replacing a traditional Chinese restaurant. A dozen sites are empty, advertising for new tenants or in the process of being converted into new shops and restaurants.

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Small businesses that cater to locals, like this chicken shop, are being replaced by hip restaurants and boutiques. Credit Eric Rechsteiner for The New York Times

"Every few weeks you see a new place opening up," said Zoe Au of Apex, a real estate agency on High Street. "Everything is changing very fast."

All this has drawn in wealthier people, including expatriates, who used to barely set foot in the neighborhood until a year or two ago but now delight in the area's bohemian feel.

A painful side effect, however, has been higher rents - a hot-button issue in Hong Kong, which has some of the highest rents and property prices in the world, and where nearly one in five people live in poverty, according to a government report published last year. Many Sai Ying Pun residents and storekeepers, rather than welcoming their neighborhood's newfound trendiness, are worried about it.

"Everything has gotten expensive," said Yeung Sun, the co-owner of a shop that sells and services tires and car batteries. "There are many more Western restaurants that only foreigners go to. I never go there. I can't afford them."

Two small noodle restaurants and a place that sells bowls of congee, or rice porridge, for about 16 Hong Kong dollars, about $2, are the only cheap eateries left on High Street. Across from Mr. Yeung's workshop, an Italian restaurant recently replaced a car repair shop.

Ground-floor retail spaces in the area now cost about 55 or 60 Hong Kong dollars per square foot per month, according to Ms. Au, the real estate agent. Two years ago, it was 30 to 35 dollars.

"The new escalator does bring more people, but not so much business," said Lee In-yu, whose small stationery and toy shop is packed with pens, dolls and stickers featuring Hong Kong pop stars.

In their 20 years on High Street, Ms. Lee and her husband, Cheng Chi-ming, survived the arrival of the Internet and computers: They phased out the printing business that used to be their main source of income and added phone cases and cables to their shelves when cellphones took off.

Sai Ying Pun's gentrification may be harder to survive.

Because many cheap restaurants closed last summer, far fewer students from nearby schools now visit, Ms. Lee said. "They used to come to this neighborhood for lunch, and shop here before they go back to class. That doesn't happen anymore."

The expatriates who have begun moving into the area do visit the little shop from time to time, but do not buy much.

The opening of the new subway station later this year may bring more people, Ms. Lee said. But with rents rising fast, she has little hope that she will be able to make ends meet. "We'll probably close in two years' time, if not this year," she said.
Alan Wong contributed reporting.

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HONG KONG - The streets around Centre Street, in the Hong Kong neighborhood of Sai Ying Pun, are a microcosm of the vibrant, small-business life that makes this city as colorful as it is. There are shops selling large, wobbling blocks of fresh tofu, bean sprouts and papayas.