NEW YORK—Crain’s New York Business hosted a conference titled Future of NYC: Meeting the Growth Challenge, which drew many of the city’s influentials to the Grand Hyatt hotel in Midtown on Tuesday.
Crain’s brought five panels together to discuss “What will be required to sustain the city’s stature as an economic powerhouse in the face of growing global competition and diminishing government resources.” The discussions ranged from education, to infrastructure, to technological development.
As Mayor Michael Bloomberg took the stage to give the keynote address, officials from nuclear power provider Entergy, Citi Bank Infrastructure Investors, Microsoft, and other major stakeholders in the city’s future looked up from their ice cream and strawberries and ceased their lively chatter.
The mayor’s address had a bit of personal flavor, as he recalled the city’s transformations since he moved here from his native Boston in 1966. Boston is New York’s competitor for second place in the international tech industry. Bloomberg declared his goal for New York’s future is “reclaiming our title as the world capital of technological innovation.”
While New York and Boston compete for second place, both cities are far behind Silicon Valley—for now, anyway. The California technology epicenter is home base to industry giants such as Google and Yahoo and saw roughly $6 billion more in capital investments last year than did either Boston or New York.
“We understand that we will not catch up with Silicon Valley overnight,” said Bloomberg. He hopes a new applied sciences campus to be built in the city will help New York City take a leap in the right direction. He noted that in Boston, companies started by MIT graduates generate about $2 trillion in annual revenue.
“That’s roughly equal to the GDP of Brazil, the tenth largest economy in the world,” exclaimed Bloomberg.
Bloomberg first announced the plan to build a campus in December 2010, and received 18 Expressions of Interest. He announced the second stage in the process on Tuesday, a Request for Proposals (RFP). The mayor’s office estimates that the campus will be completed by 2015.
The proposed locations are Governors Island, the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and Roosevelt Island, but educational institutions are welcome to suggest other locations. Some of the schools interested are among the top tier universities for the technology industry.
Stanford University expressed interest in building a campus in New York. It would be the university’s first extension outside of California. Stanford is ranked as the No. 1 university for computer sciences in the world by Academic Rankings of World Universities (ARWU).
ARWU ranks MIT in Boston as the second leading university in the field.
Bloomberg pointed out that New York City’s student population of approximately 600,000 outnumbers Boston’s total population. The mayor playfully poked fun at himself as he denigrated all things Bostonian.
When Bloomberg moved to New York in 1966, the industrial makeup of the city was on the cusp of change.
“I arrived in town with a BA in engineering and an MBA,” recalled Bloomberg. “I had always assumed I would end up working for an engineering or manufacturing company.” In retrospect, the mayor was glad a friend steered him in the right direction—away from manufacturing and onto Wall Street.
From 1966 to 2001, when Bloomberg was elected, the number of New Yorkers employed in manufacturing plummeted from 800,000 to 150,000.
When he became mayor, Bloomberg says he realized the city needed to “expand job growth outside of Wall Street so that when the financial markets turned down, as it always does, more New Yorkers would keep their jobs.”
The new campus is expected to create 22,000 permanent jobs, 7,700 construction jobs, and foster sustainable economic growth that will help carry the city through the good times and the bad.
“Building a state-of-the-art campus will take years—and attracting a critical mass of technology entrepreneurs will take even longer. But—as with everything we have done—we are taking the long view,” said the mayor.
Crain’s brought five panels together to discuss “What will be required to sustain the city’s stature as an economic powerhouse in the face of growing global competition and diminishing government resources.” The discussions ranged from education, to infrastructure, to technological development.
As Mayor Michael Bloomberg took the stage to give the keynote address, officials from nuclear power provider Entergy, Citi Bank Infrastructure Investors, Microsoft, and other major stakeholders in the city’s future looked up from their ice cream and strawberries and ceased their lively chatter.
The mayor’s address had a bit of personal flavor, as he recalled the city’s transformations since he moved here from his native Boston in 1966. Boston is New York’s competitor for second place in the international tech industry. Bloomberg declared his goal for New York’s future is “reclaiming our title as the world capital of technological innovation.”
While New York and Boston compete for second place, both cities are far behind Silicon Valley—for now, anyway. The California technology epicenter is home base to industry giants such as Google and Yahoo and saw roughly $6 billion more in capital investments last year than did either Boston or New York.
“We understand that we will not catch up with Silicon Valley overnight,” said Bloomberg. He hopes a new applied sciences campus to be built in the city will help New York City take a leap in the right direction. He noted that in Boston, companies started by MIT graduates generate about $2 trillion in annual revenue.
“That’s roughly equal to the GDP of Brazil, the tenth largest economy in the world,” exclaimed Bloomberg.
Bloomberg first announced the plan to build a campus in December 2010, and received 18 Expressions of Interest. He announced the second stage in the process on Tuesday, a Request for Proposals (RFP). The mayor’s office estimates that the campus will be completed by 2015.
The proposed locations are Governors Island, the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and Roosevelt Island, but educational institutions are welcome to suggest other locations. Some of the schools interested are among the top tier universities for the technology industry.
Stanford University expressed interest in building a campus in New York. It would be the university’s first extension outside of California. Stanford is ranked as the No. 1 university for computer sciences in the world by Academic Rankings of World Universities (ARWU).
ARWU ranks MIT in Boston as the second leading university in the field.
Bloomberg pointed out that New York City’s student population of approximately 600,000 outnumbers Boston’s total population. The mayor playfully poked fun at himself as he denigrated all things Bostonian.
When Bloomberg moved to New York in 1966, the industrial makeup of the city was on the cusp of change.
“I arrived in town with a BA in engineering and an MBA,” recalled Bloomberg. “I had always assumed I would end up working for an engineering or manufacturing company.” In retrospect, the mayor was glad a friend steered him in the right direction—away from manufacturing and onto Wall Street.
From 1966 to 2001, when Bloomberg was elected, the number of New Yorkers employed in manufacturing plummeted from 800,000 to 150,000.
When he became mayor, Bloomberg says he realized the city needed to “expand job growth outside of Wall Street so that when the financial markets turned down, as it always does, more New Yorkers would keep their jobs.”
The new campus is expected to create 22,000 permanent jobs, 7,700 construction jobs, and foster sustainable economic growth that will help carry the city through the good times and the bad.
“Building a state-of-the-art campus will take years—and attracting a critical mass of technology entrepreneurs will take even longer. But—as with everything we have done—we are taking the long view,” said the mayor.
