From "College Town" to Big City
City Journal Audio
Manhattan Institute
4.7 • 657 Ratings
🗓️ 6 February 2019
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Aaron Renn joins City Journal associate editor Seth Barron to discuss how some big public universities are expanding their tech departments to major cities to maximize their economic impact—creating new political battles in their states.
A senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and contributing editor of City Journal, Aaron Renn writes on economic development and urban policy in America. "The Tech Campus Moves Downtown," his article examining recent expansions of universities into city centers, appears in the Winter 2019 issue of City Journal.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the Ten Blocks Podcast. This is Brian Anderson, the editor of City Journal. |
| 0:05.4 | Starting in the late 19th century, states across the U.S. built massive public universities, |
| 0:11.8 | far away from many major cities, leading to what we know in America as the college town. |
| 0:18.3 | But today, many of those schools are moving their operations back to central |
| 0:23.5 | cities, and it's causing some political battles in states like Illinois and Michigan. To talk about |
| 0:30.9 | that, my colleague Seth Barron interviewed Aaron Wren to discuss his new piece, Aaron's new piece, |
| 0:39.8 | the tech campus moves downtown. |
| 0:49.7 | But before we get started just a couple of announcements, first off, city journal readers will be happy to know that our winter 2019 issue is hot off the press. |
| 0:55.9 | Among the highlights, we have Jim Miggs, James Miggs, on the future of nuclear energy, |
| 1:03.1 | Orrin Cass on vocational education, Charles McElwee on the Catholic Church's struggles in the Rust Belt, |
| 1:06.9 | George Kelling on community policing, and much more. |
| 1:13.6 | Lastly, this week marks the third anniversary of the Ten Blocks podcast. So thank you to all our listeners for tuning in, and we hope you'll tell your friends to subscribe to the podcast, and maybe |
| 1:19.4 | give them a copy of City Journal while you're at it. That's it for me. The conversation between |
| 1:24.7 | Aaron and Seth begins after this. Hi, everyone. Welcome back to Ten Blocks, the official podcast of City Journal. This is your |
| 1:52.0 | host for today, Seth Barron, associate editor for City Journal. The United States has a fantastic |
| 1:58.0 | network of large state-funded research institutions that are among the best in the world, |
| 2:03.7 | and they have trained and launched the careers of many well-known tech innovators. |
| 2:08.3 | But we never hear about the Quad Cities Tech Hub or about all the venture capital firms in Ipsilanti. |
| 2:15.7 | Joining us today is Aaron Wren, senior fellow at Manhattan Institute and contributing editor |
| 2:20.6 | to City Journal. |
| 2:22.5 | Aaron writes widely about urban planning, technology, and growth in mid-sized American cities. |
| 2:29.1 | His most recent piece in the Winter 2019 City Journal issue is called The Tech Campus Moves Downtown. |
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