When you replace industry that makes things with the fire industry, the finance, insurance,

and real estate, they make their money off of infinite financial growth, right?

And so they want everything to get as expensive as possible.

That's how they make their money.

Yeah. Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us. I'm your host, Paris Marks, and this week my guest is David A. Banks.

David is the author of The City Authentic, How the Attention Economy Builds Urban America.

He's also a lecturer in the Geography and Planning Department at the University of Albany,

and he writes the other day newsletter and co-hosts the Iron Weeds podcast.

David was last on the show in December of 2020, you know, way back in the early days on episode 40, where we talked about how the tech industry was kind of shaping our cities and affecting a lot of what was happening in city life.

And so this conversation really picks up on and builds on that earlier conversation by talking about how in the same way that social media

has encouraged all of these influencers to brand themselves in a certain way, to show that they

are authentic, it has done very similar things to cities. And cities have had to compete against

one another, to brand themselves in particular ways, to make themselves appealing to capital and in particular to the tech industry and to workers in the tech industry.

And that has had serious consequences. It's shaped development patterns in cities. It's shaped what governments are focused on and who they are

focused on serving. And it's also created a lot of inequality and a lot of negative outcomes

because, you know, they've been focused on serving quite an affluent population over,

you know, the people who are in their cities who really need some help. And so I think that

this is a really fascinating and important conversation with David, where we dig into you know, the people who are in their cities who really need some help. And so I think that this

is a really fascinating and important conversation with David, where we dig into the implications

of these things, how these strategies worked, and, you know, where they came from, you know, who

was putting out these ideas that cities should be attracting major tech companies in this way

and should be kind of reorienting their policy goals around

...