If you'd still like to apply to the Spectator's Economic Innovator of the Year awards, there's time to do so.

The deadline has now been extended to Friday the 23rd of June.

Wherever you're based in the UK, we can't wait to hear about the successes of your business

and the impact you're making on the economy and society in 2023.

To learn more and apply, please visit spectator.co.uk forward slash innovator.

Hello and welcome to the Americano podcast, a series of discussions about American power,

politics and society. On each episode, I will talk to

an American expert or an expert on America about something that's going on in America in

23. I'm delighted to be joined today by Joel Kotkin, who is the presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University.

And he's also executive director of the Urban Reform Institute, as well as the author of

The Coming Neo-Fuelism, which is an extremely interesting book.

And we're going to be talking about the death of the Silicon Valley Dream,

which is a very interesting article Joel wrote for The Spectator quite recently. But Joel,

I thought I'd start with a bit of sort of more recent news, which is about the shopping center

chain, Westfield, pulling out of San Francisco, because this relates to the death

of the Silicon Valley dream and a lot of what you've written about. Because Westfield didn't

say it so directly, but the reasons were clear that it's because of rising crime, a lack of

consumer appetite. And this ties, a lack of consumer appetite.

And this ties into a lot of other reports and statistics and figures we hear coming out of California and San Francisco in particular about the fact that it does seem to be an increasingly

uncivilized and disastrous place to live in.

Right.

What was your reaction to news?

...