Cities of Knowledge, Cold War Science and the Search for the Next Silicon Valley by Margaret Pugh O’Mara

 The premise is that the “cities of knowledge”, such as Silicon Valley, were not the result of random, market driven forces, but rather a pre-meditated effort by the federal government to have such cities and to properly locate these concentrations of intellectual power. The story is how the federal government committed to research for national defense and commercial purposes; and then selected high-powered universities to create research centers around the United States…Stanford, Penn and Georgia Tech experiences are highlighted. The conditions that created these post-Second World War “cities of knowledge” are products of [p5]: 

• Cold War spending patterns, especially from federal defense budgets, 
• University-centered economic development policies, 
• Local action, and 
• The idea that intellectual centers should not be in major cities where a nuclear attack might destroy them.