What I found in Tulsa was that the Heartland encompasses the nice center of the nation—not solely in geographic phrases however in societal, cultural, and even religious ones. For me, the Heartland represents midsize cities like Tulsa, middle-class residents, and people striving to succeed in the center class. “Whether or not the legendary heartland is widely known or reviled,” historian Kristin L. Hoganson writes, “it fosters the notion that there’s a gulf between the middle and the sides, between the center and the nationwide physique.” Regardless of its definition or borders, this notion is actual: the Heartland does, certainly, signify a divide. We sometimes consider folks missing alternatives as marginalized, working on the sides of society. However the Heartland rightly exhibits us that the metaphor is inverted—these on the margins of financial alternative signify the huge center, whereas coastal tech hubs, by way of their concentrated wealth, are within the minority and but firmly in energy.
Each metropolis desires to grow to be a tech hub, however solely a handful on the coasts rule America’s innovation system—and that’s an issue. The Brookings Establishment discovered that between 2005 and 2017, 90 p.c of development from the nation’s innovation sector got here from simply 5 coastal metros. And from July 2022 by way of July 2023, six coastal cities accounted for nearly 50 p.c of all US job postings in generative synthetic intelligence (AI), which is the slicing fringe of right now’s tech business. Via the clustering of expertise, business, and capital and the agglomeration economics that end result, huge coastal cities like New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Boston, and Washington, DC, have monopolized innovation and its myriad advantages. This slim geographic distribution of the innovation financial system leaves Heartland cities out and restricts alternatives for many of the inhabitants.
Consequently, the American Dream—the notion that by way of arduous work everybody has an equal alternative to guide a very good and respectable life in order that successive generations are higher off—is transferring additional out of attain for extra folks. In 2023, citing rising revenue inequality, the Harvard economist Raj Chetty stated, “If we take a look at what has occurred over time, we see a dramatic fading of the American Dream such that for youngsters born in the course of the Nineteen Eighties and the Nineties who’re getting into the labor market right now, it’s now grow to be a coin flip, a 50-50 shot, as as to whether you’re going to do higher than your mother and father.” These are unacceptable odds that undermine religion in American democracy and capitalism, and so they’re solely going to worsen until Heartland cities act with urgency to reset their economies.
Heartland cities like Tulsa can and should be actors within the innovation financial system, which, regardless of its inequitable entry, stays the perfect alternative for long-term job and wealth creation. However they don’t have to compete with the large coastal hubs. Middleweights are in a category of their very own, and they need to try to grow to be the perfect model of themselves.
Midsize cities like Tulsa, with metropolitan statistical space populations between 1 and three million folks, have already got the muse to help a tech ecosystem: inhabitants density, cultural facilities, in addition to a comparatively low value of residing that may de-risk entrepreneurship. Pandemic workforce traits have highlighted these benefits, as members of the inventive class can now extra simply seek for a greater high quality of life and transfer away from coastal cities, the place development and fairness too usually work in opposition. Established tech hubs are driving out even the effectively compensated, and this cohort of cellular expertise is discovering advantages in unassuming locations like Tulsa. This inflow of expertise creates a possibility for any metropolis that may entice and retain them.
Regardless of possessing lots of the key parts for a tech eco system, too many Heartland cities have additionally shut themselves out of the innovation financial system by clinging to outdated notions of financial improvement, by underinvesting of their communities, or by holding on to a nostalgic sense of tradition—an aversion to vary that has led to counterproductive insurance policies that flip off exterior tech expertise and traders and do nothing to foster residence grown ecosystems. Whereas most change occurs organically over time, skyrocketing home inequality and widening geographic disparities in tech have introduced us to an inflection level as a rustic. Heartland cities have to pivot with intention and haste—or danger dying out.
Taken from Reinventing the Heartland by Nicholas Lalla Copyright © 2025 by Nicholas Lalla. Utilized by permission of Harper Horizon, a division of HarperCollins Focus, LLC.