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 non secular 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 perimeters, between the center and the nationwide physique.” Irrespective of its definition or borders, this notion is actual: the Heartland does, certainly, characterize a divide. We usually consider folks missing alternatives as marginalized, working on the perimeters of society. However the Heartland rightly exhibits us that the metaphor is inverted—these on the margins of financial alternative characterize the huge center, whereas coastal tech hubs, by their concentrated wealth, are within the minority and but firmly in energy.
Each metropolis needs to turn into 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 July 2023, six coastal cities accounted for nearly 50 p.c of all US job postings in generative synthetic intelligence (AI), which is the chopping fringe of in the present day’s tech business. By means of the clustering of expertise, business, and capital and the agglomeration economics that outcome, huge coastal cities like New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Boston, and Washington, DC, have monopolized innovation and its myriad advantages. This slender 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 arduous work everybody has an equal alternative to steer a very good and first rate life in order that successive generations are higher off—is shifting additional out of attain for extra folks. In 2023, citing rising earnings inequality, the Harvard economist Raj Chetty mentioned, “If we take a look at what has occurred over time, we see a dramatic fading of the American Dream such that for kids born in the midst of the Nineteen Eighties and the Nineties who’re coming into the labor market in the present day, it’s now turn into a coin flip, a 50-50 shot, as as to if you’re going to do higher than your mother and father.” These are unacceptable odds that undermine religion in American democracy and capitalism, they usually’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 massive coastal hubs. Middleweights are in a category of their very own, and they need to try to turn into 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 dwelling that may de-risk entrepreneurship. Pandemic workforce developments have highlighted these benefits, as members of the artistic 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 properly compensated, and this cohort of cell expertise is discovering advantages in unassuming locations like Tulsa. This inflow of expertise creates a chance for any metropolis that may appeal to 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 growth, 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 outdoors tech expertise and buyers 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.
