Original post by RICHARD FLORIDA via theAtlantic Cities

With New York City’s emergence as a start-up hub, the suburban nerdistan model for high tech start-ups appears to be losing some luster. “Whether Silicon Valley’s hegemony is in jeopardy or not,” I wrote Monday, “there can be little doubt that high-tech has taken on much more of an urban cast in the first decade of the 21st century.

“The same urban tech dynamic appears to be taking root in London. This map from Tech Citycharts the rise of London’s “Tech City” or “Silicon Roundabout” in the area around Shoreditch, where some 200 significant high-tech companies and as many as 600 tech-related firms have sprouted, according to a report in Gigacom.

Dan Crow, who authored The Guardian article that the map accompanies, has a long history in high tech. He left the U.K. in 1996 to work as a software developer at Apple in Silicon Valley. England was start-up and tech-unfriendly at the time, he wrote, and offered few opportunities to work in cutting-edge software development. Crow spent ten years in the Valley, “founding or helping to run” four tech start-ups, before heading to Google in New York – the last assignment likely exposing him to the urban turn in tech. He recently returned to England to become the Chief Technology Officer of a small start-up.  Crow notes Prime Minister David Cameron’s interest in supporting high-tech development as well as that of minister David Willets.  This is something I am somewhat familiar with: I met Willets in his office while traveling to London to give an address to the Royal Geographic Society 18 months or so ago, and I was subsequently invited to and participated in a meeting with members of the Cameron administration and others to discuss the broad issue of urban tech.

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