Seventeen universities and research institutions, from Cornell to Stanford to Columbia to City College, are hoping for a piece of the money the city is offering for an applied sciences and engineering campus. It's a sweet deal?$100 million in capital, plus land?but the Times isn't so sure the Bloomberg administration's goal of a bigger tech industry for the city is actually possible.
The city does have a few models for entrepreneurial growth, especially in coworking spaces outside of Manhattan. The Times highlights the Sunshine Bronx Business Incubator, where tech folks and the self-employed can pay $195/month for office space. Several companies have already grown out of the effort, but they aren't engineering-related, and the Times just doesn't think NYC feels like an engineering town: "What if legions of engineers lived among us? What would they wear? Where would they eat?" But hey, if they're off on Roosevelt Island, would we ever see them, anyway?
· New York as a Tech Hot Spot - Is It Just a Sci-Fi Dream? [NYT]
· Engineering Campus coverage [Curbed]
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