Cities of Knowledge: Cold War Science and the Search for the Next Silicon Valley Paperback - 2015

From the rear cover

"Can American cities survive in the twenty-first century? Margaret Pugh O'Mara puts forth a blueprint, not only for their survival, but one that could lead to an economic resurgence that restores cities to their traditional leadership role."--Edward G. Rendell, Governor, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania

"Margaret Pugh O'Mara has written a timely and brilliant exposition of the powerful forces that helped create the great suburban 'centers' of America's knowledge economy. This book is essential reading for every American metropolis imagining a high-tech future."--Bruce Katz, Director, Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy, The Brookings Institution

"An original, compelling, and important book, Cities of Knowledge is at once a work of deep empirical research and of creative interpretation. O'Mara's study will make major contributions to economic history, political history, and the cultural history of suburban development in post-World War II America."--Bruce Schulman, author of From Cotton Belt to Sunbelt: Federal Policy, Economic Development, and the Transformation of the South, 1938-1980

"O'Mara tells you why the search for the next Silicon Valley has been so difficult and so important. By placing the history of Silicon Valley and its would-be imitators in Philadelphia and Atlanta into a larger history of postwar America, she challenges us to think about whether conventional cities can compete with emerging cities of knowledge and if so, on what terms. Urban planners may not find her four lessons easy to implement, but they have plenty to learn from them."--Stuart W. Leslie, author of The Cold War and American Science

"Cities of Knowledge is an important work that reframes our understanding of the relationship between science, metropolitan development, and the Cold War state. O'Mara's creative synthesis of international, national, regional, and local perspectives combined with her explication of the tension between public and private development charts a course for future work in this field."--Brian Balogh, University of Virginia, author of Commercial Nuclear Power, 1945-1975