Dive Brief:
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San Jose, California; San Francisco; and New York City came out on top in New York University’s Cities Emerging Technologies Index, which evaluated the 55 most populated U.S. metropolitan areas on their readiness for technological advancement.
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Cities with strong technology sectors scored high on the index, which focuses in part on the role that AI will play in shaping urban landscapes.
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The analysis also found that a diversity of entertainment options helps to attract young talent, who in turn can help advance technological innovation in cities.
Dive Insight:
The New York University researchers scored cities based on a weighted average of two indexes: a city entertainment and habitability index and a tech economy index. The tech economy index focuses on the “development of economic and technological capacity through appropriate education, taxation, patents, and immigration policies.”
The index analyzed survey responses from 25,300 U.S. residents across 55 metropolitan areas. It also factored in secondary data sets, including demographic characteristics, number of tech companies, and research spending.
The index identified specific strengths of metropolitan areas not at the top of the rankings. It found that residents from the Raleigh-Cary, North Carolina, metropolitan area rated their quality of life the highest, while residents from Rochester, New York, ranked highest in confidence in their knowledge of emerging technologies.
Oklahoma City ranked 51st overall out of the 55 metropolitan areas the study evaluated, but Jeff Seymour, president and CEO of the Oklahoma City Innovation District, said the index rankings don’t account for differences in population: Oklahoma City, the 42nd largest metropolitan statistical area, according to Statista, is being compared to much larger cities, he said.
“Oklahoma City is built on a strong foundation in key sectors like aerospace, defense, oil & gas, and life sciences, all of which are driving our tech growth,” Seymour said in an email. “Our universities, including the University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State University, produce over 1,000 tech graduates annually, supporting innovation across multiple industries.”
He added that a 2024 CBRE report ranked Oklahoma City among its “Next 25” up-and-coming tech talent markets in North America.
