America's Engineering Hubs: Silicon Valley, Houston, Wichita

From Joel Kotkin:

America has always been a nation of tinkerers. Our Founding Fathers, notes author Alec Foege, were innovators in areas ranging from agriculture (George Washington, Thomas Jefferson) and electricity (Benjamin Franklin) to the swivel chair (Jefferson).

Engineering advances drove America’s quest for industrial supremacy in the 19th century, many of them borrowed (sometimes illegally) from the then very resourceful British Isles. By the early 19th century, the U.S. was producing its own major inventions, including the steamboat and cotton gin. By the end of that century, the U.S. was clearly on the way to industrial preeminence. The growth of engineering schools — MIT, the Case Institute, Stevens Institute of Technology, as well as departments at the great land grant universities — generated a steady supply of engineers. For much of the last 70 years, America, has been the world’s leading center of engineering excellence, dominating markets from steel and cars to energy and aerospace.

Today, as well, where engineers concentrate, we can expect the greatest capacity for innovation. According to research from Houston Partnership economist Patrick Jankowski, there is a wide range of concentrations of engineering talent among the country’s 85 largest metropolitan areas. For the most part, regions with higher concentrations of engineers tend to do better, and seize the leadership of key industries.

Nowhere is this more true than in America’s top engineering hub, San Jose/Silicon Valley. The Valley’s ratio of 45 engineers per 1,000 employees is twice as high as any other big metro area. This deep reservoir of talent remains the Valley’s key asset, and has made it by most measurements the nation’s most affluent metro area.

This preeminence dates to the Valley’s early history, particularly in research sponsored by the Defense Department and NASA. This large high-tech workforce was then backed by venture capitalists, many of them also engineers by training, to form by far the most dominant high-tech region in the world. The presence of Stanford, now rated the nation’s second leading engineering school by U.S. News & World Report after MIT, Berkeley, ranked third and Santa Clara, at No. 14, gives the area an unmatched capacity to produce technologists.

More surprising, perhaps, is the second city on our list: Houston. The world energy capital is home to 59,000 engineers — second most in the U.S. after the much larger Los Angeles metro area — and has a concentration of 22.4 engineers per 1,000 employees. Although it does not match the Bay Area in elite engineering schools, Houston is home to Rice University and the University of Houston, both highly regarded, and, perhaps equally important, a strong sub-structure of trade and technical schools that feed into the engineering pool.

Key here is the energy industry, which is far more technology-dependent than many might believe. Houston is arguably now the country’s most important emerging city, with the largest job growth of any major metro area. Not only can engineers make money there, unlike in Silicon Valley, they can also afford to buy a house.

More surprising still is the metro area with the third-highest concentration of engineers: Wichita, Kan., with 21 engineers per thousand employees. In this case, the driver is manufacturing, particularly aerospace. But recent cuts by Boeing threaten the future of the self-proclaimed “air capital of the world.” As a result, Wichita has not done nearly as well economically of late as San Jose or Houston, but its reservoir of engineering talent suggests considerable potential if they stick around.

These top three engineering cities tell us much about the source of American innovation, and the remarkable diversity that makes this country an engineering powerhouse. It involves three essential industries — information technology, energy and manufacturing. Each has a distinct geographic makeup that reflects differing kinds of engineering talent.

The High-Tech Centers
No place comes close to Silicon Valley in terms of concentrations of engineers, but several other traditional tech centers make the top 10, led by San Diego in fifth place, a major center for biotech. Boston, home to No. 1 engineering school MIT, ranks eighth, and Denver, which boasts both a thriving tech and energy sector, is 10th. Other tech regions that rank in the top 20 include Seattle (13th), San Francisco (18th) and Austin (19th). None of these areas can claim even half of Silicon Valley’s per capita engineering base, but have thrived during the current high-tech boom....MORE