Path to Success, or Highway to the Dangerzone?

After reading the article about "knowledge-value" cities, it would seem that the Hudson Valley area is making many of the right moves in economic advancement. If Tech City and other such projects are built, the Hudson Valley area would once again be on the cutting edge of technological progression. In this way the area would be a leading producer in highly demanded products. These products, which were once horseshoes, are now computer chips and would provide a lucrative source of income for the area.

Although investments in the digital age would be greatly beneficial to the economy of the general area, there are problems with these projects in that they do not provide jobs for the many low skill workers that are jobless today. The solution to this, as mentioned in the Kotkin reading, is to create an education-rich environment. By investing in education and keeping close ties with local universities, overhaul effects would be minimized and the Hudson Valley area would have hope of creating a population of educated citizens capable of participating in the digital age. Assuming that enough high-skill jobs would be available, this in turn would make the area more prosperous as more effective workers means more production.

Through all of the potential benefit, however, I continue to have some reservations to the technological advancement of the Hudson river towns. With these cities once again on top of the production business, what will prevent them from making the same environmental mistakes they made while producing horseshoes or logging? A major variable in the success of revitalization is the preservation of the river and surrounding lands. With the environmental problems we have learned about today, advancement that does not prevent similar problems in the future is hardly worth having. In the construction of new microchip factories and other new developments, I would like to see the environment taken into serious consideration, lest the people of the Hudson Valley repeat their destructive history and become wealthy at the expense of the environment.