The Innovation Complex Cities, Tech, and the New Economy

An in-depth look at how New York adopted "innovation" and became a destination for startups and large tech companies.

In recent years, the language of "innovation" has spurred visions of urban economic revival led by digital technology. Investors, mayors, and tech evangelists transform the city into an "innovation complex" that expands the tech industry while struggling to control its power. No city has been more ambitious in this pursuit than New York. In The Innovation Complex, Sharon Zukin looks to the people who created New York's tech economy and the places where it took root. She traces its origins to the city's response to the 2008 financial crisis and the aggressive leveraging of wealth from the US and overseas. Through interviews with venture capitalists, startup founders, and economic development officials, she explores the spaces where the rules of the new economy are made--transforming the city but increasing dependence on Big Tech firms, siphoning public subsidies, and enabling the rise of a new meritocratic elite. Updated with a preface on the effects of Covid-19, Zukin's provocative interpretation of the innovation complex is a warning to cities around the world.

Sharon Zukin is Professor Emerita of Sociology at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York, and author of Naked City (Oxford).