Technology Clusters and Neighborhood Demographic Change

Abstract: Technology is a growing industry and shows little sign of stopping. Employees of technology firms are of a particular type both in terms of racial composition and in terms of their consumption wants and needs. The following paper follows several trends that are emerging in cities and tries to apply these trends in order to examine the changing demographic structure of cities and neighborhoods in particular. The major themes examined in this thesis are: life cycle decision making and residential location choice, firm agglomeration, creative class theory of firm location decision making, and demographic trends relating to the creative class in the context of the second demographic transition. The paper examines the hypothesis that due to these trends, areas wherein technology firms agglomerate become less diverse both in demographic terms of race and sex but also in family structure. These trends produce a feedback loop. As firms decide to move to where their employees are located they create firm agglomerations which in turn induce more firms to move into the same area.