Richard Florida links to the top twenty livable cities. Sydney came in tenth and Melbourne twentieth. The areas in the US I have lived in; Central New Jersey, Northern Virginia (Washington DC) and now Phoenix don't rank in the list.

I have to brush up on some technologies that I have worked with in the past but am not intimately familiar with and commented that in Northern Virginia, and its Dulles High Tech Corridor, there was a Barnes and Noble (or Borders) which had a large tech selection. Ideal for a quick run down to grab an O'Reilly book on any particular subject when there wasn't time to wait for an online service like O'Reilly or Amazon to deliver it.

Phoenix does not have anything like that. The tech here is mainly near shored. There are some stand out companies in the valley, such as GoDaddy, Lifelock, Limelight Networks, Avnet and a few others but the tech market here is very small. There is no hive of economic activity like Manhattan over the Hudson as there is NJ which feeds its tech market, nor is there the behemoth of the federal government and all its TLA departments like North Virginia and Maryland have to suck from.

Phoenix is largely headless. The company I am currently with a great example. They spent x-tens-of-million dollars on a production facility which includes engineering, facilities, production, operations, etc and the place does not include on VP. They are all in San Francisco.

So Phoenix has no high tech corridor, and s largely headless in its tech market because San Francisco has all that expertise, tech economic activity and is the finger reaching into the Phoenix market, rather than the other way around.

It is surprising. Phoenix has ASU nearby which should be feeding Phoenix's tech demands. It has Scottsdale and its upmarket restaurants and life-style. It just lacks a large and thriving tech market.