What I discovered in Tulsa was that the heartland encompassed the great means of the country – not just in geographical terms, but in societies, cultural and even spiritual. For me, the heartland represents middle -sized cities such as Tulsa, middle class citizens, and those who strive to reach the middle class. “Whether the mythical heartland is celebrated or honored,” writes historian Kristin L. Hoganson, “it promotes the perception that there is a gorge between the center and the edges, between the heart and the national body.” Regardless of its definition or boundaries, this perception is real: the heartland does indeed represent a gorge. We usually think of people who do not have opportunities as marginalized, who work on the edges of society. But the Heartland rightly shows us that the metaphor has been reversed – those on the margins of economic opportunities are the great remedy, while coastal technical centers, through their concentrated wealth, are in the minority and yet in power.

Each city wants to become a technical center, but only a handful on the coastal regime that America’s innovation system rules – and that’s a problem. The Brookings Institution found that between 2005 and 2017, 90 percent of growth from the country’s innovation sector came from only five coastal metros. And from July 2022 to July 2023, six coastal cities were nearly 50 percent of all US posts in generative artificial intelligence (AI), which is the forefront of today’s technology industry. Through the grouping of talent, industry and capital and the agglomeration economy that results from it, large coastal cities such as New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Boston and Washington, DC, monopolized innovation and the wealth of benefits. This now geographical distribution of the innovation economy leaves out heartland cities and limits opportunities for most of the population.

As a result, the American dream – the idea that everyone through hard work has an equal opportunity to lead a good and decent life, so that successive generations are better off – move beyond the reach of more people. In 2023, with reference to rising income inequality, Harvard economist Raj Chetty said: “When we look at what happened over time, we see a dramatic fading of the American dream, so that children born in the middle of the 1980s, and the nineties who enter the labor market today, now become a 50-50 shot, This is unacceptable chance that undermines faith in American democracy and capitalism, and they will only get worse unless heartland cities act with urgency to restore their economies.

Heartland cities like Tulsa can and should be actors in the innovation economy, which, despite its unfair access, remains the best opportunity for long-term work and wealth creation. But they do not have to compete with the big coastal. Middle weights are in their own class, and they must strive to become the best version of themselves.

Mid -sized cities such as Tulsa, with the populations of metropolitan statistical areas between 1 and 3 million people, already have the foundation to support a technical ecosystem: population density, cultural facilities, as well as a relatively low cost of living that could jeopardize entrepreneurship. Pandemic labor magnifies have emphasized these benefits, as members of the creative class can now easily look for a better quality of life and move away from coastal cities, where growth and fairness work too often in opposition. Established technical hubs even drives the property, and this group of mobile talent finds benefits in modest places like Tulsa. This influx of talent creates an opportunity for any city that can attract and retain them.

In spite of the fact that they own many of the most important elements for a technical ECO system, too many Heartlands have also closed themselves out of the innovation economy by holding on to outdated views of economic development, by investing their communities, or by holding a nostalgic sense of culture -a dislike of change that is outside of technical talent, and nothing, and nothing. Ecosisystems cultivated. Although most change occurs over time organically, the increasing domestic inequality and the greater geographical differences in technology have brought us as a country to a bow. Heartland cities must turn with intention and rabbit – or run the risk of dying out.

Taken from Rediscover the heartland By Nicholas Lalla Copyright © 2025 by Nicholas Lalla. Is used by consent of Harper Horizon, a section of HarperCollins Focus, LLC.