I'll use my judgment to resolve, but the biggest factors will be the size of the start-up scene, the number of tech employees at tech companies, and public perception.
If NYC has caught up to but not overtaken Silicon Valley, but the trends are strong enough that I can confidently predict that NYC will soon be larger, I'll resolve YES.
1,000
3.00IMHO, the biggest issue is controlling the cost of real estate. This is what has been the millstone around San Francisco's neck and is why so many tech people have been flocking to Austin, where real estate has historically been cheaper (but is now likewise rising). If you don't deal with land economics properly, increased productivity from a local tech boom just gets sucked into property prices.
Under current policies, the best predictor of housing affordability I've seen is permissive zoning and relatively high property tax rates. New York is actually on the high end of nominal property tax rates compared to California, sitting just a few ranks behind Texas, but there's a lot of complicated exemptions and carve-outs there, and a lot of real estate moguls with empires to defend. That said, if NYC cuts that gordian knot I would expect them to quickly zoom forwards and easily overtake Silicon Valley.
How will you resolve this if NYC overtakes Silicon Valley not because it is the "new tech capital," but because Silicon Valley has diminished, and both NYC and some other city have surpassed it, but some other city (e.g. Austin) is the clear "tech capital?"
@LarsDoucet Sadly, I'm familiar with this issue. I just moved out of Berkeley to NJ (temporarily) because my rent was too high. I created this market to better understand if people expect NYC to be the new place to be for tech at some point. So if, for example, Austin in the clear winner, then I'll resolve NO.
@AmitAmin Gotcha, thanks for clarifying.
2030's a long time frame! If NYC fixes the housing situation I think they'll definitely win by default. Otherwise I think the crown goes to whatever top-20 metro does the best job of keeping housing costs the most affordable.
@LarsDoucet I can see what people mean about moral hazard in prediction markets now. For a fraction of a millisecond, I felt tempted to bet against your no, and then somehow. magically, fix NYC's housing problems, because obviously mana is worth so much more than my time and real money.
More seriously, do you have any hope for cheap and fast driverless cars reducing the impact of restrictive zoning, making living in housing competitive suburbs much easier?
Honestly I'd love to see that (fix the housing market in NYC to win a bet over fake money!)
I don't think electric cars will fix things. The original wave of suburbanization definitely helped to offset housing costs, but the benefit of that is now getting priced in. You see the same effect with work from home -- there was a decline in commercial real estate prices, but simultaneously every house in an area with good internet and an extra bedroom that could be converted to a home office jumped in price.
Opening new "frontiers" like this can definitely give temporary relief: westward expansion in the 1800's was very beneficial to the settler class (but not to the Indians), and suburbanization in the 1900's was very beneficial to the white middle class (but not to Blacks who were redlined out of them). Ultimately, though, the productivity gains gets priced in by landowners who gradually consolidate the land and charge everyone else to access it.
To offset things enough to make a big splash by 2030 through "frontier expansion" alone would require a really fast and cheap long distance transportation network dedicated to daily commuting in and out of NYC, and a LOT of sprawl.
@AmitAmin I hope I'm wrong too!
And just so I can wear my bias on my sleeve so you can calibrate how seriously to take me or not -- I'm a Georgist, an adherent of an economic theory that is absolutely obsessed with the role of land and housing in the economy, I've written a bunch about it here: http://gameofrent.com