An open letter to City Council Representative Danny Thompson

Hi Danny,

I read Dick Barron's article about the Google effort and in it I read something that you had previously said to me and about which I'd like to you to consider from a different perspective: It is your view that the Google initiative might somehow mesh with the "Piedmont Triad logistics community."

If I may be frank, any overlap between the two is tangential and trying to shoehorn the Google initiative into the logistics community idea will miss the point of the importance of Google's plans, the way it may actually transform Greensboro and how Greensboro can win it.

Consider:

• Greensboro has had no net job growth in the past ten years. Why? Because we had previously put our eggs largely in the manufacturing basket. The endeavors the Google network would inspire are appealing precisely because they would NOT necessarily overlap with the logistics basket. They will be a diversification away from the logistics industries. They are going to be creative, software, information, education, entertainment and media types of endeavors.
  
  
• Logistics/Shipping has a significant physical footprint. Its infrastructure consumes fossil fuels, its vehicles take up space, make noise and cause congestion; its operations are polluting and its labor largely physical. The Google infrastructure would inspire a complimentary component to our local economy because of its nearly opposite characteristics.
  
  Endeavors inspired by Google's ultra high speed internet access will consume electrical power that may come from clean alternative energy; the physical footprint, for the infrastructure itself will be minimal; its spin-offs can "recycle" existing space throughout the city rather than having to build anew in specific locales; it and the industries it will inspire are environment friendly and their labor largely cerebral.
  
  
• The Google initiative, by their explanation, seeks to serve a discrete cohesive community. The Aeropolis concept, by its definition, seeks to make sprawl an asset; to diminish the identity and influence of any single place or government and recast an identity around a vague amalgam of places.
  
  Google says it wants to serve a community of 50,000 to 500,000 people. Greensboro's 258,000 is right in the fat part of that range. Think about what Google needs to do -- they need to lay/string fiber optic cable throughout the place they choose. Try to sell them on a twelve county area and the geographical prohibitions put us in the losers' column.
  
  
• Google wants a place. A place. The Piedmont Triad Aeropolis is not a place. It's a still-evolving concept. Greensboro is a real place with people, infrastructure and institutions that set it apart from and above its neighbors. It should thrill us, especially those elected to serve Greensboro, to pursue an opportunity where we can toot our own horn; where everything Google needs or wants for this endeavor is right here, in Greensboro; where inclusion of far flung bergs and towns is not only unnecessary for once, but a detriment to our qualifications for this pursuit.

I know from our conversations that you "get" the importance of Google's initiative. I am grateful that you have taken a serious interest. What I hope you'll see is that there are huge differences between the Google initiative and the logistics/shipping concept and that appreciating that difference will help us do better in trying to bring Google here. Neither needs the other. Neither excludes the other. But let the Google thing have its own proper inspiration. We'll do a better job of convincing Google why they should choose Greensboro if we understand it well ourselves first.

Yours,
Roch