1. Pittsburgh's Moonshot ... The Center for Urban Innovation, Urban Tech. Bring the 100 best and brightest in the world to Pittsburgh with their research financed. That would position Pittsburgh for success for the next hundred years. https://pittsburghquarterly.com/articles/pittsburgh-tomorrow-podcast-richard-florida-part-2/

2. Pittsburgh has smart and innovative in its DNA. Pittsburgh has always respected intelligence. It’s not like so much of the rest of America is, so captivated by celebrity culture.

3. Pittsburgh should put together every single philanthropic dollar it can. Put together the biggest pot of money to attract the 100 best and brightest superstar geniuses in the world, from computer science and artificial intelligence to arts and culture.

4. If Pittsburgh said we want to attract 100 MacArthur Genius Awards—which is not a MacArthur Genius Award that says, “Stay where you are”—it would say, “Come to Pittsburgh and be part of this cohort of 100 of these unbelievably smart people from across disciplines.”

5. The COVID crisis makes people feel unmoored. People are saying, “How do I want to live? I want to spend more time with my family. I don’t want to go back to the grind. I don’t want to get on a plane. I don’t want to go to the office every day. I’m working from home. ...

6.Make Pittsburgh the greatest center of artificial intelligence and computer-related, software-related urban technology in the world. So a genius award each for 100 of the best & brightest, but a real focus on artificial intelligence, particularly as it applies to smart cities.

7. This area of urban tech—mobility, surveillance, urban automation, delivery, we can go down to list, micro-mobility—is big. This is the biggest sector of high technology since software.

8. Pittsburgh is a laboratory. It has the scale to try it out. It has Carnegie Mellon. Make Pittsburgh the center of artificial intelligence, computer-related innovation in cities and smart cities of urban technology.