Champaign-Urbana, Illinois
No. of high-tech firms: 70
Anchor company: Wolfram Research
Top dog: Larry Smarr, director of National Center for Supercomputing Applications
Hot gathering spots: Café Kopi, Radio Maria (restaurant)
Status toy: Lava lamp
Status vehicle: Cannondale bicycle
Median home price: $150,000
The twin cities of Champaign and Urbana rise—though not very high—from the cornfields of central Illinois. With no dramatic beachfront or mountainscape and a dead-drab nightlife, the two towns are unlikely competitors to the hip, scenic enclaves that are becoming computer-age boomtowns. But for researchers and programmers who are interested in serious computing, these plain plains are the place to be. In the mid-1980s, a young astrophysicist named Larry Smarr got the local University of Illinois campus to set up the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. Today Champaign-Urbana has more supercomputing power—"Big Iron"—than any other university in the United States.
Like the center, the 70 high-tech companies that call the area home and recruit from the university tend to focus on big breakthrough concepts instead of the games and office applications that will soon grace your PC. "Supercomputing is a time machine," Smarr says. "It lets people experience the future 10 years before we arrive there." Mosaic, the graphical browser that made the World Wide Web accessible to nontechies, was developed here. A current project of the center: "scalable computing," in which computers would be linked in a national grid to deliver precisely as much computing power as any task requires.
What impresses many newcomers is how much the atmosphere of innovation permeates everyday life. Local schools and libraries are awash with lavish computer offerings; a recent study ranked little local Busey Bank's online banking services just ahead of global giant Citicorp's.
The remoteness of the place will always make it hard to lure new recruits. "There are things Austin and Boulder offer that we don't have," says Peter Fox, a developer who specializes in buildings with high-end fiber technology. Then again, this is a place that stands for function over form.
John McCormick for Newsweek