America’s bluest big cities are in a tense, co-dependent relationship with the tech giants that power their economies and anchor their prosperity. 

It didn’t start out that way. When tech giants first decided, about 20 years ago, to decamp from their cloistered suburban enclaves to embed themselves in the vibrant hearts of big blue cities, a torrid big tech bromance with urban America flourished. But what initially seemed to be the perfect marriage of shared progressive cultural values has soured. Now Trump’s big win threatens to further divide blue city leaders from some of the tech giants. 

We ask Professor Margaret O’Mara, author of “The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America," why the relationship between tech and blue cities has deteriorated, and what to do to try and repair it.    

Margaret O’Mara's writing about tech regularly appears in the New York Times and other outlets. She writes and teaches about the growth of the high-tech economy, the history of American politics, and the connections between the two at the University of Washington. Back in the 1990s, O’Mara worked in the Clinton White House and the Department of Health and Human Services.