Far from Silicon Valley some North Carolina State University academics started a company in 1976 called the Statistical Analysis Software Institute.

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Up north, three Silicon Valley cities make our list: San Jose at No. 8, Oakland at No. 14, and San Francisco at No. 19.

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Just 500 kilometers north, however, in Silicon Valley, the opposite holds.

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And they have come here from advanced societies as engineers and scientists that fuel the knowledge-based revolution in the Silicon Valley of California, in the Research Triangle of North Carolina, along Route 128 in Massachusetts, in Austin, Texas, and across this great land.

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She lived in Silicon Valley and commuted daily to Autodesk in San Rafael, north of Sausalito and west of Berkley across the San Rafael Bridge.

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In terms of innovation and creative impetus, Shanghai pales in comparison to New York, London, Paris and Milan, not to mention high-tech hubs like Silicon Valley, the Bay Area, Seattle, Boston, Austin and North Carolina's research triangle, all of which have much lower densities.

WSJ: To Build Creative Cities, the Sky Has Its Limit by Richard Florida