The evening skyline of Columbus, Ohio, is not as recognizable as some of its famous brethren, but the growing influx of innovative tech companies could change that. Photo courtesy of Columbus Chamber of Commerce COLUMBUS, Ohio – As a child growing up in the relatively new city of Phoenix in the early to mid-1980s, I would occasionally fantasize about what the great municipalities of the 21st century would look like. I imagined they were very Jetsonian, complete with moving sidewalks that whisked people about, office towers that soared miles into the sky and flying cars. And each city was covered by a vast dome. Suffice it to say, I am no Edgar Cayce. In the real world, of course, urban areas are comprised of complex layers of development and decay, and so constructing the metropolis of the future is not that simple. What, then, makes a city technologically cutting-edge?And where will the next “technopolis” – the next Silicon Valley, or Boston – emerge? While no two municipalities are identical, many of America’s top tech cities and regions – San Jose/Silicon Valley, Seattle, Boston, Raleigh-Durham, N.C., Los Angeles, New York City – share a number common characteristics, such as effective leadership, money, a strong higher-education presence and good planning, to name a few.

The answer to the second question is less clear. But Philip Auerswald, a professor of public policy at George Mason University, decided to give it a shot.He surveyed regional innovation trends across the country and produced an objective report that ranked the top 10 up-and-coming tech cities in the United States. The rankings, which were published in a Forbes magazine article last spring, came as a surprise to many readers. Topping the list is Columbus, Ohio, a city that is perhaps best known as the home of The Ohio State University, and the beloved Ohio State Buckeyes football team. In a list full of surprises, Columbus’ No. 1 ranking was perhaps the biggest.

The article thrilled community leaders and local and regional business-development officials, but it didn’t tell them anything they didn’t already know. The region is home to several highly regarded research and testing facilities, including the prestigious Battelle Memorial Institute, OSU, the American Chemical Society’s Chemical Abstracts Service, and the Online Computer Library Center Inc., a nonprofit computer-library service and research organization.

Many private IT firms and tech-oriented startups are based in Columbus and the surrounding communities, as are larger companies like Sterling Commerce, a subsidiary of AT&T that provides business process integration and fulfillment services to organizations in various industries. And CompuServe Information Service, an Internet-service provider and the first major commercial online service in the United States, was founded in Columbus and still maintains its headquarters in the city, although it has been owned by New York City-based AOL LLC since 1998.The Forbes article confirmed the region’s existing strengths in high-tech economic development, but more importantly, it acknowledged decades of work that Columbus-area residents have put into developing a local technology sector that is now healthy and growing fast. There was just one problem: few people outside of Central Ohio were aware of this. So, the Columbus Chamber of Commerce did what many organizations do when they want to promote their communities: it organized a press junket .The chamber invited me to participate. Two other journalists joined me on the trip: David Strom, a St. Louis-based freelance journalist and contributing writer to various technology.