Chicago alone is a glaring exception.

- It's not constrained for space, rent is relatively cheap

- Good public transit and airports

- Great food scene

- Cultural mecca

- Young people love it

- Several great universities are either in it or nearby

- Pedestrian/biker friendly

- Each of the many neighborhoods is like a different town with its own character

Google and Facebook recently made minor expansions into Chicago, but why the trickle? I get that in the short-run the elite want to be "where it's at" i.e. SF and NYC, but Chicago has so much to offer. Tech companies would get a lot for their money if they start a virtuous cycle of investment and employment here. Many STEM students from UChicago, Northwestern, and UIUC would rather stay home but the opportunity in California is too great to pass up.

Yet the Bay area has a mediocre public transit system that does not provide convenient service to major employers like Facebook, Google, or Apple. Transit service in the Bay Area is so bad that the major tech companies run private commuter buses to make up the gap. Somehow that has not stopped tech companies from building new offices around the Bay.

Chicago has decent public transportation and plenty of young, affluent techies. It's not SV or NYC but it fits the bill for a midwest city.

Chicago, and IL, have plenty of issues to work through though so I get why they didn't want to setup a HQ there.

In Ancient Rome, where your namesake hails from, wouldn't a superwealthy individual(corporation) be considered obligated to use that accumulated wealth in part to provide for the public infrastructure?

> For example, public transit. Only a handful of US cities have decent public transit at all

That’s a weird criterion given that the Bay Area has awful transit.

Cleveland is largely the state of Ohio’s fault, and Phoenix is investing in light rail.