[alexophile]

I don't think opportunity is actually that difficult to describe, it seems to mostly be a product of labor markets. Either there's an untapped well of excess labor (like the post-war boom in Phoenix, AZ) or there are jobs in a high unemployment environment (like what's fueling growth in the bay area now).

In the case of Phoenix, they went from 99th in the US to 9th in about 30 years in large part due to the government building air force fields and pilot training camps. When everyone went back there after the war and realized they needed jobs, industry was happy to fill the gap because there was high competition among labor.

Similarly the bay has developed obviously because of tech, but for most of that early tech, the US government was the primary customer. Not just transistors, but before that, radio and telegraph research and operator training was done for/on behalf of the Navy.

That is all to say that the next step probably won't be fueled by some small-batch kickstarting program. People won't relocate en masse if they don't have long-term motivation. I think the best bet for inciting development of New Cities is mass investment by the government training people to do things like build and operate solar farms in the great plains, understand and combat coastline destruction in the gulf, etc.

If the government commits to buying clean energy and prioritizes investing in it's development, it can have a big say in where that happens and I think that's a great opportunity to rebuild dying old cities or start from scratch since so many people have abandoned those places already.