Driverless cars, drones doing building inspections, the cyber currency capital of the world.
These are some of the economic development visions Mayoral frontrunner Eric Adams has to jumpstart the City’s economy once he takes the helm of Gotham.
“In Brooklyn, while I’ve been borough president, we’ve had almost a 356% increase in our startups. We have become the Simi Valley of the east and we should be excited about that. So I want to number one lean into the self-driving car industry, similar to what they’re doing in Pittsburgh right now. They blocked off a geographical piece of real estate where they’re going to be tested to see innovation,” said Adams in an interview Monday with community and ethnic media outlets. “But we must connect the industries to our educational system. I want these industry leaders to be connected with CUNY, as well as connected to our district and charter schools and public schools in the city so that we can continue to give the children a challenge.”
Adams said since winning the Democratic Party nomination he has met with a number of deputy mayors and business leaders including business icon and former Mayor Michael Bloomberg to understand how he used technology in both his administration and business development.
Among the tech business sectors, Adams is looking to increase or bring into New York City include the cyber currencies industry including bitcoin.
“I think we need to look at blockchain. This is an emerging industry and New York is nowhere on the map and Miami is leaving us in the dust. We need to really look at blockchain and see how do we fit it into our economy,” said Adams.
Adams said he is also very interested in drone development and has met with some drone development leaders.
“We can inspect buildings at a fraction of the time and a fraction of the cost by using drones, as well as using drones for so many other purposes in the city,” he said. “We should build out to technology in the city, and we should look towards the shortage of different pieces of technology that are used. Sometimes we overlook that.”
Adams also said the city needs to look at emerging markets such as cannabis growing and urban agriculture.
“This is the Empire State. We should be building empires, not only from previous years, but let’s look at the innovations. I’m going to put in place an Office of Innovation and we’re going to look at all of these emerging markets, and have a role in these emerging markets,” he said.
