Boston provided an estimated $145m in incentives to secure the deal. 而波士顿为了使企业扎根，提供了约1.45亿美元的激励。

　　Still, something is clearly changing in America’s older cities. 但是，美国的一些旧城市正发生显著变化。

　　They are much less crime-ridden than before, thanks to a combination of better policing and demographic change. 城市中心区因为治安管理方面的加强，以及人口结构的改变，犯罪率较以前大大减少。

　　The homicide rate fell by 16.8% from 2000 to 2010 in big cities. 从2000至2010十年间，大城市中的谋杀率也下降了16.8%。

　　Now these urban centres are magnets for millennials fresh from university and with few responsibilities. 如今，城市中心区对刚从大学毕业、却鲜有责任感的千禧一代有着较大的吸引力。

　　Young professionals are reconquering former no-go areas and shifting the problem of urban blight into the suburbs. 年轻职业人在重征这片之前被称为“禁区”之地时，同时也将城市问题转向了郊区。

　　Hiring such people in Boston, GE reckons, will help it shift its focus from hardware to software and from selling things to offering services over the internet. 通用认为，雇佣这些人到波士顿，可以将公司侧重点从硬件转向软件，从网络销售商品转为网上提供服务。

　　Yet the new downtown headquarters are very different from the old ones, and not just because they are open-plan and trendy. 但是，新城区的公司和旧式的公司不同，并不仅仅是因为这些公司是时髦的开放式办公室。

　　They are far smaller. 还在于这些公司的规模小得多。

　　Often, firms are moving their senior managers to the city along with a few hundred digital workers. 公司搬进城市时带着他们的高级经理和数百位技术人员。

　　Moving back to Chicago’s centre has usually involved downsizing. 迁入芝加哥中心的同时也在缩减规模。

　　Motorola Solutions’ HQ shrank from 2,900 to 1,100, and that of Archer Daniels Midland from 4,400 to 70. 摩托罗拉从2900人减少到1100人，阿彻丹尼尔斯米德兰由4400人减少到70人。

　　Many companies are deconstructing their headquarters and scattering different units and functions across the landscape,  许多公司在分流他们的总部，将不同部门和职能的人员分散在整个城市中心区，

　　leaving most middle managers in the old buildings, or else moving them to cheaper places in the southern states. 让许多中层经理留在旧办公楼中，或者搬至价格更便宜的南方各州。

　　Aaron Renn of the Manhattan Institute, a think tank, reckons that head offices are splitting into two types:  曼哈顿研究院是一家智库，其研究员亚伦·雷恩认为现在公司总部分为两总类型：

　　old-fashioned “mass” headquarters in the sunbelt cities, and new-style “executive headquarters” of senior managers and wired workers in elite cities such as San Francisco, Chicago and Boston. 一种是阳光地带城市中旧式“大规模”型的总部；另一类是在旧金山、芝加哥和波士顿这样的精英之城中仅有高级管理阶层以及普通电子技术工人的新式总部。

　　That suggests there will be no return to the broad-based urban prosperity of America’s golden age. 这表明美国并不是回到黄金时代中规模宏大的城市繁荣。

　　San Francisco could be the template of the future. 旧金山会成为未来城市的模版。

　　Its centre is divided between affluent young people who frequent vegan cafes and homeless people who smoke crack and urinate in the streets. 在旧金山中心区，经常去素食餐厅的富家子弟与吸毒、随地大小便的流浪汉各占半壁江山。

　　Long-standing San Franciscans resent the way that the urban professionals have driven up property prices. 而旧金山本地人却对都市职场人士抬高了房价而感到愤怒。

　　And those young workers may fall out of love with the city centre when they have children and start worrying about the quality of schools and the safety of streets. 当年轻职场人士有了孩子，开始担心市中心学校的质量和街道安全时，他们可能对市中心不再留恋。

　　The best book to read if you want to understand corporate America’s migration patterns is not Mr Florida’s, but a more recent study, Bill Bishop’s “The Big Sort”. 如果你想要理解美国公司的迁移模式，最好去读最新的研究成果—比尔·毕晓普的《大归类》，而不是佛罗里达先生的《创意阶层的崛起》。

　　It argues that Americans are increasingly clustering in distinct areas on the basis of their jobs and social values. 他在书中阐述了许多不同地区的美国人因为工作和社会价值观而日益集中。

　　The headquarters revolution is yet another iteration of the sorting process that the book describes, as companies allocate elite jobs to the cities and routine jobs to the provinces. 并将公司将高层管理工作转向城市，把基层工作留在郊区的改革描述成另一种反复分类的过程。

　　Corporate disaggregation is no doubt asensible use of resources. 分流公司无疑是一种明智的整合资源的方式。

　　But it will also add to the tensions that are tearing America apart as many bosses choose to work in very different worlds from the vast majority of Americans, including their own employees. 但是，由于许多老板选择在与包括他们自己员工在内的大多数美国人不同的地区工作，这也加剧了使美国分裂的紧张局势。