On an empty patch of land in my hometown, a new economic order may be taking shape.

Growing up around Syracuse, New York, at the turn of this century had its share of joys: post-blizzard sledding, minor-league baseball games, chance sightings of Syracuse University basketball players at Wegmans. But the area’s best days seemed to be slipping ever further into the past. One major employer after another abandoned the area for leaner workforces and cheaper pastures abroad. To those of us coming of age then, the blaring signal was that if we wanted opportunity and security, we’d better get out. So many of us did—leaving home, and our families, for the “superstar” cities (in my case, New York) where the good-paying jobs were.

That story of decline and exodus was repeated in any number of cities and towns around the country during those years. It was driven in no small part by place-agnostic policy choices that let the “invisible hand” of the market pick where jobs would go. This led to concentrated growth in a few big cities, while regions like Central New York and much of the Midwest were relegated to stagnation or worse. It fostered animosity among the people who had been sold out, forging a ready-made constituency for Donald Trump and the politics of resentment.

[Ronald Brownstein: Bidenomics really is something new]

But perhaps that story is changing. In October, the semiconductor manufacturer Micron Technology announced that it will spend as much as $100 billion over the next 20 years to build a plant outside Syracuse. It’s an unheard-of amount of money for Central New York. The deal was sealed by last summer’s CHIPS and Science Act, a bipartisan $50 billion investment in American-made semiconductor chips. It is, to date, the biggest example of—and the biggest bet on—the Biden administration’s rediscovery of an old idea about the economy: that geography matters. This approach recognizes that when it comes to growth and opportunity, the question is not just how much, but where and for whom. If it succeeds in places like Syracuse, it could transform the American economic and political landscape.

An earlier era of government policy put Syracuse on the map. Nineteenth-century nation-builders such as Henry Clay pushed for an “American System” to support domestic industry and build connective infrastructure. The shining success was the Erie Canal, running from Albany to Buffalo, as upstate–New York schoolchildren still learn through field trips and song. Syracuse sat at its center and was soon transformed from empty swampland into a boomtown. The city grew into a full-fledged manufacturing hub by the 1900s, producing everything from automotive gears to steel to typewriters. The name of my hometown and Micron’s new base just north of Syracuse memorializes the area’s American System heritage: Clay, New York.

During the Great Depression, Syracuse was among the earliest beneficiaries of place-conscious New Deal policy. Then-Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1931 regional-relief legislation put hundreds of residents to work building a park and parkway along Onondaga Lake, on the city’s northwestern edge. (He would nationalize this type of initiative as president to support hard-hit places through programs such as the Works Progress Administration and the Tennessee Valley Authority.) In the 1940s, the parkway was essential for transporting workers to a massive new General Electric campus north of the city known as Electronics Park. GE joined the air-conditioner producer Carrier and other manufacturers to form the area’s economic backbone during the postwar boom.

That golden age came under strain in the 1970s. After decades of American industrial dominance, competitors in Europe and Japan began catching up. At the same time, Milton Friedman–style laissez-faire economics was on the rise. So was inflation. Policy makers prioritized national growth and low prices for consumer goods above all else and believed that the best way to achieve them was to get government out of the way. Where that growth took place and those consumer goods were produced was mostly irrelevant. The proceeds, it was claimed, would trickle down to everyone.

This combination of macroeconomic forces and policy choices bludgeoned industry in Syracuse. The GE plant started shifting jobs—including in semiconductor production—overseas during the ’70s. About 20 years after Ronald Reagan visited the Syracuse plant as a GE spokesman, the company closed operations there entirely during his presidency. Other companies followed suit, shedding thousands of jobs in the ’80s and ’90s. Then, after China was admitted into the World Trade Organization in 2001, with the United States’ support, a flood of cheap Chinese imports further undercut the local manufacturing base. In the biggest blow, Carrier moved production overseas in 2003, explaining that it could make air conditioners “three times cheaper in Asia.”

Deindustrialization left a void that Syracuse has struggled to fill. There are fewer private-sector jobs in the area today than there were in 2001. The city’s population fell for decades. It has one of the highest child-poverty rates in the nation. GE’s old Electronics Park campus, where 17,000 people once worked, is surrounded by a sprawl of mostly empty parking lots; its current tenants employ fewer than 3,000 people. Until last year, Carrier’s name still graced the university’s famed sports dome, two decades after the company last produced an air conditioner in Syracuse.

The dramatic rise in economic inequality in the U.S. since the 1980s is usually pictured in vertical terms, as a pulling-away of the top earners from everyone below. But the shift toward market fundamentalism also had drastic horizontal effects, creating a map of winners and losers. Merger-friendly regulators waved through corporate acquisitions that saw regional businesses gobbled up by large multinationals headquartered in coastal hubs. The Midwest was already seven years into a recession before the 2008 financial crisis. The few elite cities where job growth clustered, meanwhile, became crushingly expensive to live in. And a pandemic exposed the downsides of place-agnostic economics: Crises anywhere could snap supply chains and throttle economies everywhere.

In response, President Joe Biden’s administration has embraced industrial policy—that is, direct government support for particular domestic industries—through legislation investing in semiconductors, clean energy, and infrastructure. Crucially, but with less fanfare, the administration has also been designing these efforts to reverse decades of geographic redistribution. It aims to invest “in places and communities that risk being left behind,” as the White House economic adviser Heather Boushey said in a recent speech. Brookings Institution researchers identified $80 billion worth of place-based programs in Biden’s laws, with the CHIPS Act leading the pack.

[Read: Why the economic fates of America’s cities diverged]

“There is no doubt that without the CHIPS Act, we would not be here today,” Micron’s chief executive said upon announcing its Syracuse investment. Micron stands to reap billions from the act’s pot of money for new semiconductor plants and could collect even more from a separate investment tax credit. In exchange, the 20-year project is forecasted to directly create 9,000 good-paying jobs, generate another 40,000 jobs at local companies, and raise $17 billion in state tax revenue. Micron has also pledged to fund local child care, achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, and spend millions on other community investments. (New York mandated some of these commitments to unlock state subsidies, in part to avoid the kind of blowback that killed the Amazon HQ2 deal in Queens.)

Having been burned before by big promises of new industry that never materialized, many in Syracuse are taking a believe-it-when-we-see-it caution with Micron. But the economics of hope are already gaining visible momentum. Even before Micron breaks ground, the county is preparing for a house-building spree. Underused spaces are being targeted for residential and commercial development. Public transit is being expanded to get workers to and from Micron. Colleges are adding degrees and training programs to seed a semiconductor workforce. Local breweries are crafting semiconductor-inspired lagers.

Biden, who attended Syracuse University for law school, has been a vocal booster of the Micron project. Effective place-based economics may prove politically beneficial for him and the Democratic Party. In 2020, Biden drew support overwhelmingly from the most economically vibrant parts of the country. As opportunity has concentrated in fewer places, so too have the college-educated voters whom Democrats rely on. If more areas grow, the party’s electoral map may too.

Ultimately, Bidenomics will be judged by whether it actually delivers for the people and places that lost out under the old economic-policy consensus. From my adopted home 250 miles away, I’m watching Micron’s arrival with cautious optimism. Americans have long been lauded for our willingness to pick up and move, to “go west” toward new frontiers and opportunities. But maybe we shouldn’t have to. And maybe, in a few decades, we won’t. A generation from now, Syracuse may be churning out semiconductors like it once did televisions and air conditioners. Maybe more children will be able to envision a good middle-class life where their roots are—not just in Syracuse, but in places like Detroit, Columbus, northwestern Indiana, and more. The old order had too little use for too many places. We may be witnessing the birth of a new one that spreads possibility and meaning across more of America.

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