CHICAGO—High-tech was nurtured in Silicon Valley, but even as the sector's soaring growth has moderated somewhat, it has also started to sink roots in new cities and regions, perhaps providing these areas with the resilience to withstand economic downturns. That was one of the conclusions of a research team from Chicago-based JLL, which just released its latest Tech Office Outlook report, a study of the top 45 metro areas.

As reported in GlobeSt.com, there was a modest pullback from tech office users in the second quarter, and that was partly the result of a pullback from the venture capitalists that have funded the sector. Cutting costs has become more important in the industry, and that has its leaders looking to spread out to lower cost markets.

“Chicago has gotten a lot of traction in the past five and a half years,” Steffen Kammerer, senior vice president and leader of JLL's technology group, tells GlobeSt.com. In addition to its increasingly strong start-up scene, the city and its suburbs have office spaces that cost a fraction of ones in Silicon Valley and other top tech centers. Direct average asking rents in its burgeoning West Loop submarket were $28.76, compared to $74.69 in San Francisco's South Financial District and $76.77 in New York's Times Square.