Exactly, culture matters a great degree for creative work. If there were a big untapped reservoir of cultural input for tech firms being underutilized, it would be invested in. You see this a bit in secondary tech hubs like Boulder or Austin, which by dint of their history have some of whatever culture and skillsets the tech industry needs.

Big cities and metropolitan areas are generators of their flavor of culture, and that influences the kind of work objects that the local labor pool can produce.

Many of the cities on GP's list are actually major tech hubs (Tokyo, Sao Paulo, NYC, LA), and many of the other cities (Cairo, Mexico City, LA) are major creative centers for other industries especially media/entertainment industries for their respective spheres of orbit.

> There's a reason that the major tech hubs in the US are liberal cities...

Because the owners and operators of the companies in question are usually left of center (American spectrum)?

That's sort of a subset of the real answer: the in-demand talent that the companies need so much of are usually left of center, and relatedly appreciate some things that are more common/better in left-er areas: public transport, decent public universities, support for biking/walkability, friendliness to cultural/ethnic diversity, friendliness to LGBT people, stronger social safety net.

There are things that liberal areas are worse at, of course: housing costs are usually higher, they're not as accommodating to religion, taxes are higher, some regulations can be stifling. But most techies are less concerned with these latter things than the former.