via TechCocktail's Flickr

If venture funding from the likes of Yuri Milner and Jeff Bezos wasn't enough to convince you that the outside world is picking up what General Assembly's putting down, how about the most sincere form of flattery? Imitation. The Chicago Tribune reports that a billionaire venture capitalist J.B. Pritzker is leading a local team looking to replicate General Assembly's urban tech campus/co-working space in Chicago.

Yes, that's same bold-faced last name as O.G. General Assembly chairman Adam Pritzker, who emailed Betabeat to say he's psyched about the prospects, "I am excited for J.B. Chicago is a great city and I am confident that his skills and experience will help develop the startup culture there."

Because Chicago's startup community is more dispersed, plans call for doubling the size of GA to 50,000-square-foot space near some kind of public transit--with the notion of creating a startup hub around it. With debate over plans to recreate Silicon Valley on Roosevelt Island, we're sure the EDC is taking notes in terms of what works and what doesn't when you're trying to transplant another city's culture and hoping for the same results.