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The demand for tech education is pretty high in NYC right now. I'd imagine those schools are already doing things on their own. I'm sure he's hedging his bets that either those schools will come around on their own or something new will fill this gap.

I think having Stanford or some other strong third institution here in NYC would be a good thing for diversity.

Full Disclosure - I work for Columbia and am a native NYC'er.

Most likely because it's trendy? I know that sounds ignorant so let me put it another way - Bloomberg is more of a capitalist than a mayor and he always will be. There's a lot of hype around SV startups and VCs are flocking to fund every little startup they can find for better or worse. The Wall Street types aren't always the best at independent thinking and they see this going on and so they feel that since New York is the self proclaimed "Greeatest City in the World" they have to keep up. Think about it in terms of the recent market situation. All the big banks were pouring money into bad investments without really looking at the consequences. Some even knew they were going to see a crash eventually but did it anyway. It's this kind of keeping-up-with-the-Joneses mentality that pervades the business and finance types everywhere but it's very pronounced in NYC. That's most likely why they want a dedicated Tech university. To keep up with Stanford and be part of the cool tech movement.