Creative Class

Anya Kamenetz has a powerhouse article in Psychology Today drawing from an incredibly wide array of current research in psychology, sociology, economics, geography and urban studies showing why geographic clustering of economic activity matters more today than ever before.

Mark Perry (via Greg Mankiw) explains:

the pattern of income distribution in the NFL is strikingly similar to the
income inequality of the general population, and is actually slightly
greater in the NFL… perhaps this pattern of income distribution is a
natural and expected outcome of any extremely competitive environment
where talent is scare, valuable and highly paid, whether it’s the NFL
or the overall economy.

Philippe Legrain so gets it:

The biggest economic benefit of diversity is that it stimulates new ideas, which are the source of most economic growth, which in turn pays for the good schools, hospitals and other public goods that we value.

The exceptional individuals who come up with brilliant new ideas often are immigrants. Instead of following the conventional wisdom, immigrants tend to have a different point of view and notice new details. As outsiders, they are more determined to succeed. Of Britain’s Nobel-prize winners, 21 arrived in th e country as refugees.

Most innovations nowadays come not from individuals, but from groups of  talented people sparking off each other – and foreigners with different ideas, perspectives and experiences add something extra to the mix. If there are 10 people sitting around a table trying to come up with a solution to a problem and they all think  alike, then they are no better than one. But if they all think differently and bounce new ideas and reactions off one another, they can solve problems better and faster, as a growing volume of research shows.

Over at Slate, Witold Rybczynski illuminates how architecture firms come up with those cool – or funny sounding – names.

Not satisfied with being perceived as respectable or corporate
professionals, these architects want to be seen as subversive artists,
bad boys—and girls—with laser cutters.

The typically calm and always pro-Pittsburgh Mike Madison at Pittsblog may be losing his cool:

I went out of my way the other day not to pile criticism on the Allegheny Conference for Community Development, after the Trib published a pretty scathing review of that
outfit. Why stir up additional trouble on the eve of the ACCD’s annual
meeting. Then the ACCD’s chair, James Rohr of PNC, essentially
declares at that meeting that Pittsburghers should stop talking about
change and the future of the region. Things are just fine the way they
are! Dan Fitzpatrick in the P-G writes up the details. Jim Rohr reminds me of Kevin Bacon, in the movie Animal House. There’s a moment toward the end of the film, during the parade/riot
scene, when Bacon — who has a minor role as a freshman ROTC and
fraternity recruit — stands in the middle of the sidewalk and screams,
“All is well! Remain calm!” And the onrushing horde of townspeople crushes him.  Literally.  Flat as a pancake. Where is Pittsburgh’s Senator Blutarsky?

I feel your pain, Mike, and be careful:  A leading historian based in Pittsburgh once told me, “Watch your back, they always shoot the messenger.”

Tyler Cowen on why the Iraq war costs more than most people think.

Ryan Avent’s comment seems about right to me:

I’m not that familiar with Red Hook, but from the description in
the story, it sounds to me like gentrification didn’t fail, it just got
ahead of itself. Let’s be honest, a lot of the push of gentrification
stems from property prices and ease of commute. The flavor of a
location matters, but it takes a lot of flavor to overcome real
disadvantages in cost and location.  …

Look, lots of other cities around
the country have been able to put together thriving cultural scenes,
but there’s no substitute for New York. New York may well lose the kind
of people that are happy to make it in Buffalo, but those people aren’t
the ones that put New York on the map. For many, many people of a
certain creative inclination, there is no substitute for New York.
Those people stayed there through the crack days, and they’ll stay
through the gilded days. Which isn’t to say that other places won’t benefit mightily from New
York’s growth and subsequent pricing out of marginal artists. It’s just
to point out that those cities are competing for the marginal artists.
The best go to New York.

(Via Innovation Playground)

Wlifred McKay (via Avent via Layman) is onto something:

On a more immediate level, while we have often been taught to think
of our American cities as hothouses of “creative destruction” and
ceaseless dynamism, and also as holding pens for atomized and anonymous
“mass men,” our actual experience of cities tells us something entirely
different. For one thing, every great city is really a collection of
strong neighborhoods, in each of which there is far less anomie in fact
than may appear to be the case to an outside observer. And because
conservatism is, or should be, partly about faithfulness to memory, it
is highly important to note that a great city is much more likely to
carry forward the material vestiges of the past, and the memories those
vestiges hold, than is most any American suburb or small town. …

But every great city does something like
the same thing and can engender something like the same experience: an
experience forming the core of any authentic conservatism. For
conservatism cannot be merely an attachment to certain abstract
principles. It is also an attachment to real and tangible things, and
to the past out of which those things, not to mention we ourselves,
have emerged. Cities are, and remain, the chief places where these
meanings are conserved and cultivated.

It never ceases to amaze me that while Washington is rife with the worst kind of political polarization, in virtually very city I visit I cannot tell who is conservative and who is liberal, Republican or Democrat. Now if only conservatives would take heed to McKay’s arguments.

We’ve been around the block more than once. But leave it to Pittsburgh’s Allegheny Conference for Community Development to bring us together. I could not agree more with Joel’s assessment of the group as “the poster child of out-of-scale ideas” in this Tribune Review story. Mike Madison weighs in over at Pittsblog.  The Conference outlived its useful life two decades ago. It’s time to just get out of the way.