I think this is also true across styles, the more kinds of music that are available the more cross-fertilization. Portland was favorably compared to Nashville for variety in a recent post. In the last month or so:
We went to hear Pink Martini (a sort of Latin flavored big band) play with the Oregon Symphony,
Another time to listen to Tom Waits songs sung as Opera by the Portland Opera’s understudies,
I heard an excellent cellist playing his own minor key classical compositions at the Farmers’ Market (among all the folkies and bluegrass bands),
A student in my grantwriting class had a grant project to revive the gamelan at Lewis & Clark College.

The point is when there are many different kinds of music available, the musicianship gets better. Rock drummers go listen to jazz drummers, symphony violinists to listen to fiddlers, and the combinations give way to new forms.

“Despite the seeming incongruity, White is thriving because he finds the Music City more professional, less confrontational and less melodramatic.”

Exactly why in electronic dance music (EDM), especially minimal techno, but not exclusively — as pretty much any eccentric, aspiring electronic musician can attest to — Berlin is still widely known as THE place to go to. It’s almost a cliche now in the industry (in fact, that term has been used by edm journalists) to describe a musician from around the world who does this. My suspicion is that much of this has to do with the exact factors mentioned in this piece and Prof. Florida’s research:

1) Berlin is cheap to live in (abundant space in the East part of the city, keeps rents low, and allows for artists to survive while developing their sound and experiment styles that might not be so formulaic nor easiest to sell to mass audiences.

2) It has a connected community of musicians, record labels, and other industry types is quite prevalent.

3) Berlin is a large city with an eccentric and well regarded club culture that attracts party tourists, as well as easy access to the large European market (with lots of urban settings/cities that usually have enough of a population open to “underground” styles of music & edm) via cheap airlines like RyanAir and EasyJet to perform in clubs, at festivals, etc. and earn money.

4) Within Berlin’s community of producers/djs/live pa acts, is far less of a competitive attitude (which I gather has to do with some of the other factors, i.e. cheap to live in, easy/cheap access to many markets) and very professional/cutting edge.

5) Most of the new sounds, styles, and uses of technology, (i.e. Ableton Live, Traktor) in EDM, comes from Berlin based EDM musicians and producers, which pushes the marketplace for demand of products and new technologies, even affecting other music genres that are increasingly relying on these technologies for music production.

This leads to part of the problem the U.S. faces as a creative nation, in my view, in that our most developed urban centers are extraordinarily expensive, and the rest for the most part lack urban development/attractiveness to certain types of creative class folks, especially musicians. Most of our cities also lack cheap transportation/access to other centers in the way Europe has.

I could see the NorthEast with Bos-Wash, Chi-Pitt, Buf-Tor region being the best option of place given the proximity and population density that exists within this area, and relatively short travel distance via plane or, hopefully, one day high-speed rail.

One underlying problem I see is that while humans are treated as capital in our late post-industrial capitalist society, by institutions and businesses, immigration laws are not libertarian enough for anyone to move to any country of their choosing, and inequality, relating to some possessing privilege to move and work easier between countries (i.e. EU member nations), make it so that even an American citizen interested in furthering their career as a musician, connecting to a place they are interested in living might not be able to so legally due to EU restrictions.

Here’s an article written on Beatportal (a blog of Beatport, the biggest seller of downloaded electronic music) last summer that documents many of the points about Berlin’s attractiveness:

http://www.beatportal.com/feed/item/berlin-the-electronic-music-commune/