Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations suggested over 200 years ago that what makes us human was the fact that we exchange. Dogs do not. Well, today we know that sometimes animals do exchange according to an article in a recent issue of the Economist Magazine (February 21, 2009 p. 80).

In a recent book, Richard Wrangham, an anthropologist at Harvard University believes that what makes homo sapiens unique is that their food is so often cooked. In a new book Catching Fire he explains that what makes us truly human is cooking food. We are the only species that cooks food. But what is really interesting is that cooking, especially meat, is what led to our big brains. Without cooking the human brain, which consumes 20-25 percent of the body’s energy, could not keep running. Without cooking, raw food cannot feed the brain. Cooking softens food and makes it easier to digest so even the tough stuff is easy to use. Cooking also increases the food digested in the small intestine from 50 percent to 95 percent.

What is really interesting is do we have a connection between cooking and the creative class? Most creative cities and regions we know have lots of gays, bohemians, and immigrants. But what role does cooking play in all of this? Do we not find that most of the creative places also have great eating places? Is this the immigrant connection? I do not mean the simple fast food restaurants, but really good cooking and good food. What is the connection between these two activities?

Does culture and therefore cooking and food also act as a part of the social capital that drives creativity and the creative class? Give me a good bowl of pasta, a nice bottle of wine, and the creative juices will start to flow because we are feeding the brain. Give us bad food and obesity develops, the brain does not develop, and we have no creative class.

Food for thought.

As they swell, the suburbs are changing. Perhaps none ever quite resembled the
colourless domestic enclaves popularised by 1970s television programmes such as
“The Brady Bunch”; now, they look nothing at all like them. America’s suburbs
are ethnically and demographically mixed—sometimes more so than its cities. Many
are less dormitories than economic powerhouses.

This is from an interesting, if somehow conflicted, Economist article on America’s suburbs.  As I point out in WYC, there is no one suburban model.  Close-in suburbs on  transit links in and around “super-star cities” are likely to fare very, very well. Far-off exurbs, not so much. Suburbs come in many styles and “flavors.”  There are strollervilles, boho-burgs, family lands, new urbias, exurbs – the list goes on and on. Beyond this, there are real economic drivers that are transforming suburbia. One is of course rising fuel costs.  There are more options out there for “living” and tastes and preferences are changing and becoming more differentiated by group and across life-stage. One size no longer fits just about everyone.  And as I’ve stated here before, in  the idea-driven creative economy, time or “opportunity” costs increasingly matter to location choice.  A very interesting ongoing transformation indeed – one which is far from over.