There’s a great post by Edward Glaeser (in the Economix blog of the New York Times), titled “New York, New York: America’s Resilient City.”
In it, he describes how New York has managed to avoid the decay that has afflicted many large older cities, and, after a brief downturn in the 1970’s, came roaring back as arguably the most influential single city in the world.
His explanation? In a word - “smart people.”
“New York still has an amazing concentration of talent. That talent is more effective because all those smart people are connected because of the city’s extreme population density levels. Historically, human capital — the education and skills of a work force — predicts which cities are able to reinvent themselves and which ones are not. Those people who are continuing to pay high prices for Manhattan real estate are implicitly betting that New York’s human capital will continue to come up with new ways of reinventing the city. “
Glaeser continues, describing why dense cities succeed…
“They thrive by enabling us to connect with each other, which then promotes learning and innovation. The current downturn will only increase the returns to being smart, and you get smart by hanging around smart people. As long as New York continues to attract and connect those people, the city will continue to thrive.”
Now here’s what every city planner wants to know. Is this replicable? Can this success be engineered or encouraged, and are the effects measurable in 10 years, 20 years, a lifetime?
Does anyone have successful examples of campaigns and projects to replicate this resilient infrastructure? Or perhaps, examples of some cautionary unsuccessful attempts?
Best wishes to everyone for a creative and fruitful New Year!
December 30th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
When I worked in an office in NYC there were two classes of workers: NYC-residents who had plenty of time for out-of-hours social activities, networking, etc., and commuters who had none. Perhaps a key indicator in a city’s success is “Percentage of creative workers who live within 30 minutes of each other and of work?”
December 30th, 2008 at 8:26 pm
I don’t know NYC as well as I would like, but my impression is that the City’s wealth is what has allowed it to “succeed” in some way. If you contrast Los Angeles with NYC in any way besides the recent recession-induced declines in housing,( and incidentally, the financial troubles were largely manufactured by New York bankers) the success of New York may look diminished. In the article it says that 40% of the economy is related to finance, which is one of the main drivers of the recession. In L.A. there are lots of industries such as the entertainment industry, areospace, bio-tech, high tech, design, organic farming, aviation, there are even oil wells in the metropolitian area.
Californians often have this discussion with East Coast city people who feel that “nothing is happening”, because they cannot relate to low density. In fact much has happened in the low density cities of Cali during the last generation. Also, creative people can afford to live with a high quality of life, inexpensively, while they work on their dreams, and ideas. LA may be the model to study. The article was NYC-centric.
March 31st, 2009 at 5:30 pm
Edward Glaeser frankly says a lot of stupid things. Go on Youtube and look at his long interview literally 1-2 months before Wall Street and the banking system collapsed. He went on and on and on about how NY is great for ONE reason only, the glorious bankers and wonderful value-adding financial services sector. He said the bankers and financial servies people in NY on their own were so creative and wonderful that they should properly be compared to the immortal geniuses of FLORENCE DURING THE RENNAISANCE!!!