Why Cities Boom While Towns Struggle
This seems a very important point, if it's correct. It affects so many of the big stories we see in the news, from SV's housing shortage to the widening gap between Republicans and Democrats. It would also mean that Y Combinator making founders move to SV (at least temporarily) turns out to be perfectly aligned with the times."The emerging knowledge economy, Mr. Moretti argues, depends on constant innovation, which turns out to be a social process. To succeed, cities need a critical mass of highly educated workers engaged in the regular, often informal, exchange of ideas. Once this critical mass comes into being, it feeds on itself: Innovation hubs attract new innovators in a self-reinforcing process, while areas lacking this critical mass fall further behind.In the early stage of the information revolution, it was fashionable to argue that new technologies would eliminate distance. People could do creative work in rural Colorado and communicate their ideas anywhere on earth with the flick of a finger.This thesis rested on an excessively individualistic understanding of creativity. In fact, remote exchanges of ideas are no substitute for the elemental human process of face-to-face communication. Innovators don’t do their work in isolation; they stimulate one another."