
Urban Innovation - robg
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/30/new-york-new-york-americas-resilient-city/
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rglullis
While I do agree that social interaction is key to innovation, it is also
becoming less and less bound to geography.

All the studies and books presented are based on the data that is older than
the Internet. Hacker News is as good as a city sidewalk for the exchange of
ideas. And it doesn't cost me 2k/month in rent.

~~~
pchristensen
I think the Internet will strengthen the trend, rather than weaken it. People
outside of a specific innovation cluster can take part in it through the
internet. People that live in that cluster can participate through the
Internet _and in person_. That's a big advantage that will only become more
pronounced over time. Face to face is so much higher bandwidth that important
parts of it will never be reproduced online. Why do you think YC requires you
to be in person?

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rglullis
Actually, I think that will be more important is the ability of people to
_come and go_. It's the velocity of social interaction between talented people
that it's important, not the amount of aggregated "human talent capital". YC
requires people to be in person, but only during the 3 month period. That is
the time it takes to make all the social interactions that are needed for that
stage.

If Internet access, smart people and population density were important to
innovation, Tokyo would give birth to the majority of tech startups and
cultural achievements. It doesn't.

~~~
pchristensen
Population density and personal interaction are important to innovation, but
only certain kinds of innovation are highly profitable. SV has a big edge
there because it has the highest density of people with the resources (mental,
financial, relationship, etc) to produce tech startups. Ditto for film in LA,
fashion in Milan, finance in NYC, etc.

~~~
h34t
I agree, and I'd say these differences between cities fall under the label of
'culture'. Population density and personal interaction are necessary but
insufficient.

I taught SAT prep in China for a couple of months. If population density and
personal interaction were all that are required for innovation, my students
would have been creative geniuses. Instead, the results of cultural patterns
such as fear/obedience/submission to authority dominated my impressions of all
but a few.

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nihilocrat
The biggest socio-economic failure of the past 50 years is the insistence that
the environment you grow up and live in is unimportant to your day-to-day
living and your ability to _conceive_ of the choices you have, much less your
ability to actually choose them.

That was the conclusion I came to after thinking about the bigger implications
of this article for a bit.

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pchristensen
I always knew that I preferred cities to suburbs but couldn't explain why. I
wasn't much more social when I lived in Chicago, I didn't actually go to most
of the events and places there, but it was somehow ... better. I only recently
realized that it's so much richer in _information_ , and when I moved to the
burbs, I get so much less information that I feel starved.

That's also overlooking the fact that I meet fewer people, fewer kinds of
people, and spend more time commuting.

~~~
lief79
So, what is the best way to over come this? If I already have a career in the
suburbs and a family, how do I emulate this environment?

That's the general case, which might be the easier one to address. In my
specific case, I have a career in the suburbs, and I'm about to get married
and probably start a family. How do I go about finding/creating a more
stimulating environment? What do I look for in recognizing the highly
stimulating environments? I feel like I'm in a medium environment now, and
outside of the suboptimal online contact, it seems to be moving in the wrong
direction.

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pchristensen
1) Carefully pick your suburb - all are not created equal

2) Ditto for location within suburb - an older home near the town center
usually offers more convenient stimulation than a larger home 15 minutes out.

3) If you can't do those, try to locate convenient to train station or
interstates so commuting is faster and external events aren't so hard to get
to.

~~~
nihilocrat
There are some satellite hamlets that are attached to larger metropolitan
areas that I feel sort of achieve this.

I am specifically thinking of Carrboro, NC. I spent some of my childhood there
and I feel it had all the good qualities of the suburbs (I have lived my
entire childhood in them) but mitigated a lot of the bad ones (alienation,
etc.) because it was in an area that is denser and much more progressive by
Southern standards (Carrboro/Chapel Hill).

A negative example would be Cary, NC. A small one-block 'downtown' surrounded
by vast urban sprawl and conservative values all around. It is a malignant
growth attached to Raleigh, NC.

~~~
pchristensen
That sounds exactly like what I had in mind. The Chicago equivalents would be
Naperville, Downer's Grove, or Oak Park for the good ones. I don't want to
call out the bad ones specifically.

