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This makes a lot of sense. Why do you think suburban metros got hit by the recession far worse.
Quote:
As President Obama and his economic advisers desperately try to figure out how to get millions of unemployed Americans back to work, the relationship between job creation and urban density hasn’t exactly been on the radar. But maybe it should be, according to a recent New York Timesopinion article written by Economist staff writer Ryan Avent. Avent argues that those who often fight for urban preservation (and the concurrent restraint of development) are hobbling the ability of cities to grow at their full potential and create more jobs.
Economists studying cities routinely find that after controlling for other variables, workers in denser places earn higher wages and are more productive. Some studies suggest that doubling density raises productivity by around 6 percent while others peg the impact at up to 28 percent. … Put two workers with similar skill levels in cities of different densities and the one in the denser place will be more productive, according to two decades’ worth of research from economists.
While Avent makes an important addition to the public discourse on urban policy, his ideas are not fundamentally new. Jane Jacobs came out against dispersing people and celebrated tight-knit city neighborhoods in her classic book The Death & Life of Great American Cities. More recently, urban theorist Richard Florida has brought renewed attention to the issue with his book The Rise of the Creative Class.
But Avent doesn’t say that making cities more packed with people is a cure-all for the economy and some cities are better able to take advantage of the benefits of being more crowded.
Density isn’t a magic elixir. One can’t create wealth just by crowding people together; otherwise the super-dense metropolitan areas in emerging Asian countries would be richer than American cities. Density simply facilitates interaction. Interactions translate into wealth when a population is educated and local institutions support private enterprise and entrepreneurship.
No, because all they did was measure productivity.
Productivity is not something that creates jobs, necessarily. In the short run it actually kills jobs. If you have extremely productive workers, you need fewer of them.
Swedish researchers have found an association between high
levels of "urbanisation" and an increased risk of psychosis and depression
in men and women.
Makes sense. You'd have to be out of your mind to live in a very high density area, such as NYC.
Makes sense. You'd have to be out of your mind to live in a very high density area, such as NYC.
Inventing diseases may be our best refuge. It may very well become a part of political centerpiece (it did under Nazi Germany). Having said that, NYC has more people than many states for good reasons although I don't expect retirees and like to fancy those.
But, if your argument is that urban density won't be the future, well, you're entitled to a belief like everybody else. I call it... short sighted (if not a complete lack of). Come over to Dallas area, and as much as Texans have a love for sprawling cities (DFW being an example of that), I will gladly show that work in progress.
I wonder what impact on productivity there would be if our worker bees all wore the same drab uniform, rode the same color bicycle to work and toiled under the same picture of dear leader?
Inventing diseases may be our best refuge. It may very well become a part of political centerpiece (it did under Nazi Germany). Having said that, NYC has more people than many states for good reasons although I don't expect retirees and like to fancy those.
But, if your argument is that urban density won't be the future, well, you're entitled to a belief like everybody else. I call it... short sighted (if not a complete lack of). Come over to Dallas area, and as much as Texans have a love for sprawling cities (DFW being an example of that), I will gladly show that work in progress.
In honesty, I'm not opposed to urban density, done "properly". In my mind, that means dense, but smaller, urban areas. Cities and smaller towns, where a dense core can be located near manufacturing areas or industrial areas. Large urban areas drive property costs through the roof. This in turn tends to drive manufacturing to less costly areas, in turn driving the very "sprawl" they claim to reduce. Dense, downtown urban cores (in my experience) tend to drive service industries, not production.
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