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by skewart
3642 days ago
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> Cities reflect networks effects as strongly as anything, which is why the same cities that were important 100 years ago are, by-and-large, the same cities that are important today: there has been no doubling of exciting, the-place-to-be kind of cities in at least North America despite huge increases in population. I'm not sure how you're defining "important" but I think it's safe to say that the list cities many people 'the place to be' has changed quite a bit from 100 years ago. Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle would not have been on that list 100 years ago. But Cleveland and Pittsburgh probably would have been. So I would argue that things actually are kind of flexible. Of course, many cities would stay on the last - e.g. New York. That said, your point still stands that the list hasn't noticeably grown despite massiveky increased population (if anything I bet it's shrunk), which is kind of counterintuitive. I totally agree with your larger point about the need for a critical mass of people to move to a city though. It's a tricky problem to solve. I think it's worthwhile to look at small cities that have recently become much more popular - Portland OR, Austin TX, and Asheville NC. Their recent histories might provide some insights into how small cities go from being backwaters to attractive alternatives to the big coastal metropolises. |
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During this period artists and musicians took advantage of the cheap rent and renewed New York's status as cultural center, rebooting the gentrification process. The same thing was going on in Portland 15 years ago, where a lot of musicians and writers I knew at the time had insanely low rent, and incredible communities of like-minded people with a lot of free time. There may be other factors that contribute to why some cities take off this way and others don't, but the depression/rejuvenation cycle seems to have a momentum of its own.