[creakingstairs]

This is a great interactive essay. I found the part about diffusion in cities particularly interesting.

I’ve been discussing with a friend on what makes big cities worth living in and one of the point raised was that just by putting a lot of people in a small space, you get much more innovation than spreading out the same amount of people in a wider area.

This is one of the reasons why Edward Glaeser dubs city as “the man's greatest invention“ in his book. He brings up the rate of new patents to back up the above claim but the blog post offers another mathematical reason.

[nerdponx]

I think the benefits of living in a city on a day-to-day basis have a lot less to do with "innovation" than with positive returns to geographic density for a lot of activities and industries, like entertainment, fine dining, the arts, and public transit.

[kubanczyk]

Not to diminish fine dining or my biannual visits to the movie theater, but I think schools and kindergartens are the killer apps.

[nerdponx]

Also jobs, medical facilities, and various social services, which I didn't mention in my previous post.

[creakingstairs]

I agree! Though I think "innovations", in a broad sense, can also be a delightful reason to enjoy cities. I find a fair bit of really niche ideas (mini "innovations" if you will) when I go to an indie exhibition and that fills me with inspiration and joy. I know that your comment also covers this aspect ("the arts") but I think increased creativity from being near other people is worth pointing out.

[onos]

This thread points to the different motivations of individuals and those running a society.

[kaba0]

I would be interested in how would this effect change by the introduction of remote work.

[creakingstairs]

Companies are going in different tracks and some universities are more remote friendly than others. It will be interesting to compare how the companies are doing 5 years later to see the effect.