The Splendor of Cities


David Brooks’ celebration of city life in his New York Times column Tuesday made me think of downtown Albany and what its rising office vacancy rate might mean for the economic health of the region.

Brooks uses “Triumph of the City,” a book by Edward Glaeser, as his muse. Here’s a piece of the column:

Glaeser points out that far from withering in the age of instant global information flows, cities have only become more important.

That’s because humans communicate best when they are physically brought together. Two University of Michigan researchers brought groups of people together face to face and asked them to play a difficult cooperation game. Then they organized other groups and had them communicate electronically. The face-to-face groups thrived. The electronic groups fractured and struggled.

Cities magnify people’s strengths, Glaeser argues, because ideas spread more easily in dense environments. If you want to compete in a global marketplace it really helps to be near a downtown. Companies that are near the geographic center of their industry are more productive. Year by year, workers in cities see their wages grow faster than workers outside of cities because their skills grow faster. Inventors disproportionately cite ideas from others who live physically close to them.

For years, cities like Detroit built fancy towers and development projects in the hopes that this would revive the downtown core. But cities thrive because they host quality conversations, not because they have new buildings and convention centers.

Chris Churchill

6 Responses

  1. rich says:

    I’m assuming the book may cover these points, but beyond the benefits of face-to-face communication (often discounted in today’s technological society), cities offer a tremendous number of synergies that the suburbs loose out on due to being so decentralized (time savings, gas savings, etc). As one who lives in Albany, but grew up in Colonie, I can see this just this winter, where my suburban peers have been wasting a few hours of their lives commuting in these past snow storms, whereas, I was able to bus it (which added 10 minutes to my normal 15 minute commute by foot) and have realized some great savings in gas since my suburban days. In the long run, if the region were to focus on consolidating its businesses and residents to the urban cores, taxes would drop significantly considering how much goes to duplication of services (that keep multiplying as small towns blossom into growing suburbs, where the Capital Region will soon become the next muncipal happy New Jersey). In the end, to each his own, we are all guilty of living by our short term interests. While many of my peers will conceed to these arguements, it is easier to sacrific the long term view in order to save on the extra tax dollars that would be spent living in the regions urban centers.

  2. elmer says:

    Great catch, I saw this yesterday and had the same thought. People around here have to recognize that a strong city center, especially in Albany, is absolutely vital to area residents no matter where you live.

  3. ike says:

    That’s why Albany is a failure as a city… for the past 50 years its been a never-ending series of razings for new buildings and convention centers…

  4. elmer says:

    Missing the point ike.

    What has hurt Albany is too many businesses thinking it is best to hike to the suburbs and plentiful parking, ignoring the impact that isolation has on their employees.

    What has hurt Albany is the mindset that you have a Constitutional right to park within sightlines of the building you are visiting.

    What has hurt Albany is the preposterous idea that downtown is too dangerous to visit.

  5. LouHarv says:

    There is much hand wringing about the office vacancy rate. But class A space has about 10 percent vacancy rate downtown, which is on par with the suburbs. The real problem is the abundance of class B and C space, which no one wants. The solution is to redevelop it into apartments or condos. There has been some progress toward rehabbing some of those old buildings into apartments. So far they’ve been relatively small projects, but they’re all full and that’s a sign of viability. Once you get a few bigger projects off the ground, good things will follow.

  6. RPIguy says:

    LouHarv nails it.