Golden Prosperity Building, or the Jin Mao Tower, lords it over Shanghai's
23 million residents.
Image: Josef Hoflehner Gallery Stock
In Brief
- Teleconferencing and virtual meetings of all stripes were supposed to spell the death of distance. Yet the city (home of more than half the human species) continues to flourish.
- Things seem to go better with closeness: a deal or relationship is often best sealed only with a handshake or a kiss.
- Interchange of ideas that occur in the gargantuan urban swells of the developing world may help forge a pathway out of poverty.
More In This Article
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Sidebar
Bigger Cities Do More With Less
Crime, congestion and pollution mar all cities, from Los Angeles to Mumbai. But another force trumps the drawbacks of urban living: cities bring opportunities for wealth and for the creative inspiration that can result only from face-to-face contact with others. In fact, the crush of people living in close quarters fosters the kind of collaborative creativity that has produced some of humanity’s best ideas, including the industrial revolution and the digital age. In the years ahead such collaborations can be expected to help solve the world’s most pressing problems—poverty, energy shortages, climate change—and to promote the type of fundamental political transitions seen in Cairo that recently astonished the world.
Why do cities bring out the best in us? Technology lets us hold virtual meetings, and the Internet keeps us in touch 24/7, but neither can be a substitute for the types of social cues (a facial expression that signals comprehension or confusion) when people meet in an office, bar or gym. Cities deliver the random exchanges of insight that generate new ideas for solving the most intransigent problems [for more on this mechanism, see “Bigger Cities Do More with Less,” by Luís M. A. Bettencourt and Geoffrey B. West]. Young workers, whether they are on Wall Street or in Google’s New York City offices, succeed by picking up unexpected bits of knowledge from the successes and failures of those around them. It has always been so.
This article was originally published with the title Engines of Innovation.
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16 Comments
Add CommentI have no problem with cities just remember a simple fact.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe cities need the farmers, the farmers don't need the cities.
Does this suggest Ants and Bees' habitats reflect where the "urbanistas" want to go ?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"drafter" - we know where the "urbanistas" will head for when they get hungry; don't know about your place but ours is well armed and stocked with provisions. Stay well!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThen who would the farmer sell to without cities?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUgh!! Don't get me wrong as I usually gain much from Scientific American online. But this time I am not a happy camper in my rural environment in Montana. What a bunch of self-serving nonsense! Get out of your cities and enjoy our wonderful natural world.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCan't stop here... Yeah there is significant innovation occurring in your huge cities. Here in my rural state we have developed sophisticated technologies including optical, energy efficient and nanotechnologies, biochemical recycling & remediation, global climate change instrumentation and algorithms, world-class heart research and on and on. I will be nice and stop before I get into urban smugness.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Get out of your cities and enjoy our wonderful natural world."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI do, from time to time.
But actually living there would put too much of a strain on the environment there. I mean, do you _really_ want the cities to empty out and everyone living there move to the countryside?
How much of the "natural world" would be left then?
Well... that was not my point. Good for you for getting out of your city from time to time. However, for a great many people, getting out of the city means boarding a plane and flying over the country to another city. I did not state that all urban people need evacuate their cities and move to rural areas. It was the smugness of the article and of so many who live in urban areas that bug me. I deny the claim in the article that cities bring out the best in us. They often bring out the beast in us.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSome folks like the country life and will defend their preferences with rationalizations. Some like their urban life and will defend that will their rationalizations. looked at logicaly, city life, urbanization, the shift from hunter gatherer to agricultire, the shift from villages to cities, from cities to nations, has been a story of increasing complexity, increasing human interaction, increasing knowlege, technological sophistication, lifespan and standard of living. city living, or living in larger and larger groups, is one large bit of behavior that seperates us from most other animal species, and has made us the most 'sucessful' species around today.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIm a true blue,dyed in the wool CITY BOY,but I gotta agree with you 100 percent.Too many times us city folk dont realize how much agricultural Americans do for us.That food we see in the aisles of (insert local super/megamarket grocery chain here) did not appear there magically.So remember there should be a strong alliance between the urban and non urban population in the US.Love,peace,and chicken grease....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthe food in supermarkets come mainly from factory farms, not small farms in small communities populated by salt of the esrth rural folk. rural environments are agents of sameness and stagnation. urban environments are agents of change, innovation and growth. life in the rural environment can be more pleasant and less stressful, but it is stagnant and feels like living in an ever-present, never advancing, ancient past. a past where no social evil is ever overcome or left behind, but where they are enshrined and worshipped. the most important resource our species has ever discovered is ourselves. it is in the city where that resource is developed and put to use
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe hubris exhibited in this piece is palpable. How is "success" measured, I wonder? The so-called problems (heads up: we have a predicament, not a series of problems) are all caused by humans in the first place and now we're led to believe that more of the same thinking that caused the problems can solve them all, one by one, until we're living in utopia, where everything is perfect.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAll societies, all civilisations, collapse. I have no idea why SciAm thinks we can avoid that fate by making cities bigger. We really need to start thinking in terms of sustainable lifestyles (i.e. ones that don't, of themselves, lead to their own demise). Given past hubris here, I don't think we're likely to see articles supportive of that idea, until we're well over the edge.
I recently heard on a BBC "documentary" that doubling the size of cities caused an increase in average income of 15%. Typical BBC niavety did not ascribe any of this to market clout forcing suppliers of the basics ( food, water, natural fibres, wood, and energy) to accept smaller margins. Common sense would suggest that this "law", if it is one, resembles Moore's law in being subject at some point to that higher law of diminishing marginal returns. Producer and consumer are both parts of the complete system and it is absurd to put all the carbon "costs" of food production onto the producer, as he / she/they would not require to produce if there were not a lot of consumers needing food. On the development of ideas and technologies, communication between like minded individuals and others whose interests spark new intuitions and insights are not dependant on large cities, now that we have so many means to communicate. Committees have never produced anything remarkable, without it first having been conceived by an individual or very small group.In another thread I asked why there was no word of monorails as an urban transport solution - I'm still waiting.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOne thing that is clear, and is largely ignored by people on both sides of the "pond" not taught the basics of economics at school,is the absolute reliance of large urban areas on a successful and reliable commercial agriculture, and the transport infra structure to get the food to the cities.
Enjoyed Cities Issue, but cannot figure out why living is more expensive in a more efficient environment. More than one article suggested Cities provide a more efficient way of life than suburban or rural living. By definition, more efficient should mean less cost for equal value or more value for same cost. If a 70 story sky scraper is the most efficient building, then a living space in that building should cost less than equal space elsewhere.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn one of the articles some sort of economic circle was mentioned that tried to explain why living space in cities cost more, but efficiency at some point goes back to cost advantages, so again, how are cities more efficient if less costs more ?
I would suggest that smaller metropolitan areas may, in fact, be the best way for the world to progress. These areas have most of the advantages of larger metropolitan areas and cost of living is much lower.
More and smaller metropolitan areas, of 500,000 to 1,000,000 people would make it easier to consume local food, provide many people with whom to interact and actually be able to demonstrate efficiency to residents by lower housing costs . This lower cost of living is true today and I saw nothing in your cities issue to suggest that it will not remain true.
Enjoyed Cities Issue, but cannot figure out why living is more expensive in a more efficient environment. More than one article suggested Cities provide a more efficient way of life than suburban or rural living. By definition, more efficient should mean less cost for equal value or more value for same cost. If a 70 story sky scraper is the most efficient building, then a living space in that building should cost less than equal space elsewhere.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn one of the articles some sort of economic circle was mentioned that tried to explain why living space in cities cost more, but efficiency at some point goes back to cost advantages, so again, how are cities more efficient if less costs more ?
I would suggest that smaller metropolitan areas may, in fact, be the best way for the world to progress. These areas have most of the advantages of larger metropolitan areas and cost of living is much lower.
More and smaller metropolitan areas, of 500,000 to 1,000,000 people would make it easier to consume local food, provide many people with whom to interact and actually be able to demonstrate efficiency to residents by lower housing costs . This lower cost of living is true today and I saw nothing in your cities issue to suggest that it will not remain true.
The full article doesn't suggest we do not need Ag and all that supports it (Ag is not just food- trees, clothing, fuel, ect) . It does start to suggest the posing rural is not efficient..that is living in the suburbs and driving everyday to the city for work. It also speaks about the connectivity, diversity and consequent creativity that comes from that environment. We need farmers and should do a lot more than we do to support them!
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