Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

Density and Creativity

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by

James A. Bacon
in ,

Shockoe Bottom: There’s a reason it’s Richmond’s creative hub.

In Virginia, discussions about the density of growth and development tends to focus on the fiscal dimension. Is there an optimum level of density to maximize revenues versus costs for local governments? (See “The Fiscal Fix” for a discussion of these issues.) But there is another angle that may be just as important. What is the optimum density to stimulate creativity and innovation?

Economic geographer Richard Florida addresses the question in a Wall Street Journal op-ed today. The optimal level of density may be associated with mid-rise development, he says, not hyper-crowded skyscrapers like the buildings clotting the horizons of the world’s biggest cities, especially in Asia.

Florida argues that a city’s physical layout can affect the ability of its inhabitants to mix, network and engage in the kind of informal encounters that stimulate great ideas. Echoing the critique of anti-modernist architect Leon Krier, he likens giant skyscrapers to vertical cul de sacs — dead ends for interaction. He also quotes urban economist Jane Jacobs on the critical need for pedestrian scale to facilitate interaction and affordable, sub-Class A office space where start-ups can get traction. New York’s hubs of innovation aren’t its skyscraper districts, he notes, but its mid-rise, mixed-use neighborhoods.

Richmonders need to be asking the same kinds of questions: Can we alter the physical design of our communities to create what Florida terms “Jacob density,” an urban form that sparks street-level interaction and informal encounters? Chasing after downtown high-rises or glass-and-steel boxes set amid acres of asphalt parking won’t do much to crank up Richmond’s metabolism.  But the re-development taking place in three- and four-story buildings in Shockoe Bottom and Manchester very well may.

Regionally, the City of Richmond is leading the way, acting as a magnet for artists, architects, engineers, advertising agencies, small IT firms, video production shops and other creative professions. Henrico and Chesterfield have yet to crack the code. Unless they do more to encourage mixed-use redevelopment on a wide scale, not just in pockets, they will cede the local creative movement to the city.

— JAB

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  1. larryg Avatar
    larryg

    well there is such a thing as GDP by city. And we know the area of cities so we could generate a table showing GDP per square foot.

    This is not an odd concept. McDonalds and other companies actually compute revenue and profit per square foot.

  2. TMT Avatar
    TMT

    Start-ups need cheap rent, which can often be found in many older urban areas. So do many younger people.

  3. Darrell Avatar
    Darrell

    Channel Stuffing — who created that idea?

    Was it:

    An Ad agency?
    A creative accountant?
    A graduate of MIT?
    A street level artist creating Las Vegas masterpieces with spray paint and a fork?
    A government bureaucrat?
    Or their boss?

  4. Peter Galuszka Avatar
    Peter Galuszka

    Huh? Shockoe Bottom is Richmond’s creative hub? News to me. Other than the nearby Martin Agency it is basically a bunch of bars with fights over dress codes and the occasional pistol popping in parking lots.

    1. James A. Bacon Avatar
      James A. Bacon

      You need to get down there and see what’s going on. You know… do some gumshoe reporting!

  5. Hydra Avatar
    Hydra

    After years, maybe a decade of my asking the question of how to go about figuring the optimal density, and being rudely ridiculed for it by EMR, Florida
    finally gets around to the idea that there might be such a thing?

  6. DJRippert Avatar
    DJRippert

    San Mateo County – population density: 1,005 per sq mi

    Santa Clara County – population density: 1,400 per sq mi

    City of San Francisco – 17,179 per sq mi

    Is Silicon Valley less of a “creative class” hangout than the City of San Francisco?

    Richmond needs a top notch university and a serviceable airport. It also needs to be heavily, heavily Democratic.

    There are no “creative class” enclaves with Republican majorities. There are no “creative class” enclaves in low tax areas.

    Sorry, Jim but you are barking up the wrong tree. If you can tell me the quantitative density you think best for the “creative class” (in people per sq mi), I’ll find places in the United States with densities in that range. You know what we’ll discover? Nothing. The densities don’t matter.

    What matters is top tier universities or lots of federal spending and a very, very liberal political environment with sky high taxes.

    1. James A. Bacon Avatar
      James A. Bacon

      Don, you are clouding the issue. No one is saying that the creative class can’t exist in a low-density environment. Certainly not Richard Florida. There is no contradiction in low-density San Jose or the Research Triangle having a strong creative class. As Florida repeatedly says, it’s all about technology, talent and tolerance. Medium density is not part of the equation.

      The point of my post is to ask whether there is an optimum level of density for sparking the kind of interaction and creativity that Jane Jacobs wrote so eloquently about. San Jose is the world leader in innovation. But could it be so *despite* its sprawling human settlement patterns? And could other regions do more to maximize their potential, modest though it may be, by encouraging the right kind of development?

      My other objection to what you write is this: You’re basically saying that if Richmond doesn’t have a Tier 1 research university (which VCU will not become for a very, very long time) or lots of federal spending (which is not in the cards), it cannot become a center of creativity and innovation. I think you’re wrong. Richmond won’t become a center for *technological* innovation, but it’s not attempting a copycat strategy. We’re trying to become something else — something that, to my knowledge, no one else has tried before. We’re going after different industry clusters. I will elaborate in future posts.

      We won’t ever be as successful as Silicon Valley, but how many people are? The goal is to maximize our potential, not to try to be something we cannot.

  7. Richard Avatar
    Richard

    For Richmond to be a center for the region, the region has to care about it and “downtown.” That wasn’t the case years ago. The professional class had moved to the suburbs and better public schools. Those who stayed in Richmond had their private schools. An important factor is a commitment to “community.” Not sure if Richmond has it or wants it (but this is based on old preconceptions).

  8. reed fawell Avatar
    reed fawell

    Richard gets to the nub of it. There must be commitment to community by all citizens. When groups move out of the community, and thus self segregate, the community begins to die. It loses its generative power, it power to create. Since all groups have much to contribute, all whelms, be they cultural, economic, artistic, intellectual, social, or whatever, decline and atrophy.

  9. reed fawell Avatar
    reed fawell

    To expand on Richard’s Point. Imagine how Density and Creatively worked best in the past.

    Use to be, we were in constant fear of attack, so gathered round places of safety, typically easily defensible positions, an escarpment say. Call it the Acropolis.

    The Acropolis served double duty. A safe temple place, so closer to the Gods, the Acropolis became sacred too. A place of Worship, a Place of Festivals, a Place of Special Day Gathering, a Place for ritual where offerings were made in return for safety.

    So artisans and builders built temples and sculpted Gods on the Acropolis. And there, on the Acropolis, we began to tell our stories. Stories of the Gods. Stories of our Ancestors who knew the Gods, even mated with them, creating Demi-Gods. Stories of how they overcame all enemies, proving it always can be done, so long as we have this place, the Acropolis.

    So this Acropolis became central of our lives, a part of us, individually, collectively.

    So ever more people gathered around the Acropolis. At first these were mostly strangers gathering into groups in places beneath the Acropolis. These strangers had left tribes ruled by Patriarchs. Now beneath the Acropolis new ways emerged. Strangers living together beneath the Acropolis for safety began to trade and barter. People now rubbing up against one another, living, trading, and mating. Markets formed. Neighborhoods rose around these markets. Social skills exploded.

    Now, these places below the Acropolis became deme, neighborhoods centered on markets of traders below, Gods and story telling and myth making above. This birthed a revolution. These neighbors, who needed to bring order out of disorder, gave themselves, every man, the right to trade, to speak and to be heard. So Everyman became every Citizen, and now found his own identity, and others in that place below the Acropolis see that man’s identity too-this individual man with his singular identity.

    So now this deme, like the Acropolis above it, has huge and singular value – It’s a Neighborhood that creates an identity for each of its citizens, not only in his own mind, but also in the minds of his neighbors in the deme.

    So, in this unique place, all Citizens are now free individuals and safe, if they collectively can defend their deme. This requires political order within. Man-made laws are needed. Administered and enforced too. So now we need not only temples and markets, but political places for democracy, large gathering places for citizens to make Laws, adjudicate and administer them. So the Citizens houses stay small and closely packed together as all neighborhood energy goes into large public places.

    Now, with local politics in play, social intercourse reaches fevered pitch. Lawyers, Magistrates, Judges, Ministers, builders, and engineers, emerge. Again social skills explode. Skills of negotiation, cooperation, compromise, consciousness, rhetoric, political sciences, and neighborhood planning, engineering, building are invented then sharpened. Things like how do you bring a single man’s voice to thousands? Solution: carve out a hillside, build a stadium within the curve, and stack the thousands of up a hillside.

    More things then explode. The Political Stage birthed Comedy and Tragedy too, along with philosophy, art, political science, history, law, medicine, poetry. Now creativity is feeding on itself. The proof is in the pudding.

    In its prime Athens had 45000 Citizens. From those came Aeschylus, Aristophanes, Euripides, Sophocles, Hippocrates, Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Phidias, Phidias, Pericles, and Demosthenes.

    And the energy to build things like the Angora, Pnyx, Parthenon, Areopagus, Strategeion, Colonos Agoraios, Panathenaic Stadium, and Theatre of Dionysus and Odeon of Herodes.

    So how is this relevant to us? What parts can we use? What parts no longer apply? What new challenges can energize us? For example, we moderns enjoy far less immediate fear from attack and are very mobile. Hence we build places spread out. So things in their way get can get harder.

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