Scott Page, a professor of complex systems at the University of Michigan, concentrates on the intellectual benefits of diversity in his book The Difference. To him, "diversity" means not necessarily ethnicity, race, or religion, but a range of perspectives and skill sets that intersect to create what he calls "superadditivity"—problem-solving power that is more than the sum of its parts. The great advantage of cities is your access to a full-bore spectrum of minds, from Nobel Prize winners to that guy muttering to himself on the subway. Page doesn't believe in the myth of the lone intellectual. "It's really nice to think of yourself living in some cabin in the woods and thinking deep thoughts," he says. "But there are only so many neurons in the pumpkin." In short, you're better off in the city, where other people are bombarding you with ideas to add to your own limited supply.
Also, if you're alone in that cabin in the woods, there's no one to challenge you. "In an aggressive city like New York, there are more people telling me whether my ideas are full of crap," say Page. "So there are more ideas, and the ideas get subject to some sort of selection." That's the task of the tastemakers: editors, curators, critics, and other arbiters of cultural value, who cluster in cities so they can track—and declare—what's new, what's hot, and what's not.
In order to get the intellectual benefits of diversity, you first have to actually talk to a wide variety of people. Cities are good for challenging people's natural preference to stick with their own kind (a fairly universal social tendency known as "homophily"). Scott Simpson, who runs Take Root Consulting, relies on the diversity of his Washington, D.C., neighborhood to figure out how to connect with a range of audiences. On a typical day, Simpson might bring his laptop to the Ethiopian coffee shop, work his shift at a gay bar, and buy some fruit from the Salvadoran guys on the corner. When working on an AIDS awareness campaign, Simpson put a nonprofit in touch with some local Ethiopian, Nigerian, and Ghanaian activists. The nonprofit learned how the local groups used blunt language and national pride to connect with their communities, helping it to be more effective in its own messaging.
The Flatworld camp has it that tools such as e-mail, instant messaging, and social networking sites are increasingly important ways for people to communicate and expand their roster of social and professional contacts. And these technologies do indeed offer the opportunity to connect more easily, perhaps strengthening weak ties. But researchers like Duncan Watts and economist Edward Glaeser have shown that online networking tools tend to be complements to—or representations of—your real-world network, rather than substitutes for it. So city dwellers may actually find these technologies more useful than do people in suburban areas.
B.L. Ochman is a blogger with an audience of 100,000. Yet one of her strongest avenues for socializing and networking is Central Park, where she takes her chocolate Labradoodle every morning.
"I have been introduced to more than one very major client through people I met in Central Park," she says. "If I need a lawyer, doctors, a printer, I ask people at the park." Rolfe would say that the diversity of this group, meeting every morning at the park by chance, makes a more useful set of "weak ties" because the people there know others that Ochman doesn't already know. Olson would say that Ochman probably relies on her park contacts for this kind of advice because of the trust produced by knowing them face to face. And they're both right.
Every year, more and more complex jobs—legal work, journalism, product design—are outsourced around the world. As richer online communication tools like videoconferencing become more widely available, we'll all be dancing on the wires—new types of collaboration will be possible. But since those technology tools will be available to city, rural, and suburban dwellers alike, the playing field will never truly be leveled. If creativity and innovation are your goals, the advantages of joining in the bustle of a city crowd will probably endure.
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