Richard Florida warns that too much density can undermine, rather than promote, creativity:
Stop and think for a moment: What kind of environments spur new innovation, start-ups and high-tech industries? Can you name one instance, one, of this sort of creative destruction occurring in high-rise office or residential towers, in skyscraper districts? The answer is no. High-rise districts typically house either corporate office functions or residences. During the post-war era, while they were building these towers for their corporate functions, large U.S. companies housed their research scientists in green, low-rise R&D campuses, where the scientists could interact more freely.
Florida and I are both fans of Jane Jacobs’s Death and Life of Great American Cities. In that book, Jacobs postulates four principles for vibrant cities, one of which was that “new ideas need old buildings.” That is, the most interesting activities in a city rarely occur in gleaming new office towers. Rather, they occur in slightly run-down parts of town where rents are cheap enough that ambitious 20-somethings can afford to live there while working on their startup or novel.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Skyscrapers Are Good for Startups - Forbes
