If you’re a very talented person, you have two choices: you either move to New York or you move to Silicon Valley. This is the message that Peter Thiel delivered to a conference being held in Chicago earlier this month. Not surprisingly, it pissed a few people off.
Peter responded by saying that he was simply illustrating the “extreme version” of a metaphor about the impacts of globalization and technology. And while it certainly doesn’t sound very nice if you’re sitting in Chicago, or the countless other fantastic cities between the coasts, I can appreciate what Peter is getting at.
Saskia Sassen is known for coining the term global city. These are cities which play an important role in the functioning of the global economy. But what has happened, she acknowledges, is an even further concentration of activity within a select few “super-places.”
If you’re a very talented person, you have two choices: you either move to New York or you move to Silicon Valley. This is the message that Peter Thiel delivered to a conference being held in Chicago earlier this month. Not surprisingly, it pissed a few people off.
Peter responded by saying that he was simply illustrating the “extreme version” of a metaphor about the impacts of globalization and technology. And while it certainly doesn’t sound very nice if you’re sitting in Chicago, or the countless other fantastic cities between the coasts, I can appreciate what Peter is getting at.
Saskia Sassen is known for coining the term global city. These are cities which play an important role in the functioning of the global economy. But what has happened, she acknowledges, is an even further concentration of activity within a select few “super-places.”
“…a new, higher category of cities may now be emerging: global capitals. Amsterdam has risen but New York, London and Hong Kong have risen faster. The Dutch elite is moving to Amsterdam; but many ambitious Dutch people no longer want to join the Dutch elite. They want to join the global elite. That often requires moving to a global capital.”
Anecdotally, I can say that almost everyone I know who has left Toronto for an opportunity has moved to New York, Silicon Valley, London, and so on. They have moved up the rank of global cities/capitals.
So while Peter may not have chosen the right way to deliver this message, I do believe it is a message worth delivering.
In general, Kickstarter in the US sees a high concentration of music projects (24%) and film & video projects (19%). But where it gets interesting is to see which cities over-represent in certain categories.
“…a new, higher category of cities may now be emerging: global capitals. Amsterdam has risen but New York, London and Hong Kong have risen faster. The Dutch elite is moving to Amsterdam; but many ambitious Dutch people no longer want to join the Dutch elite. They want to join the global elite. That often requires moving to a global capital.”
Anecdotally, I can say that almost everyone I know who has left Toronto for an opportunity has moved to New York, Silicon Valley, London, and so on. They have moved up the rank of global cities/capitals.
So while Peter may not have chosen the right way to deliver this message, I do believe it is a message worth delivering.
In general, Kickstarter in the US sees a high concentration of music projects (24%) and film & video projects (19%). But where it gets interesting is to see which cities over-represent in certain categories.
Los Angeles = film & video (not surprisingly 45% of all projects)
San Francisco = design and tech
Chicago = theater
Detroit = music
Nashville = music (76% of all projects!)
They also measured the size of each project (number of backers) and created these neat bubble diagrams:
Above is New York. Red is music. Orange is film. And yellow is theater.
I also like their explanation for why they did this project:
Pretty much all existingattemptsto map creative communities use census and jobs data. But creative efforts are often side-hustles. They’re garage/basement/cottage industries that will not appear in a census.
It’s true. This data should be a much better capture of each city’s creative soul.
A couple of years ago, an architect friend of mine from Chicago (who was in town for work) told me that when it comes to units of measurement the building industry in Toronto is schizophrenic. She basically said, sometimes you use the international system (metres) and sometimes you use customary units (feet).
And this is absolutely the truth. We are constantly switching back and forth between the two. The drawings that go into the city are in metres and millimetres, but the drawings that get shown to prospective renters and buyers are in feet and inches. We’ll say that the Tall Building Design Guidelines stipulate that towers should be 25 metres apart, but then in the next sentence say that we’re going to need a 24 inch transfer slab.
This kind of measurement bilingualism is so common that I bet some of you have cheat sheets with common conversion factors posted up at your desk. It probably includes things like: 1 square metre = 10.76 square feet.
Over the years though, I have found myself naturally drifting more and more towards metres and millimetres. So much so that when people throw out inches in a meeting, I’ll now sometimes ask them what it is in millimetres: “Wait, how thick does the slab need to be?” A lot of this has to do with the fact that all city planning documents are in metres. So it’s simply more efficient to stick with one system of measurement and avoid constantly converting back and forth.
That said, there are still lots of people who prefer feet and inches (particularly in my industry) and many instances where I default to thinking in customary units. I’m 6 foot 3, not 1905 mm. But, I am ready to go all in with the international system. I think it would make life simpler and more efficient. After all, it is called the international system.
What system of measurement do you think in?
Los Angeles = film & video (not surprisingly 45% of all projects)
San Francisco = design and tech
Chicago = theater
Detroit = music
Nashville = music (76% of all projects!)
They also measured the size of each project (number of backers) and created these neat bubble diagrams:
Above is New York. Red is music. Orange is film. And yellow is theater.
I also like their explanation for why they did this project:
Pretty much all existingattemptsto map creative communities use census and jobs data. But creative efforts are often side-hustles. They’re garage/basement/cottage industries that will not appear in a census.
It’s true. This data should be a much better capture of each city’s creative soul.
A couple of years ago, an architect friend of mine from Chicago (who was in town for work) told me that when it comes to units of measurement the building industry in Toronto is schizophrenic. She basically said, sometimes you use the international system (metres) and sometimes you use customary units (feet).
And this is absolutely the truth. We are constantly switching back and forth between the two. The drawings that go into the city are in metres and millimetres, but the drawings that get shown to prospective renters and buyers are in feet and inches. We’ll say that the Tall Building Design Guidelines stipulate that towers should be 25 metres apart, but then in the next sentence say that we’re going to need a 24 inch transfer slab.
This kind of measurement bilingualism is so common that I bet some of you have cheat sheets with common conversion factors posted up at your desk. It probably includes things like: 1 square metre = 10.76 square feet.
Over the years though, I have found myself naturally drifting more and more towards metres and millimetres. So much so that when people throw out inches in a meeting, I’ll now sometimes ask them what it is in millimetres: “Wait, how thick does the slab need to be?” A lot of this has to do with the fact that all city planning documents are in metres. So it’s simply more efficient to stick with one system of measurement and avoid constantly converting back and forth.
That said, there are still lots of people who prefer feet and inches (particularly in my industry) and many instances where I default to thinking in customary units. I’m 6 foot 3, not 1905 mm. But, I am ready to go all in with the international system. I think it would make life simpler and more efficient. After all, it is called the international system.
