Want to revive a city? Forget stimulus packages, just make it fun
If you think Worcester needs government money and programs to revitalize its economy, you may be overlooking a very important local stimlus: fun. Very interesting story on Boston.com about how an area’s “fun” factor — bike trails, fine dining, amenities, etc. — can be major driving forces behind success.
The main focus of the story are a couple of studies — a paper published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia and written by economists Gerald A. Carlino and Albert Saiz and a paper written by Saiz and Harvard economist Edward Glaeser and California economist Jed Kolko titled “Consumer City.”
What these studies found, among other things, is that spending by local governments on parks and other recreations and amenities yielded both an increase in visitors as well as general growth to a city. Essentially, cities that are the types of places people want to visit, are the types of places that attract high-skilled and high-income people who, in turn, invigorate the economy. This paragraph from the story stood out in particular:
Social scientists had long studied the growth of cities, but in the 1990s they started to notice something puzzling: Cities like Seattle and Austin were booming as new-economy hubs for no apparent reason other than the fact that the people responsible for the greatest innovations in high technology had chosen to live in places that were bike-friendly, had good music scenes, and allowed them to show up to business lunches in jeans.
It’s an interesting notion and one with real-life examples right here in Worcester. While the city struggles to give rebirth to City Square and the downtown, areas like Shrewsbury Street (the unofficial county destination for fine dining) seem to have exploded with success on their own.
