{"id":1256,"date":"2009-06-08T09:40:20","date_gmt":"2009-06-08T16:40:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/?p=1256"},"modified":"2009-06-08T09:40:20","modified_gmt":"2009-06-08T16:40:20","slug":"urban-density-and-social-media-tools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/2009\/06\/08\/urban-density-and-social-media-tools\/","title":{"rendered":"Urban density and social media tools"},"content":{"rendered":"

It won’t come as news to those of us who love and defend cities, but it’s nice to have scientific research backing up what we espouse as urban positives: High population density triggers cultural explosions<\/a>, according to a new study by scientists at University College London<\/a>. The study was published in the journal Science<\/a>; see also UCL’s page here<\/a> (h\/t Richard Florida\/Creative Class blog<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The study reports that “complex skills learnt across generations can only be maintained when there is a critical level of interaction between people.”<\/p>\n

I wonder how current social media tools mimic the benefits of density, or augment it in places that are emerging.<\/p>\n

For example, I live in Victoria, BC, a medium-sized city that is approaching good density levels in the core neighborhoods, and I’m continually amazed by how social media tools like Twitter<\/a>, Facebook, and a local forum<\/a> on Vibrant Victoria<\/a> have allowed a speedier dissemination of ideas. The dissemination doesn’t necessarily produce “instant” results, but how much more bereft we would be without the various platforms for those conversations.<\/p>\n

While web-based tools can’t replace actual rubbing-up against people, they do facilitate transmission of ideas as well as complex skills, particularly if those skills aren’t manual. Yet even in the realm of manual skill or physical production – say, vegetable<\/a> gardening<\/a> or backyard chicken-raising<\/a> – I’m likely to turn to the internet to find instructional videos or a local group. Digital natives<\/a> will always go there first (and I’ve been an immigrant several times over, so I consider myself fully “naturalized” here, too, thank-you!).<\/p>\n

Online social media tools absolutely augment the benefits of “real” population density. Thinking about online density and actual urban density (and its benefits) together<\/i>, as being of a piece, seems important.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It won’t come as news to those of us who love and defend cities, but it’s nice to have scientific research backing up what we espouse as urban positives: High population density triggers cultural explosions, according to a new study by scientists at University College London. The study was published in the journal Science; see […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":311,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1419,1071,259,2233,822,2149,1418],"tags":[6158,61,3261,6157,6159],"class_list":["post-1256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cities","category-creativity","category-innovation","category-land_use","category-social_networking","category-urbanism","category-victoria","tag-density","tag-tools","tag-twitter","tag-university-college-london","tag-vibrant-victoria"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/311"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1256"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1256\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1260,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1256\/revisions\/1260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}