By: Richard Florida
During the late 20th century, startup companies were quintessentially suburban, in standard-issue office parks dubbed “nerdistans.” Think of Silicon Valley, the North Carolina Research Triangle, and the suburbs of Seattle where Microsoft is located.
But high-tech startups have become increasingly urban in the past decade or so, gravitating to dense neighborhoods in downtown San Francisco and Lower Manhattan, which have supplanted Silicon Valley as the nation’s leading centers for such startups.
Now a new study finds a close connection between transit access and startups of all types—not just high-tech startups. The study, by Kevin Credit from the Center for Spatial Data Science at the University of Chicago, uses advanced spatial econometric techniques to examine the connection between transit and business startups in five cities. Two of them, San Jose (Silicon Valley) and Austin, are well-documented startup hubs with underdeveloped transit infrastructure; two others, Philadelphia and Cleveland, have reasonably well-developed transit systems but low rates of startup activity; and Boston has both a high level of startup activity and an established transit system.
Read more >> https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2019/07/startup-cities-public-transportation-new-business-development/594286/
