Beyond spillovers : Effects of creative density on innovation

Thus, to summarize, the knowledge transmission and learning preceding innovation is geographically bounded if, given the tacit nature of the knowledge often responsible for innovation, the knowledge producing sources must be proximate to enable the spillovers to occur. [...] Then, since we know the change in population for 1982 to 1997 and the change in urbanized acres for 1982-1997, we can divide the two, and thus calculate the “marginal density”. [...] To the extent that the Percent in UA measure defines land as urban by its ability to meet a particular residential density threshold, it once again captures the notion of the closeness of people depicted in the theory section. [...] They explain this by claiming that new ideas arise due to a multiplicity of people and perspectives, and that the presence of gays and bohemians in metropolitan areas is indicative of a tolerance of such a wide variety. [...] Seemingly, one could raise the objection that we double-count scientists and engineers and bohemians, given that they are controls in the regressions and are part of the creativity measure.