In Wired Jonah Lehrer, author of Imagine, cites SFI research suggesting that creativity is one natural outcome of urban living. But, the research points out, that creativity comes at a cost.
Writes Lehrer: "Although [Geoffrey] West celebrates the inventiveness of cities – all those knowledge spillovers leads to new knowledge – he is quick to point out that our creativity has its disadvantages. New ideas, after all, have a disturbing tendency to become new things, and things aren’t free."
Lehrer goes on to cite West's work showing that the average human uses far more energy than a blue whale.
Read the complete Wired article (March 27, 2012)
Read an interview with Lehrer in The Economist (May 29, 2012)
Read an interview with Lehrer in The Atlantic (May 2, 2012))
In the Wall Street Journal, Lehrer cites SFI's cities & urbanization research showing that people in cities tend to be more creative on average than people who don't live in cities.
Read the Wall Street Journal article (March 12, 2012)
Read the NPR article (March 12, 2012)
Read the Financial Times article (April 14, 2012)
Read the Forbes article (March 10, 2012)
Read the Huffington Post article (June 14, 2012)
Read the Globe and Mail article (March 23, 2012)
Read the SmartPlanet interview (May 14, 2012)
Watch the video about SFI's cities & urbanization research (7 minutes)
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