Commercial district activation issues in smaller communities: Phoenixville, Pennsylvania

Related to the issues and concepts of destination management of communities large and small as expressed in recent blog entries ("Learning from Las Vegas: Round 2 | Planning for Activation and Transformational Projects," "London rejects a version of The Sphere"), commercial districts ("H Street NE nightlife district, failing?," "A follow up on the H Street article: Learning from Philadelphia | More sophisticated daypart, retail, cultural, and experience planning"), and specific destinations like the Eastern Market building and area of Capitol Hill DC ("Eastern Market DC's 150th anniversary last weekend | And my never realized master plan for the market"), the Philadelphia Inquirer has an interesting article, "Phoenixville has turned into a destination, but some locals don’t like what it’s become," about how a town outside of Philadelphia attracts thousands of patrons to its Bridge Street "main street" traditional commercial district on weekends through street closure, but not all businesses and residents are happy about it.

Photos from Phoenixville Inside Out.

Phoenixville is in Chester County, 27 miles from Philadelphia, which is a goodly distance away, and maybe too far to attract Philadelphia residents as patrons.  

So the community needs to focus on attracting area residents.  

Which it can do because Chester County has 500,000+ residents.

To bring attention to the traditional commercial district, Phoenixville's Downtown, on Bridge Street, the Phoenixville Inside Out event was created.  It closes the street from Friday afternoon to Monday morning in favor of dining, music, and yes drinking.

Some residents and business owners don't like the event,  And that includes someone who had been the commercial district revitalization manager for the district back in the 2000s.

It reminds me of the similar dislike by vendors of Eastern Market public market in DC and the weekend street closure of 7th Street.  

Bridge Street, Phoenixville.  As a Main Street manager, I would be ecstatic with this kind of regular weekend patronage. 

They complain about access difficulties and loss of parking (even though there aren't that many spaces and they didn't turnover because at the time there weren't time restrictions on weekends).

It's true that not every business is set up to benefit from street closure if they don't sell goods that appeal to that particular demographic and event approach.

It also reminds me of some opposition by businesses on St. Catherine Street in Montreal where the street is closed to cars for a couple months every summer.

True, not every business benefits from such treatments.  To me, that means taking planning steps to assist those businesses where street closures are a hindrance, and to help the businesses that can better benefit to realize those opportunities.

But the article illustrates to me a number of things:

• For example, it says the district is so successful it doesn't need a commercial district revitalization manager.  I disagree.  It illustrates the point that revitalization is multi-phased and needs constant management ("MAIN STREET NICHES IN A MASS SALES WORLD," Neal Peirce, 2004)
• That not every business will benefit from certain strategies and tactics, even if most do.  (In DC I have written about this in terms of BIDs representing property owners foremost, business owners second, residents not at all, and activation planning not at all.)
• Work to create better opportunities for leveraging events for all businesses, including businesses that need to work harder on doing so.
• Making tough decisions is difficult.
• The commercial district needs to lobby for its interests in the face of opposition.

At the same time, here is a national best practice example for smaller communities which should be celebrated--Phoenixville has only 19,000 residents, which is hardly enough to support a local commercial district the size of Bridge Street--but is equally relevant to sub-districts of larger cities.

-- "From more space to socially distance to a systematic program for pedestrian districts (Park City (Utah) Main Street Car Free on Sundays)," 2020

Park Silly Sunday Market in Park City on Aug. 27, 2017. Park City leaders say they are open to a possible long-term deal for the Park Silly Sunday Market after it cut operations down this year amid its uncertain future. (Ritu Manoj Jethani, Shutterstock)

Park City, Utah has some of the same issues.  It's a resort community in part because of skiing.  It's also a destination for the Sundance Film Festival and other events.  There is a Sunday Market, Silly Market, which closes Main Street.

Over time resident opposition has been raised, making continuation of the market difficult even though it is successful ("What's next for Park City's Park Silly Sunday Market?," KSL).  In response, it's cut back.  From the article:

Christoper Benton Dorsey can't remember the last time he saw High West Distillery as empty as he's seen it the past two Sundays as the Park Silly Sunday Market entered its August hiatus. 

"Since the Silly Market went away, I guarantee you that the last two Sundays our business has been down," he told members of the Park City Council Tuesday afternoon, admitting that he doesn't have the empirical to back this but adds he's also never had to think much about it either. 

He said the bar was "completely empty" at 2 p.m. on a Sunday for the first time he can remember in 14 years of working there. 

The Park Silly Sunday Market, now in its 17th year, cut its operations down to just 11 Sundays on Main Street this year amid contract negotiations between the city and the market operators. The cuts meant no market on a pair of Sundays in July and all of August.

I think partly it is out of a misplaced anger about the effect of skiing--the launch of multi-resort annual passes has significantly increased patronage in Park City, and many of these patrons aren't "shopping" Park City, so they're consuming skiing but not so much the community ("Actually, the Mega Season Pass Is Killing Skiing," Outside), and the impact of Sundance, where many of the events end up being oriented to non-residents, even though the film festival takes many steps to provide programming to residents as part of the festival.

Note that the Market is getting re-approved ("The Park City Council has unanimously approved a new four-year contract for the Park Silly Sunday Market," KCPW-FM/NPR) based on its success.  But it is unfortunate it has to jump through hoops to do so.  The contract includes a three year renewal provision.

Street fountain in the borough of Newville in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania

 

November 27, 2023. Photo: Dan Gleiter, PennLive (Harrisburg Patriot-News)

Even small communities can invest in beautifying their public realm.

I didn't know Cumberland Maryland "had" a pedestrian mall

 I've written a lot about pedestrian malls in the US (versus pedestrian districts in Europe).  It's hard to make them work because our mobility paradigm is dominated by the car, and because Downtowns are no longer leader centers and destinations within metropolitan areas, the way they were before the rise of suburban shopping malls.  But some cities, in particular college towns like Boulder and Burlington, Vermont, and to some extent Charlottesville, have them.

I've come to realize that the point isn't necessarily to have a long pedestrian mall, but to start small, where you can be successful, even with one block.  And to heavily program and manage it

-- "Planning for place/urban design/neighborhoods versus planning for transportation modes: new 17th Street NW bike lanes | Walkable community planning versus "pedestrian" planning," 2021
-- "Extending the "Signature Streets" concept to "Signature Streets and Spaces"," 2020
-- "From more space to socially distance to a systematic program for pedestrian districts (Park City (Utah) Main Street Car Free on Sundays)," 2020
-- "Why doesn't every big city in North America have its own Las Ramblas?," 2020
-- "Diversity Plaza, Queens, a pedestrian exclusive block," 2020

-- "Now I know why Boulder's Pearl Street Mall is the exception that proves the rule about the failures of pedestrian malls," 2005

That being said, many places, including DC, have removed pedestrian malls over the years.

The DMV region has two pedestrian malls that I knew about, in Charlottesville and Winchester Virginia.  Both tend to peter out at the ends.  (As does the pedestrian mall in Santa Monica, especially as it has over the years lost department stores as key anchors.)

I didn't know about Cumberland Maryland, which was mentioned recently on the Reddit Walkable Streets thread.  

However, they are tearing up all that beauty and investment, and adding a traffic lane, which makes it less than a stellar example ("Downtown mall work on schedule," "Downtown construction includes unexpected challenges,"  Cumberland Times-News).

-- Reimagine Cumberland

It's a shame because photos indicated that the mall was super well executed, managed and maintained.  That being said, I guess infrastructure improvements are necessary, and for the most part, they will be keeping the overall focus on walking, not driving.

Flickr photo by Jacqui Trump.

Photo: Steve Bittner/Times-News.com 

Construction continues on Baltimore Street on Thursday, July 13, 2023.

Rendering of the newly constructed pedestrian mall

Transit safety and security: Broken Windows theory and reality | and the state of transit safety today

Liverpool Echo photo.

When I was in Liverpool in June of 2018, I was really surprised at how many security personnel were present at the Downtown transit stations, at the entrances and on the platforms, all wearing bright yellow vests, because the system seemed pretty safe, that safety wasn't an issue.  

-- MerseyTravel TravelSafe Partnership

MerseyTravel also has a teen "officer" program and an adopt a station program.  One adopter was 12 years old when he started ("Merseyside railway station adopter is just 12 years old," RailAdvent)

Same with one of the main Metro stations in Los Angeles when I rode that system a few years ago. Lots of police but at the time, they seemed unnecessary.

William Bratton, the former police commissioner for New York City, is attributed as the leading proponent of the "Broken Windows" theory of policing ("Broken Windows: The police and neighborhood safety," Atlantic Magazine) which posits that visible disorder in communities--broken windows on empty buildings, abandoned buildings and cars, litter etc.--left unaddressed communicates that it's okay to commit crime.  Addressing this is both a police issue and a community investment issue.  

He didn't ever come across the theory of social urbanism, but that's a good approach to implementation of the ideas of community investment ("Social urbanism and equity planning as a way to address crime, violence, and persistent poverty: (not in) DC," 2021) also different ways of serving the community ("Los Angeles police department "Community Safety Partnership," 2014).

In his second autobiography, The Profession: A Memoir of Policing in America, Bratton discusses interviewing for the New York Transit police chief job (which was the stepping stone to commissioner).  He was taken on a tour of the subway system by David Gunn, the president.  

Gunn showed him the disorder in the stations, and said "we can fix the trains and improve service but if this is the way people come into and enter the system, they'll never come back and ride the trains" (paraphrase).

Famously, this environment was addressed by Gunn and Bratton and the subway system was revitalized ("Bill Bratton Explains His Ideas of Good Policing," New York Times).  From the review:

Bratton took over the city’s transit police in 1990, at a time when the transit system was at a low point. Crime was rampant on the subways; the cars were covered with graffiti; riders were sneaking through turnstiles. Bratton implemented a strategy of “quality of life” policing, derived in large part from the “broken windows” theory advanced by the social scientists George Kelling and James Q. Wilson. Controlling minor offenses, they argued, restored a sense of security, and identified petty criminals likely to graduate to more serious crimes. The strategy seemed to work better than even Bratton could have predicted. In less than two years, robberies on the transit network were down 40 percent and crime as a whole was down 22 percent. It was such a striking — and unexpected — success that when the job of New York police commissioner opened up in 1994, when Bratton was back in Boston, there really was no other logical choice for it.

But thinking about this later, I think Bratton's policing approach on NYC Transit is the only example of actual implementation of a Broken Windows approach of investment in the facilities and service improvements--which are the facilities that present the potential for disorder in a transit system--and enhanced policing in the stations.

When Bratton became police commissioner they didn't do Broken Windows, they did "Data Oriented Policing" now he calls this Precision Policing, focused on addressing crime and the use of police time based on geodemographic analysis of crime data within precincts.

Later he was fired because Mayor Guiliani didn't like how much attention that Bratton got by the press and public, and the policing strategy changed from data based to what is called Zero Tolerance Policing, which could be pretty oppressive and didn't engage the community.  As crime dropped and police needed things to do, this was implemented in communities of color as "stop and frisk" which was later found unconstitutional.

Other police departments implemented forms of data based policing but mostly zero tolerance.  The alternative approaches community policing or problem-oriented policing--a mix of Broken Windows and precision policing--were pretty much ignored.

The state of transit safety today.  The media is full of reports of serious safety problems on transit networks--murders, assaults, and other terrible crimes.  Drug use--a few days ago BART had three overdose deaths on the system in one day.  And other problems like homelessness, panhandling, mental health issues, etc.

Crime increased during covid, although it is trending down.  But commensurate with the decline in transit use--the big systems have about 50% of the ridership they had pre-covid--there are fewer "eyes on the street" and a lot more problems reducing the likelihood of people returning to transit.

This was accentuated by the pre-covid social justice movement which led to some cities like DC and NYC decriminalizing fare evasion.

At the time many transit advocates including myself were opposed, because of the sense that it would denigrate a sense of responsibility towards the public good of transit.  Plus the findings during Bratton's time that fare beaters often committed other crimes on the system.

I read a lot of posts and comments on social media about transit system safety, and online media ("Metro gets earful from callers about safety, service, homeless on buses, trains," "Metro riders speak out about crime, drug use and homeless on transit system," "Survey says: Fewer females ride LA Metro buses and trains, many citing safety and harassment," Los Angeles Daily News).  

OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA – JANUARY 31: BART Crisis Intervention Specialists Ontreal Wiltz, left, and Morey Deundra Moore, center, talk with a man at the Fruitvale Station on Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2023, in Oakland, Calif. The BART transit agency is venturing into the area of homeless services to deal with an ever worsening homelessness crisis on trains, and in stations. (Aric Crabb/Bay Area News Group)

Some systems have responded with ambassadors as opposed to more police, which are more costly ("LA Metro’s ‘Transit Ambassadors’ offer alternative to armed officers," Los Angeles Daily News).  Many systems are adding fare-focused ambassadors ("Sound Transit fare ambassadors are checking if you paid, but nicely," Seattle Times).

Most systems have personnel devoted to address homeless issues, including social workers.  BART recently hired a couple dozen more people to work on this ("A transit agency is taking on the Bay Area homelessness crisis," San Jose Mercury News), transit ambassadors and crisis intervention specialists.

Safety on transit definitely is top of mind for many potential riders, especially those people predisposed against mass transit--hence the rise of ride hailing (Uber, Lyft) which on a per trip basis is much more expensive, but more convenient as it usually is a point to point trip.

Hardening fare turnstiles.  In response to the decriminalization, severe loss of revenue, and crime on the system, major subway systems like NYC and DC are installing new types of fare gates which make turnstile jumping more difficult.

St. Louis is enclosing its light rail stations making them controlled access to rebuild confidence in the system.  Light rail systems are known for mostly having open platforms.  Unlike subway stations, where you have to pay before you can enter, on light rail it's more the honor system, with open access.

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune published a series on how to improve public safety on the light rail network in Greater Minneapolis:

-- "Systemic insecurity: Saving Twin Cities light rail"
-- "The safety-first effort in St. Louis: 'We had a problem to solve'"
-- "Light rail in the Twin Cities: We have a problem to solve"
-- "Eight recommendations for Twin Cities light rail"

In response the St. Louis Metrolink system commissioned a Metro Security Assessment and Strategy study.  The final report listed 99 improvement recommendations, in four categories: technology improvements; security staffing; procedures and training; and fare enforcement.  Right now more safety personnel visible on trains and other changes have been implemented, and they are implementing creating restricted access platforms

From the St. Louis article (paragraphs reordered):

... Every aspect of operations was reexamined with an eye toward keeping passengers safe. Then, because Roach felt more was needed to rebuild trust in the system, he resurrected an earlier proposal to physically secure the platforms. By spring 2024, the first four stations should be complete.

--- Metro St. Louis Secure Platform Program 

The light-rail system in the St. Louis area is second only to that in the Twin Cities area as the largest in the Midwest, with two lines and 38 stations that span two states. Like the Twin Cities, St. Louis also faced issues with rising crime and declining ridership that predated the pandemic. 

After a series of violent crimes, leaders here took decisive action starting in 2018. They zeroed in on one element above all else: rider safety. The overhaul that followed changed the city's entire approach, with a single-minded, unapologetic, safety-first mindset that has resulted in a far more visible security presence, from police and other staff on trains to better use of technology. 

The final phase is in progress now: a potentially groundbreaking conversion from the open "honor" system, like the one used in the Twin Cities, to one in which gates and fences ensure that only paid passengers have access to platforms and trains. The $52 million project includes a rarity in transit: a public/private partnership in which major downtown corporations are putting up $10 million to help fund the conversion.

... Roach touched on a point that should resonate with Minnesotans. "As we looked through the arc of what we needed to accomplish, it was confidence in the system," he said. "This is a publicly supported system, so I need folks even out in the suburbs, who may not ever take light rail, to still understand it has value. Like any Midwestern community, they want to know that it's fair and that it's safe. We decided if we could make a bold step like [secured platforms], we could really change the reality and perception of this system." The system, he said, is one in which "the public has invested millions. And they were asking us to rethink public safety."

The Star-Tribune recommends that Minneapolis go to a restricted access system for the light rail system.  According to surveys, Minneapolis Metro residents want improvements in public safety and fare enforcement.  And Minneapolis Metro has installed thousands of cameras in facilities and on trains, has a homeless intervention program, and transit ambassadors to add more eyes on the street in the system.

From "Eight recommendations for Twin Cities light rail":

• Adopt a single-minded focus on passenger safety
• Reject a piecemeal approach to safety issues
• Enclose stations as both a symbol and a strategy
• Rely on professionals to bolster security
• Step up fare compliance efforts
• Take a different approach to homelessness
• Adopt and publicize a new code of conduct that clearly and concisely spells out passenger behavior standards and consequences for violators
• Provide the public with a better online dashboard.

That's a pretty good agenda, basically it's a "Fixing Broken Windows" approach.  Also see "Criminology and the Fundamental Attribution Error," a speech by Ronald Clarke on the acceptance of the Stockholm Prize in Criminology (2015).

One that WMATA ought to pay attention to as well.

Other options.  Maybe not every station needs to be access controlled.  Thinking about it, I'd create a typology of stations based on crime statistics.  Maybe every station doesn't need restricted access, but certain stations, especially in the center city, do.

A tent city in front of Washington's Union Station last year before the National Park Service cleared the homeless encampment. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)

Addressing homelessness.  And the Post has an interesting article about how Amtrak at DC's Union Station has contracted with nonprofit organizations to work with homeless in the station catchment area on moving to permanent housing, getting necessary services, etc. ("Can we solve homelessness? A program at Union Station is a huge step").  

Note that I used to think this kind of program was innovative, but now I think of it as an indicator of system failure in terms of addressing the homelessness issue.  When libraries, parks, and transit systems are spending millions of dollars addressing the ramifications of homelessness on their facilities, it demonstrates an offloading of the problem to other agencies.

Conclusion.  For public agencies that are customer facing every moment they operate, perhaps transit systems are the most likely to execute true Broken Windows policing strategies.  When implemented such approaches see results.  Which ought to be a lesson to police departments and elected officials deal with policing and problems and disorder in their communities.

London rejects a version of The Sphere

The recent blog entry, "Learning from Las Vegas: Round 2 | Planning for Activation and Transformational Projects," discusses how destinations can't rest on their laurels, they have to constantly focus on refreshment and adding new attractions, so they can keep up their stream of visitors.

The Sphere, created by Madison Square Garden Company, is an entertainment venue just east of the Las Vegas Strip. ("James Dolan’s $2.3 Billion Sphere Is Raising Eyebrows—in a Good Way," Bloomberg). Photos: Mikayla Williamson for Bloomberg.

One of the recently opened super major attractions is The Sphere ("The Sphere mesmerizing Las Vegas months before opening," Courthouse News Service, "Lighting up Las Vegas: The Sphere's most eye-popping displays since lighting up Sin City five months ago," Daily Mail), which is a multimedia extravaganza that is unparalleled, and requires special preparation to fully maximize the experience.  

From the Barron's article, "Sphere Gives CEO Jim Dolan Options Grants Worth $17 Million":

The Sphere was Dolan’s baby, with the CEO conceiving the idea for a music-focused arena that has over 17,000 seats with a state-of-the-art sound system.

... The Sphere opened in late September with a U2 concert that impressed fans and critics who praised the arena’s sound and video system. A nearly hourlong show called Postcard from Earth plays regularly at the Sphere and has drawn interest from tourists. The shell of the Sphere amounts to a huge billboard. It’s covered in over a million LED bulbs, and has attracted advertisers and helped make the Sphere an instant Vegas landmark. 

The arena, the main asset of Sphere, was completed at a cost of $2.3 billion, about $1 billion above the original cost estimate. The company has yet to provide financial guidance for the arena, with Wall Street expecting some projections when the company reports September quarter results next month.

The cost of creating these experiences is high, and only a few cities across the globe likely possess the right set of conditions and high income residents and visitors with the money to spend on attending, once or more times per year.  To make the costs work, shows need to be shared across multiple sites. 

That's why they attempted to get approval to build one in London ("Proposed designs revealed for MSG Sphere, UK's largest concert arena," "Like Piccadilly Circus, but spherical: is east London ready for the MSG Sphere?," Guardian) which was first proposed in 2019 and has recently been denied ("Stratford sphere proposals rejected by London mayor," BBC).

From the BBC article:

Mr Khan rejected the development, citing the amount of light pollution that it would cause for Stratford residents, its huge electricity bill and associated lack of "green" credentials, and the impact it would have on heritage sites in the area. 

A spokesperson for the mayor said: "London is open to investment from around the world and Sadiq wants to see more world-class, ambitious, innovative entertainment venues in our city. 

"But as part of looking at the planning application for the MSG Sphere, the mayor has seen independent evidence that shows the current proposals would result in an unacceptable negative impact on local residents."

Paris has Euro Disneyland, Hamburg is a center for musical theater, Spain has the Mediterranean, London has lots of attractions including the O2 Arena concert facility.  Venice has the canals, Florence art, Rome ancient and contemporary history and the Vatican.  But a lot of these places now are concerned about overtourism, not adding new attractions ("Barcelona's war on tourism," New European, "Amsterdam's new tourism campaign is ready to ruffle some feathers," Lonely Planet).

But especially in the post-Brexit world, which has made entry to the country much more difficult, diminished British industrial output, exports, and reduced the number of tourist visits, London has to more carefully manage itself as a destination to maintain its position as a leading destination in Europe.

The Guggenheim Bilbao is sculptural and architecturally forward.  It has sparked a great deal of "architourism" to the city. Photo: ©FMGB, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, 2017.

Sometimes that means taking a chance, the way Bilbao did on the Guggenheim Museum ("Why can't the "Bilbao Effect" be reproduced? | Bilbao as an example of Transformational Projects Action Planning").  

And it means managing the city as a destination.  

This does create tensions between anti-development forces among residents, but it's something that has to be overtly addressed.

Another rendering of the proposed Sphere in London.

But it's hard for a locally elected Mayor to buck the people who vote, and make such a pathbreaking long term decision.

From the BBC article:

City Hall said: "WSP concluded that the Illuminated Sphere, in conjunction with other artificial lighting within the proposed development… would be likely to have significant adverse effects on occupiers of nearby residential premises." 

This included at least 33 homes in the New Garden Quarter residential development; 28 homes in the Legacy Tower/Stratford Central; and 177 student rooms in the Unite student accommodation building. 

The size of the Sphere would make it a "bulky, unduly dominant and incongruous form of development" and cause harm to the setting of 16 heritage buildings, including the Grade II* listed Stratford Theatre Royal and three conservation areas.

These are tough issues to balance.  I'd say buy out the homes if that's what the owners want.  And recognize that the heritage built environment in London is strong enough to withstand the "incursion" of a structure like The Sphere, just as Bilbao was able to wrt the Guggenheim.

Although I will admit this goes against my strong historic preservation sense and the concept of the "architecture of the ensemble."

But like Liverpool and the Everton stadium ("Liverpool loses UNESCO World Heritage Site designation: An example of tough choices for cash strapped governments"), sometimes you have to make super hard decisions that go against the grain.

Mega events and city marketing.  The book Wish You Were Here: The Branding of Stockholm and Destinations, authored by Julian Stubbs, makes the point that events, from mega events like the Olympics to big city festivals like Artscape in Baltimore (which has been wrecked somewhat by failures by the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts and separately the city, which took over the agency) are important marketing touchpoints for cities.

He doesn't discuss big anchors like concert facilities or spectacles like The Sphere but they should be included.

For example, I surely hadn't thought of the economic impact at the local level of superstar concerts by the likes of Taylor Swift ("The Staggering Economic Impact of Taylor Swift's Eras Tour," TIME Magazine).  From the article:

If you live in one of the 20 locales Swift, 33, performed at in the last five months, your city has likely seen a boost in revenue from the hundreds of thousands of attendees who traveled from near and far. If you don’t—or simply couldn’t snag tickets due to the cost or the now infamous Ticketmaster snafu—chances are you’ve seen clips of the three-and-a-half hour show from celebrities’ Instagram stories. 

There’s also the timing: The tour has become the perfect outing for concert-goers itching for a post-pandemic live music immersive experience. “We are in an experience economy where people crave going out and participating in social events,” says Alice Enders, a music industry analyst at Enders Analysis and a former senior economist at the World Trade Organization. “It's no surprise that people are flocking to this Eras Tour experience in what is increasingly an otherwise digital environment we live in.”

... But the money goes far deeper than just net profits. The Eras Tour is projected to generate close to $5 billion in consumer spending in the United States alone. “If Taylor Swift were an economy, she’d be bigger than 50 countries,” said Dan Fleetwood, President of QuestionPro Research and Insights, in a story for GlobalNewsWire. On the opening night in Glendale, Ariz., the concert brought in more revenue for local businesses than Super Bowl LVII, which was held back in February in the same stadium. To use that event as a comparison, Swift has been performing the equivalent of two to three Super Bowls every weekend for the past five months (and six of seven nights at her last round of shows in Los Angeles).

Typically, every $100 spent on live performances generates an estimated $300 in ancillary local spending on things like hotels, food and transportation. But for the Eras Tour, Swifties are taking this to the next level, dropping an estimated $1,300-$1,500 on things like outfits and costumes, merchandise, dining, and travel—boosting local economies by hundreds of millions of dollars in one weekend.

Wish you were here isn't a primer or textbook, it's more of an outline and motivator aimed to get interested parties thinking and "thinking right" as it relates to place branding, and the impact of tourism on the local economy both in terms of visitation but also attracting new business and new investment to further strengthen the local economy. Typically, every $100 spent on live performances generates an estimated $300 in ancillary local spending on things like hotels, food and transportation. But for the Eras Tour, Swifties are taking this to the next level, dropping an estimated $1,300-$1,500 on things like outfits and costumes, merchandise, dining, and travel—boosting local economies by hundreds of millions of dollars in one weekend.

There are a bunch of case studies, not in super depth, for cities like New York, Barcelona, and Liverpool, which show the range of responses that are possible.

One point he makes is that cities need to invest more money and time into the creation of events and festivals, but he also discusses mega events like the Olympics and the World Cup.

Unfortunately, for many countries, mega events--like South Africa for soccer, and Greece and Brazil for the Olympics--such events don't work out, but that's not relevant to this particular entry. 

Light pollution.  I'm the first to admit I wouldn't want to live in the viewshed/lightshed of The Sphere overnight.  Apparently the Vegas Sphere shuts off at 11pm.  So it's not as big a deal as I thought.

Is seeing believing?  Even though it adds years to the approval process, I wonder if it will be easier for The Sphere to be approved in other places now that people can see it in operation.  People aren't big on thinking about approving things they aren't familiar with.

Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Bram van den Berg of U2 perform during opening night of U2:UV Achtung Baby Live at Sphere on Sept. 29, 2023 in Las Vegas. Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Live Nation

U2's residency at the Sphere is incredibly successful ("U2's First Batch of Shows at the Sphere Generated Nearly $110 Million in Ticket Sales," Billboard).  From the article:

U2 wrapped the first leg of the U2:UV Achtung Baby Live at Sphere residency on Nov. 4 with unprecedented box-office results. According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, U2’s 17 Sphere shows in Las Vegas grossed $109.8 million and sold 281,000 tickets. 

Opening night at Sphere was Sept. 29. U2 played another show the next night, 12 more in October and three in the first week of November. The gross and attendance figures average out to $6.5 million and 16,500 tickets per show. The average ticket price across all shows was $390.97. 

U2 is scheduled to play eight more shows in December, kicking off on Friday night. There are 11 more dates lined up between Jan. 26 and Feb. 18. The 19 shows on the books could generate another $120 million, pushing the residency to about $330 million in less than five months. Only Dion’s A New Day… would remain ahead in terms of all residencies in Boxscore history.

The only thing is few bands can pull this off.  U2 is one. 

Community radio as an element of local cultural planning

 I have a bunch of entries on radio:

-- "Local music used to define communities: today with radio chains and national music distribution systems, not so much," 2021
-- "Culture planning and radio: local music, local content vs. delivery nodes for a national network," 2019
-- "Thinking anew about supporting community radio," 2019
-- "Revisiting community radio," 2020

And on various elements that I think should be in community cultural plans, but usually aren't, such as:

-- "What would be a "Transformational Projects Action Plan" for DC's cultural ecosystem," 2019
-- "Cultural plans should have an element on culture-related retail," 2018
-- "Should community culture master plans include elements on higher education arts programs?," 2016
-- "Culture planning at the metropolitan scale should include funding for "local" documentary film making," 2016
-- "Another example of why local culture plans need to include an element on retail/dealing with for profit elements of the cultural ecosystem: Nashville's Tubb Record Shop," 2022

Salt Lake's community radio station KCPW just went out of business.  The station was originally owned by another nonprofit, and sold off to a different nonprofit a few years ago.  But for $3.5 million, and evidently that was too much, and the station wasn't able to successfully compete for donations for operations as well as loan payments, as they faced KUER-FM, the NPR affiliate owned by the University of Utah.  (The area has another low power community radio station, KRCL-FM.)

KCPW had a 31 year run.  It ended up being bought by KUER ("KCPW FM-88.3 is sold — to KUER and PBS Utah," Salt Lake Tribune) and for the time being it will rebroadcast the NPR Spanish feed, Radio Bilingue.  While Salt Lake County has a fair number of Hispanics, they make up only 1/11 of the area population.

A loss for community-based radio programs.  KCPW was noteworthy in that it was based on the campus of the main branch of the Salt Lake City Library ("The Salt Lake City Central Library is absolutely incredible," 2013) as part of pathbreaking mixed use functions in the library and they had a feedline between the library auditorium and the station so that programs there could be broadcast live or recorded.  

The station provided a fair amount of independent programming, partly because they couldn't afford NPR dues and because the area probably can't support two NPR stations as the population is relatively small.

The community benefited from having two very different public radio stations.  KCPW being absorbed by the University of Utah reduces the diversity and programming opportunities within the community in very significant ways.

It's unfortunate that radio isn't covered in local cultural planning.  

Monitoring the health of local cultural organizations in case something goes wrong.  One of the things I argue is that there should be a "distant early warning network" in the cultural community to identify the potential for organizational failure, and there should be the creation of funding and other systems to be able to step in and help.  Although I imagine most cultural professionals in the Salt Lake area are likely to think the acquisition by KUER was a good outcome.

A potential funding source (but too late now).  Salt Lake County was an early adopter of a sales tax to support "the arts."  It's called ZAP and it covers three areas: the Hogle Zoo, Parks both the County system and projects by the various cities, and funding for cultural organizations.  

The tax had to be approved by the Legislature originally and is renewed every ten years.

(Summit County where Park City is then developed a similar tax, called RAP, Recreation, Arts and Parks.  I don't know if other jurisdictions elsewhere in Utah have done the same.)

While it is a pathbreaking initiative, at the same time, it's static in that it is a funding source extremely difficult to modify for supporting "new" programs, because it requires the State Legislature to change the enabling legislation.  

I'd argue that community/local radio independent of large organizations like the University of Utah should/could be an element of that funding stream. But the time to change that is not when an organization is about to fail, but long before.

Also see "A comprehensive list of funding sources for arts and culture," 2019.

Building the culture and reinforcing the planning paradigm of automobile dependence

I've written about this issue forever (i.e., "DC as a suburban agenda dominated city").  

Sadly, even I'm imprinted with the paradigm of automobility privileging and dependence, because my first reaction to this New York Times article, "In This Atlanta Suburb, Teens Taste Freedom at 10 M.P.H:  In Peachtree City, Ga., golf carts are everywhere, giving young people in particular an early chance to take life by the wheel.," was not why don't you encourage sustainable mobility instead, like "analog" bicycles or e-bicycles.

Once children turn 12, they are allowed to drive a cart with a licensed parent or guardian. At 15, once they have their driver’s permit, they can go off on their own.  Photo: Gabriela Bhaskar for the New York Times.

This photo is a pretty good juxtaposition of the different modes, private transportation versus mass transportation. 

So since they allow 12 year olds to drive such vehicles, that puts DC's car jacking craze into perspective ("D.C. youth fatally shot in carjacking attempt had 9 prior charges," Washington Post).

According to the article "Peachtree City, Georgia, has roughly 13,000 households and some 11,000 registered golf carts."

Revisiting Pittsburgh and Allegheny County as an opportunity for city-county consolidation: The "RiversCity" proposal

Partly what got me thinking about city-county consolidation--places like Indianapolis (1970), Knoxville, Macon-Bibb County, Georgia (2012), and what SF and Philadelphia did in the 1800s--was seeing mention of a Brookings Institution report about Pennsylvania c. 2003 (Back to Prosperity: A Competitive Agenda for Renewing Pennsylvania), and it mentioning how so many of the micro jurisdictions across the state including in Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh is, lacked the financial capacity to serve their residents.

Plus I attended a conference in Louisville Kentucky in 2004, just as they were beginning to consolidate the city and county after a successful vote to do so (A 10-Year Perspective of the Merger of Louisville and Jefferson County, KY, Abell Foundation, "How merger reshaped Louisville, Jefferson County and metro development," Louisville Public Media/NPR).

It was probably easier for Louisville because Knoxville city and Knox County had merged some functions--but not the city and county--years before.

Later I suggested this for Baltimore City and County ("Opinion: What Baltimore and D.C. can do to start working better together as a region (Baltimore Business Journal op-ed," 2016), and I support efforts to do this for St. Louis City and County ("St. Louis: what would I recommend for a comprehensive revitalization program? | Part 1: Overview and Theoretical Foundations," 2021).  I also think Detroit should do it, but ideally with Oakland County!, not Wayne.

It turns out that ten years before Brookings, Professor David Miller (now deceased) of the University of Pittsburgh suggested a proto version of this, a concept called "Rivers City," not for the entire county and not for Pittsburgh but for the various small communities in what is called the Lower Mon(ongahela) Valley ("Small Western Pennsylvania towns weigh merits of merging some public services," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette).

The economic circumstances they face are issues common to that of municipal finance for communities and metro areas across the country, which I wrote about in "The real lesson from Flint Michigan is about municipal finance" (2016).

Basically our local government finance systems were set up when the country was growing.  They don't work well in changed circumstances.

In the Lower Mon Valley, communities are resistant, believing rightly that they are unique.  Although really, they are not exceptional, and economically at least, they should merge to have greater taxing and funding capacity.  

Those communities haven't merged, but over the years, because of their minimal financial capacity, they have merged services, like police and fire departments.  This phenomenon has been happening across the country for the past couple decades in places like New Jersey, Suburban Detroit, and Salt Lake County.

According to the article, 39 communities make up "Rivers City," ranging in population from 232 to 23,000. The communities total 209,000 in population, while Pittsburgh is about 306,000 and the total county population is 1.238 million.

From the article:

“A lot of these really small towns have now been in a position for about 30 years where they just don't have the tax base necessary to support the full slate of services that they had been used to previously,” Mr. Dougherty said. “And I'll be honest: our response to them has largely been, heal thyself, mostly through service cuts.” 

If it isn’t service cuts, then it’s consolidation — many fire and police departments are either decertifying their operations or merging with nearby departments, Mr. Dougherty said. And it’s likely that sort of functional consolidation, rather than municipal consolidation, will occur in the coming months and years, he said.

Relearning and retaining (or not) old lessons: Urban economics, agglomeration economies, and adaptive reuse of "a large stock of old buildings"

charlie responded to the recent entry, "Learning what not to do from the New England Patriots football team," saying I wasn't saying anything really new.  True.  But it seems that people have a hard time learning or retaining previous knowledge, so sadly these kinds of points need to be constantly repeated.

Separately, in response to the previous entry, "Federal government research hub development initiative," charlie included links to two important articles, "The ‘bump factor’ returns to Kendall Square: Random meetings in the compact hub help to fuel the local biotech cluster," from the Boston Globe and "The duo turning old Milan into a snapshot of contemporary design," from the Financial Times, which reiterate some of the arguments of the entry.

At the same time, statements in both articles illustrate the point of the leadership entry, that foundational understandings in urban economics, specifically the concept of agglomeration economies, and the value of old buildings in supporting the development of new businesses, seem to get lost, or that people would rather come up with new terms, without acknowledging the original learning.

Graphic: The benefits of agglomeration: Centre for Cities, "The impact of agglomeration on the economy." 

Like "bump factor" instead of the term "agglomeration economies."

Agglomeration economies and the biotech cluster in Cambridge Massachusetts.The Globe article explains why I am such a proponent of face to face, cluster development and agglomeration economies. From the article:

The vaunted “bump factor” is thriving again in this biosciences hub after a pandemic that limited human contact and forced many to retreat to their home offices. The factor has adjusted to the new hybrid work world — bumping mostly happens Tuesday through Thursday. But the ease with which drug developers and financiers can run into each other remains a competitive advantage for the neighborhood dubbed “the most innovative square mile on planet Earth.”' 

”It’s our secret sauce,” said Kendalle Burlin O’Connell, chief executive of the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council. The potential to generate new ideas and partnerships through chance encounters is unmatched by less compact and more car-reliant rival clusters like California’s Bay Area or North Carolina’s Research Triangle, say Kendall Square boosters. Even in Boston’s Seaport district, fast emerging as a satellite biotech hub, the buildings are too isolated and the blocks too large to support a healthy bump factor. 

... After three years of relative isolation, many are hungry for connection. Some gatherings are larger now than in pre-pandemic times. Attendance at Thursday night programs and networking events at Venture Care have drawn an average of 419 people this fall, up from353 in 2019.

... But close encounters during the rest of the week were a selling point in the successful campaign to lure the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, a new federal research agency known as ARPA-H, to Cambridge, said O’Connell, the MassBio CEO.

You can make work work well with Zoom if you are committed to collaboration with the right people and the right tools.  But you lose out on the ability to generate external serendipitous connections. 

I remember when the multimedia Internet was first launched so to speak, and I was on a marketing e-list where the new field of e-commerce and Internet based marketing was the primary topic. 

The founder of the list was big on the creation of "Internet Malls" modeled on real malls. I argued with him that unlike IRL, there was no reason for people on the Internet mall to shop "adjacencies."  In a mall you walk past other stores so your top of mind awareness is pricked.  But on the Internet, you go straight to your destination without being pricked with other sites (unless you use Google search or once you do a search within Amazon, etc.).

But in work, those adjacencies may be essential in sparking new ideas, relationships, funding deals, etc. 

Think of Katalin Kariko at the copy machine where she met Drew Fleischman.  If she hadn't met Fleischman and gotten some financial support through his connections at Penn, maybe she would have left, and not developed further the mRNA technologies that went into the covid vaccine.

The lesson is that in these districts especially the smaller ones, you need to work to build the systems, events, restaurants, etc., that help spark serendipitous encounters. Although the Boston (Cambridge) people really should understand urban economics better. I guess Ed Glaeser isn't doing his job.

Old buildings/new buildings and arts and design as consumption versus production: Milan.  I have been writing about this topic for many years.  

The FT article discusses a group in Milan, Alcova, sparked by Milan's annual Design Week, that does "installations" in abandoned buildings and structures, making a seemingly interesting point about reuse of old buildings for the arts versus new arts centers.  About how Alcova is unique.  They aren't.  But I guess a key lesson of the last few decades of urban revitalization has been lost.

In reality, what they think of as new is very old, something Jane Jacobs wrote about in Death and Life of Great American Cities, published in 1961!, about the value of cities maintaining a large stock of old buildings to support innovation, because (before the modernized finance system which refinances everything so costs go up) old buildings are paid off and have low rents, and startups need low rents.

Note that over the past 30 years, in Dublin (a vacated bus terminal in Temple Bar), Helsinki (Cabelfactory), and Marseille (La Friche), among others, arts based revitalization has been stoked by the redevelopment of what had been white elephant buildings.

Midtown Exchange, Minneapolis.

Historic preservation as an urban revitalization strategy is all about adaptive reuse of old buildings to support new uses.  There are thousands of examples across the country.  

One is the reuse of the Sprague Electric campus in North Adams Massachusetts for the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Arts.  

Another is the adaptation of old Sears combination catalog distribution centers and department stores in cities like Minneapolis and Memphis as multiuse mixed use facilities.  

In Los Angeles they are trying to figure this out with the old Sears in Boyle Heights.  Baltimore did this with a Montgomery Ward catalog distribution center and store.  Etc.

Until more recently, with the boom of new construction (now slackened in the post-covid business environment), historic preservation was the most successful urban revitalization strategy around.  Good books on this are Cities Back from the Edge, The Living Downtown, and Changing Places.  

I think the real difference is between money and not money, bootstraps versus top down, and arts as production versus arts as consumption (presenting arts performances to static audiences). 

For example, recently opened large arts centers, The Shed in the Hudson Yards and the Perelman at Ground Zero in NYC, and the originally named Factory based on Manchester music history, now called Aviva Studios after a donor are all new from the ground up.  They cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build. And they are focused on arts as presentation and consumption.

Those can be hard to fund continually, although NYC is a different situation entirely. I know the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia has ongoing funding issues.  Reviving the Cabelfactory or La Friche cost almost nothing by comparison.

Arts production versus consumption is what John Montgomery discusses in his original paper on the subject, now 20 years old. Cultural Quarters as Mechanisms for Urban Regeneration. Part 1: Conceptualising Cultural Quarters is discussed in my original "Arts, culture districts and revitalization" entry in 2009, but the entry has been updated a bunch of times.  

It's the difference too between a building and a multi building arts district/cultural quarter/innovation district.  Also, the new from the ground up arts centers are about consumption, not production. 

Characteristics of cultural quarters
From Montgomery (2003).  Slightly revised and reordered 

1. Cultural venues at a variety of scales, including small and medium. 
2. Availability of workspaces for artists and low-cost cultural producers. 
3. Small-firm economic development in the cultural sectors. 
4. Managed workspaces for office and studio users. 
5. Location of arts development agencies and companies. 
6. Arts and media training and education. 
7. Art in the environment (public art, arts incorporated into buildings, etc.)
8. Community arts development initiatives. 
9. Stable arts funding. 
10. Identity, image development, branding and marketing support. 
11. Complementary day-time uses. 
12. Complementary evening uses.

From the FT article: 

Where many cities think cultural infrastructure means financing new architecture, Grima and Ciuffi propose a new paradigm: working, through temporary interventions, with what already exists, offering a blueprint that administrations can follow. “If we really want to talk about sustainability in the design field and respect for the environment, the first step an architect must take, paradoxically, is not to build,” says Grima, adding that his profession has historically “been very animated by the impetus to do new things”. 

... Alcova was founded at a pivotal moment in the history of Milan, after the 2015 Expo, when big brands began to come to the Design Week in larger numbers. “This made it more difficult for young people to find space,” Grima recalls. “It seemed a shame to us, because everyone comes to Milan to see the future of design. We said to ourselves, ‘There is an opportunity here of doing something new.’”

The article also discusses how with the rise in success of Milan's Design Week, small firms are being crowded out by large firms and their ability to add underutilized buildings and structures to the mix maintains the ability of small firms to participate because of the way they offer participation to small firms only.

That only reiterates the point made by Jacobs. 

Federal government research hub development initiative

I didn't know NASA originally planned for a big electronics hub in Boston's Kendall Square, as MIT's Draper Laboratory was an original developer of various electronics systems for the Apollo space program.  The hub opened, but was closed three years later ("‘Cambridge, we have a problem’: The true story of NASA’s center in Kendall Square," Boston Globe).  

A new building for the Volpe Center.

One of the deaccessioned buildings was transferred to the US Department of Transportation for the development of a transportation research center now known as the Volpe National Transportation Systems Center ("New Volpe Transportation Center opens as part of $750 million deal between MIT and feds," Globe).

It's hard to say if the NASA center had stayed would it have fostered the development of spinoff businesses, because after the Apollo program, NASA's space program has shrunk.  But the Volpe Center hasn't fostered spinoff businesses either.  

OTOH, Boston has blossomed as a center for biotechnology.  See "Casebook illustration of agglomeration economies: Kendall Square and biotech."

For some insight into how different research operations have  significantly different rates and capacities for the development of spinoff businesses, see "How the closure of a Pfizer research center in Ann Arbor, Michigan led to the development of a more robust and independent biotech sector." 

Also see writings on innovation districts and quarters more generally.

Federal scientific and technology research.  Michael Lewis has a good book, The Fifth Risk, on the investment by the federal government in the development of science and technology, like weather prediction systems and the work of federal laboratories.  Decades ago, I worked for a group focused on chemistry research and development, and a number of federal government labs sponsored by the Department of Energy were members.  

USDA has a number of research labs.  The Department of Commerce has National Institute of Standards and Technology in Montgomery County, and the Department of Health and Human Services has the National Institutes of Health in Montgomery County and the CDC in Atlanta.  The Department of Transportation supports research centers across the country as well.  The National Science Foundation funds research of all types, etc.  Medical research is funded by a number of agencies and some cities have become biotech centers as a result.  NASA funds research labs too, like at Caltech and the Goddard Research Center, also in Montgomery County.

The Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency is famous for its support of the development of various technologies, including what became "the Internet."  DARPA has spawned ARPA-H, focused on health.  The Department of Defense as a customer of technology firms has also spurred economic development.

Federal laboratories too have different success rates for spurring the development and adoption of new technologies and business opportunities.  Overall, the military has the most spinoffs ("The East-West Divide | DC area regional economic development: anchors and where they are placed matter + airports | But military spending matters the most.")

New federal research hub seeding efforts.  Recognizing the benefits of federally-funded and initiated research to the economic development of the nation, the Biden Administration is funding the development of research hubs across the nation ("31 communities tapped as innovation hub finalists," Route 50).  From the article:

In a move aimed at expanding the tech sector’s economic development engine to more parts of the country, the Biden administration on Monday named 31 communities as innovation hubs that will work to advance a range of technologies, including autonomous systems, quantum computing, biomedicine and green energy. 

With tens of millions in federal funding, the selected consortiums—made up of state and local governments, educational institutions, businesses and community groups in 32 states and Puerto Rico—now have an opportunity to turn themselves into global players in advanced technology. 

“We're doing this from coast to coast, in the heartland, red states and blue states, small towns, cities of all sizes,” President Joe Biden said at a press conference.

The funding for the hubs comes from last year’s $54.2 billion CHIPS Act. Most of that capital went toward subsidies to encourage companies to increase the production of U.S.-manufactured semiconductors. The legislation also called for spending $10 billion to create 20 Regional Innovation and Technology Hubs over the next five years that would research, develop and commercialize a wide range of advanced technologies. The 31 proposals will compete in the coming years to be named one of hubs. 

However, because Congress has only formally approved spending the first $500 million of the money, only a few of the innovation hub proposals are sure to get funding in the next year. 

Already there are winners and losers ("Michigan doesn't make cut for list of new federal tech hubs," Detroit Free Press, "Minnesota's newly designated med-tech hub eligible for millions in federal funding ," Minneapolis Star-Tribune, "Baltimore selected as federal tech hub for artificial intelligence and biotechnology," Baltimore Sun).

This is important to do, and spreading around the largesse is good.  But it's hard to successfully develop spinoff technologies and businesses, it's a very long process, and it's easier when you have something to start with already, as the Pfizer/Ann Arbor entry makes clear.

Pittsburgh is a great example.  Richard Florida's book The Rise of the Creative Class is partly about the then "failure" of Pittsburgh to retain start up businesses as they grew and developed, because the ecosystem to support such businesses as they grew just wasn't there.  

But over time that ecosystem developed ("Carnegie Mellon, Region, To Share Benefits of $62.7M Build Back Better Grant," CMU press release, "Pittsburgh’s tech clusters: Oakland, Lawrenceville, Strip District … and O’Hara," Pittsburgh Business Journal), just as the venture capital base in Michigan developed to the point where it could support the development of biotechnology businesses in Ann Arbor, and now Pittsburgh is much more competitive in developing and retaining startups.

From the PBJ:

Pittsburgh has emerged as a center of technology research and development, particularly with respect to the autonomy industry, but the region’s strength in the field of life sciences and medical technology is equally impressive. 

The University of Pittsburgh is one of the top five in National Institutes of Health funding and the region is ripe with talent and an ecosystem of successful public and privately held companies in the field. 

Just as robotics firms have clustered in certain locations, so too have leading companies in the biotech and related medical technology industries. Oakland, Lawrenceville and the Strip District are well known hot beds of innovation activity, but there’s another that's sometimes overlooked: O’Hara Township.

Not only is O’Hara Township where RIDC’s first development project resides — RIDC O’Hara — it’s one of the first planned light industrial parks in the country, and it’s seen the launch of multiple prominent tech startups. And after more than 60 years, it continues to be home to a thriving life sciences cluster, including companies involved in cutting edge research and the production of life saving products. 

Among O’Hara’s attributes, which have been attractive to tech and life science companies alike, include: 

• Proximity to the universities in Oakland and other tech companies in Lawrenceville and the Strip District, which are only a few minutes’ drive away. 
• Free parking and considerably lower costs for space than in the denser city neighborhoods. 
• Easy access to the Pennsylvania Turnpike, making it a commuting destination for a large portion of the region’s workforce. 

Boston is another example, anchored by MIT and Harvard.

As I wrote in the Ann Arbor article, some universities are better than others at spinoff business and technology development, and it is worth figuring out those characteristics and conditions, in order to foster more speedy success elsewhere.

... the reality is that there are six to seven universities that seem to spin off successful start ups at a scale far beyond the rest:

• MIT and Harvard in Boston
• Stanford University in Palo Alto/Silicon Valley
• University of California San Diego
• University of California San Francisco
• maybe the University of Washington in Seattle (Microsoft located there because that's where its founders lived before leaving for college, Amazon started up in Seattle because of the entrepreneurial culture created by Microsoft, and over time UW has gotten more involved in that ecosystem)
• University of Texas Austin contributed to the development of an IT cluster in Texas, but key events like the creation of Texas Instruments had little to do with Austin ("The launch and evolution of a technology‐based economy: The case of Austin Texas," Growth and Change, 50:2, 2019).

There are probably some I've missed.

OTOH, there is also the story of Kariko Katalin at the University of Pennsylvania.  She was dissed by administrators for decades but persevered, developing the mRNA technologies that led to the successful development of covid vaccines.  She just won the Nobel Prize in Medicine, after a career of hardship ("A Penn official once told Katalin Karikó she was ‘not of faculty quality.’ Her work there just won a Nobel Prize.," Philadelphia Inquirer).

Clusters can be relative.  I used to believe that only the leading clusters had advantages, that secondary locations had no chance.

Now I don't believe that. There is a place for secondary or peripheral locations. They won't be Cambridge, but they can still be significant centers with opportunities for growth, especially locally.

But you really have to work it:

-- "Naturally occurring innovation districts | Technology districts and the tech sector," 2014
-- "Better leveraging higher education institutions in cities and counties: Greensboro; Spokane; Mesa; Phoenix; Montgomery County, Maryland; Washington, DC," 2016

(Reprinted.)  Learning from Europe: Knowledge locations in cities.  In 2013, I wrote about Helsinki, "Helsinki as an example of creative industries driving urban revitalization programs," for the Europe in Baltimore project conducted by the Washington Chapter of the European Union National Institutes of Culture.

Design is a key element of Helsinki's identity and economy.  And while writing the article, I learned a lot which has influenced my thinking ever since, about cultural planning, cultural production, systematic planning of new districts, specifically Arabianranta, where the Aalto University is now located, assigning cultural planners to districts, libraries, and more.

An article on Arabianranta, 

"Developing creative quarters in cities: policy lessons from 'Art and design city' Arabianranta, Helsinki," Van Tuijl, Carvalho, and Van Haaren, Urban Research & Practice 6(2):211-218 · June 2013

introduced me to a new line of thinking about "creative quarters," which we might call Arts Districts 2.0.

The research was part of a larger project which resulted in the book Creating Knowledge Locations in Cities: Innovation and Integration Challenges.  (This is a pdf of the book.)

Note that Brookings Institution has a similar program, Innovation Districts, but I like the writings from Europe better.