Urban space and culture

I really enjoyed Markusen and Schrock this week. For all the focus planners may place on getting a particular big business into town, it is easy to lose sight of how that business will impact on re-spending within a city, and thus growth, over the long term (for example, Walmart may employ local people, but they will have incentives to spend their income inside Walmart, which sends money outside the city). I live in a city that is replete with "Buy Local! It makes a difference" signs and the sheer volume of the signs, I have to admit, made me cynical - I will be happy to support local businesses if they sell products I want, but I do not want to feel obliged to spend locally to prop up businesses whose value lies only in their localness. This article made me rethink the idea that local-orientation is far more complex than the parochial exercise I had taken it for. The ideas about worker location as just as important (if not more so) than industrial location particularly resonates. I often wonder how a certain New York glass company will attract the best and the brightest young workers to a relatively remote upstate New York location in the long term, particularly considering that young  technology professionals - at least according to Florida's analysis - tend to concentrate in metro areas that rate highly as centers of diversity and creativity.