Superlinear scaling, innovation, and New Zealand cities

Harvard University’s Samuel Arbesman recently submitted a paper to Physical Review E entitled “An Explanation of Superlinear Scaling for Innovation in Cities” (HT: New Scientist).  The major thrust of the paper (embedded among the erudite scientific analysis) is that larger cities have dispproportionally more innovation, because they allow for richer interconnection between different communities.

My initial reaction to this from my favourite hometown of merely 250,000 souls (counted on a fine day going downhill with a southerly tailwind) was “oh no, we’re fux0r3d!”  All this talk of the Innovation Capital and Business Innovation Strategies will come to naught, because we just aren’t big enough to compete with the larger locations overseas.

Rereading Arbesman’s article however, size is only one factor enabling innovation.  Sure, given a sample of a large number of cities puts Wellington in the same league as cities such as Birmingham Alabama, Czestochowa Poland, and Pau France – none of which are particularly well known for their innovation policies.  But Wellington and Auckland are very culturally diverse cities, and I would argue that their relatively small size enables rich interconnection between communities, precisely because the interconnected communities themselves are so small.

In Wellington we joke that we’re a “village with skyscrapers”, and that there’s only a degree-and-a-half of separation. The number of people from different walks of life that I’d talk to on any given day is staggering.  I can have a breakfast meeting with Pākehā colleages, meet with Māori clients in the morning, lunch with Asian colleagues, afternoon meetings with constellations of immigrants from Europe, North America, the Indian subcontinent and Southern Africa that define the local IT scene, dinner with my own family (between us we have rellies living on six continents) and then go to an evening Interfaith meeting with people from all over the world.  There are no ethnic neighbourhoods here; the ethnic groups are just to small to sustain whole geographic regions.

So far from being a hindrance, our small size combined with the diversity of modern New Zealand can be a real advantage for breaking down barriers that are common elsewhere.

Superlinear scaling breaks down here, and long may we remain an outlier in Arbesman’s data set.

Update: In a personal communication from Arbesman, he says

… you’re definitely right that the variations and exceptions to the patterns observed are the ones that can give us the most insight into the innovation process in cities. And it sounds like New Zealand is chock full of these exceptions.