Exploration—Not Work—Could be Key to a Vibrant Local Economy
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
The next time you're on a walk, consider stopping by that restaurant you've never been to or the local store you keep meaning to check out. They just might be the key to a vibrant local economy, according to a new study.
In a surprise finding based on anonymized cell phone mobility records, infrequent trips to places like restaurants and sports facilities-not the everyday office visit or school drop-off-accounted for the majority of differences in economic outcomes between neighborhoods.
The lesson for urban planners and individuals, researchers said, is to embrace the unusual.
[...] The activities with the strongest predictive power included French and New American restaurants, golf courses, hockey rinks, soccer games, and bagel shops. These kinds of activities accounted for just 2% of trips but explained more than 50% of the variation in economic outcomes between neighborhoods. Wang and his collaborators didn't initially expect these leisure activities to be so tied to local economic fortunes.
[...] "Those irregular and infrequent activities are correlated with explorative behavior, the tendency of some groups to seek out opportunities, connect with different people, and create new businesses," said Esteban Moro, Ph.D., a professor at Northeastern University, who co-led the study. "Looking at those infrequent activities, we are directly looking at current and potential economic opportunities in the future."
[...] What was most surprising was that trips to the office-where we earn our money-were not strongly associated with income or property values. Rather, it's how we spend our free time that drives the economic vibrancy of cities.
Journal Reference:
Wang, S., Zheng, Y., Wang, G. et al. Infrequent activities predict economic outcomes in major American cities. Nat Cities (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44284-024-00051-7
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