(2011-09-06) City Density For Job Creation

Ryan Avent sees Urbanization as a Job Creation strategy. How great are the benefits of density? Economists studying cities routinely find that after controlling for other variables, workers in denser places earn higher wages and are more productive. Some studies suggest that doubling density raises productivity by around 6 percent while others peg the impact at up to 28 percent. Some economists have concluded that more than half the variation in output per worker across the United States can be explained by density alone; density explains more of the productivity gap across states than education levels or industry concentrations or tax policies. He definitely has a point, but seems focused on people/city metric, leading him to prefer 1M/city, vs people/sqmi Population Density, which supports smaller Traditional City opportunities.