"Cities that sprawl across the landscape because suburban land is (or was) cheap, such as Phoenix in Arizona or Houston in Texas, are less creative, innovative places than cities where people are more likely to jostle together and less likely to be isolated in their cars" - but there is a price to pay in terms of mental health from cramming people together where they are likely to become neurotic and crave access to nature.
"A third key theme for public policy is the attitude countries take toward openness both to the world and to their citizens. In Saxenian’s later work, The New Argonauts, she highlights the vital issue of immigration. Over half of all new companies in Silicon Valley since 1995 have been founded or cofounded by immigrants, and immigrants to the US register patents at twice the rate of non-immigrants" - this is a very alarming argument, since it seems to be promoting the idea of a pan-global intellectual oligarchy (which is fine for the quasi-Oxbridge innovative types able to travel the world and settle where they like, but condemns to serfdom the non-elite who are currently in theory able to control nation states through majority-rule democracy).
"Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs and Steel argues that this openness and interaction across the European nations in close proximity to each other was a major factor in their global dominance" - personally I think the Protestant Work Ethic created the conditions for European dominance of the world.
"...if the Pacific is to provide global leadership, how does the region’s capacity to innovate stand up against the criteria set out here? Or to put it differently, how much further must China and other countries in the region travel in the direction of openness?" - they would be foolish to swop rule by a communist (sic) oligarchy for rule by an international oligarchy of perpetual-tourist elite people endlessly moving around the world between their different properties and not staying long enough in any one place to pay taxes.
"A third key theme for public policy is the attitude countries take toward openness both to the world and to their citizens. In Saxenian’s later work, The New Argonauts, she highlights the vital issue of immigration. Over half of all new companies in Silicon Valley since 1995 have been founded or cofounded by immigrants, and immigrants to the US register patents at twice the rate of non-immigrants" - this is a very alarming argument, since it seems to be promoting the idea of a pan-global intellectual oligarchy (which is fine for the quasi-Oxbridge innovative types able to travel the world and settle where they like, but condemns to serfdom the non-elite who are currently in theory able to control nation states through majority-rule democracy).
"Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs and Steel argues that this openness and interaction across the European nations in close proximity to each other was a major factor in their global dominance" - personally I think the Protestant Work Ethic created the conditions for European dominance of the world.
"...if the Pacific is to provide global leadership, how does the region’s capacity to innovate stand up against the criteria set out here? Or to put it differently, how much further must China and other countries in the region travel in the direction of openness?" - they would be foolish to swop rule by a communist (sic) oligarchy for rule by an international oligarchy of perpetual-tourist elite people endlessly moving around the world between their different properties and not staying long enough in any one place to pay taxes.
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