This Quartz piece ‘What it takes for a city to jump into the knowledge economy‘ mentions an interesting study to determine the critical size of a city to fully be involved in the knowledge economy: 1.2 million inhabitants.
This is based on studies carried out on a sample of hundreds of metropolitan areas, looking at people occupations. Statistics show a definite increase of knowledge workers above this threshold.
“In addition to more white-collar, higher-paying jobs, a bigger population leads to a more diversified economy, which in turn leads to innovation” In addition, the network effect created by the metropolis does help ideas being exchanged and innovation to be fostered.
This is quite interesting as it tends to show that there is a critical mass for the Collaborative Age metropolis to be fully embedded in the digital innovation. 1.2 million people is a relatively high threshold that makes may local towns seemingly less adequate to be a center of Collaborative Age value.
