Thanks BostonUrbEx
Now I feel a little self-conscious. I'm just enjoying these discussions.
whighlander, if your argument is that different companies have different needs, I think we're in complete agreement.
So far, the only constant is that we haven't found a way to run companies without people. Some can draw people to them, others have to be conveniently located. Some can run self-sufficiently, others depend on a whole set of cultivated business relationships. There is lots of variety, and compromises to be made. Over many thousands of years, humans have gathered in or near cities to engage in commercial activity. This trend stubbornly persists despite the massive subsidies of "Utopian" social engineering visions by suburban-minded folks. Good infrastructure, such as highways and railways, can help trade, but it means nothing without people, and cities are where you find people.
Mathew I think we are fairly well in agreement about the "old history" -- people clustered in cities for different reasons over time:
1) first for protection from bandits and marauding armies,
2 ) later in medieval times for access to: the crown; the bishop; the professor; or the markets and fairs -- primarily agricultural and home manufactured goods
3) in the early industrial period for manufacturing jobs and later culture and transportation
4) in the white collar commercial era for business jobs; financial power and long-haul transportation
Interestingly enough -- Boston while its beginnings are only 400 years ago -- went through all 4 phases
The question is now that we are moving rapidly into the Knowledge Economy -- Phase 5 -- -- what will the successful cities of the future (next couple of decades) be founded upon?
The KE doesn't have the demand for large numbers of low to medium skilled employees that have traditionally made-up the cities from phase 3 and 4
KE companies depends on a small group of very highly skilled and very well paid leaders and a larger but not massive number of younger, less skilled and less well paid implementers. Of course the KE companies need support products and services many of which made-up a key part of the #4 stge of cities -- its not clear however if the numbers and distributions of work and workers is similar. Most cities are still dominated by the ideal population and workforce for #4 and in some more pathetic cases still stuck between #3 and #4.
In the past few years companies at the cutting edge have been experimenting alternatively clustering everyone and distributing everyone with high speed communications and good transportation making-up for lack of day-to-day direct physical contact
I think that the jury on out-sourcing (over long distances) is still out. The jury however seems in on the benefits of distributed enterprises particularly locating some of the implementation remotely for redundancy
As examples you can look at:
1) Microsoft which used to suck everyone of its acquisitions into Redmond -- but now not only leaves their acquisitions near to where they found them -- but builds genuine satellite facilities such as the NERD
2) Google -- which expanded into Cambridge for access to the talent poo; then bought-up some local start-ups and now is absorbing the ITA folks into a centralized Googleplex in Kendall
3) IBM and Cisco who bought there way into the Greater Boston area -- and now have concentrated most of their acquisitions and native growth into centralized suburban campuses
4) Novartis -- jumped into the area for the talent, decided to HQ their global corporate central R&D in Cambridge and have since imported some of their specific division R&D as well
5) Pfizer developed a small presence, vastly expanded it through the purchase of Wyeth; moving other R&D from their former R&D center in CT and now is consolidating everything in Kendall
6) HP which had a presence in Kendall; restructured and closed it; acquired its way back into the region through the purchase of Compaq; now through the purchase of a local company is moving back into Cambridge (Alewife)
7) EMC and Staples -- began as local companies; now moving in a significant R&D presence into the Kendall area
8) Biogen -- began as a local company; moved HQ out to the suburbs and now is moving back to Kendall
9) Vertex Pharma -- began as Kendall based company -- now moving lock stock and barrel to the SPID
10) Amazon -- has announced both a plug-into Kendall and the acquisition of a locally HQ's in the suburbs company
There are more examples of ways in which companies both local and "foreign" to the region are now participating in the KE
I think the definitive model for the KE has yet to be created and proven through experience
