There is a thing that happens in cities — that we think happens in cities — when people with lots of different ideas bump into each other on the sidewalk, or at the bar or the grocery store or the gym. The urbanist icon Jane Jacobs identified these collisions as central to what makes cities dynamic. “The chance encounters facilitated by cities,” the economist Edward Glaeser has written, “are the stuff of human progress.”Remote work has, well, blurred this picture. How do workers spill their knowledge when they’ve moved to Montana, or the exurbs? “It’s a trying time, certainly, for my view of the world,” said Enrico Moretti, a Berkeley economist who has written extensively about why it’s good for workers, companies and the economy when people cluster in particular cities.

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Persons: Jane Jacobs, “, Edward Glaeser, they’ve, ”, Enrico Moretti Locations: —, Montana, Berkeley