Assume that people like to have access to a community of people with similar habits, tastes, demographics, etc. A “community” is just a group of some minimal absolute size. Then the denser the population the more likely you will find enough people to form such a community.
But this effect is larger for people whose tastes, habits, and demographics are more idisyncratic than for people in the majority. Garden-variety people will find a community of garden-variety people just about anywhere they go. By contrast, if types of people are randomly distributed across locations, the density of cities makes it more likely that a community can be assembled there.
But that means that types won’t be just randomly distributed across locations. The unique types are willing to pay more to live in cities than the garden-variety types.
Cheap Talk 
5 comments
Comments feed for this article
October 21, 2011 at 7:08 am
Heski
I’m not sure I agree.
I was recently in Pennsylvania Dutch country … lots of people with pretty who to my mind have fairly odd tastes. I’m not sure “idiosyncratic” is enough.
If tastes are describable then why not just set up a “cheese-lover” community or whatever, and people who really care will move … certainly other instances of this beyond Pennsylvania – somewhat disturbingly, naturist communities come to mind.
I think really the issue (and this may be the way that you’re thinking about idiosyncratic and that I’m slow picking it up) is that people are not scalar types but multi-dimensional. If I’m sufficiently quirky in more than one dimension of the multi-dimensional space then really I want SEVERAL communities and cities start to look very good to me. If all I cared about what was fish chips, I’d be in Whitney. If all I cared about was living with Jews of Syrian-descent, I’d be in Deal, if I care a lot about finance i’d be in Greenwich, CT… etc The intersection is small and it’s in big cities
(It’s probably salient to me, not only as someone who at times has had quirkier tastes on several dimensions …middle age seems to narrow them fast … but also the paper with Vicente and Guillermo where we cite the Beastie Boys, was kind of related and has a little bit on demand side quasi-externalities and the benefits of living with people who have different tastes).
Thanks also for the link a few weeks back – never had that many people on my website and gave me some sense of the breadth of your readership.
March 21, 2014 at 3:08 am
Mitsukuni
You made some great points in sugiestgng a medical assistant start working for a family practitioner. I had never thought about it the way you put it, but I think it would be a great opportunity to see the many reasons why patients come in, and maybe later on decide which specialist you’d like to work along side. I share your same feelings with respect to working with a Proctologist, I think I would also have to have added incentive to make it work for me.
December 12, 2011 at 6:26 am
Addy
A perfect reply! Thanks for taking the turoble.
December 13, 2011 at 2:37 am
apmvndosy
xKTQbM rljrdbutsemc
December 14, 2011 at 11:35 am
vmhawobjvz
AFN44m sdwebyfvtnzx