Quote:
Originally Posted by LouisVanDerWright
That's the thing, there is no finite number. The fact that there isn't a finite number is why cities exist. When more successful people and businesses concentrate in one place, more opportunities to become successful are created. The more densely concentrated these businesses and individuals are, the more intense this agglomeration effect becomes. The more opportunities, the more people come looking for them and in turn start the cycle anew and generate even more opportunities themselves. That's why humans concentrate in cities to begin with.
So when a bunch of ritzy businesses like Scofflaw open up, you get aspiring mixologists flocking to work there. They all open more mixology bars like the whistler or Lost Lake and in turn the next crop of opportunities is generated. The owners of Scofflaw have done quite well for themselves and so have their subsequent offspring. Why? Because the initial risk taken and burst of creativity generated something new which is of value.
Point is, the more successful we are at creating desirable environments like Logan Square, the more rapidly we will see other parts of the city go down the same road.
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Well, there is a finite number right now, but it's really big - so big that most people can't imagine it. That's why I mentioned to spend a lot of time in Manhattan. NYC has it on a large scale, even if their COL is pretty high, it doesn't matter because tons of people make enough there. Chicago is the same way, but there's enough people here who don't understand that realm of the world that they call it into question. I spent a lot of time growing up in NYC and LA, but at the same time - when I moved to Chicago, I never could understand how there could be so many millionaires. Thought it was all a big lie, etc for the first bit of living here before realizing something about money and how many people actually have it. Someone with a salary of $90K in Chicago without kids is going to be spending some of it freely. There's more people in this type of situation, even people in their 20s, than most people even realize.
Chicago has always had it - it's a city and congregated by people looking for success who are able to get it at varying levels. We are now seeing it in the form of jobs within tech and consulting where literally tens of thousands of jobs have been created in this realm in the last few years and will be in the next few years. A lot of the people getting the jobs are not 45 year old guys with 3 kids (though some certainly are. A large majority are younger people, millennials, without a family and money to spend because the jobs pay pretty well on average (I saw two job postings at Avant recently for software developers. The high end for one was $150K and the high end for the senior position was $190K. These salaries even in NYC would be considered pretty high).
And the thing about creative engines congregating close together is an important one. The restaurant/bar one is obvious, but a little less obvious perhaps to some people are the startups that have happened here. There have been a bunch formed by guys who used to work in the area at larger companies like Motorola, IBM, Accenture, etc and now even Groupon and said "Whatever, I'm forming my own business." Making startups here is not only important from a jobs, revenue, new housing, etc perspective but they also attract talent - and some of that talent will eventually spin off and make their own companies as well and hire even more people into the city if they're successful too.
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