Sure, the occasional magazine piece makes it into the canon of long-lived reads, the usual suspects of Joseph Mitchell, Jane Jacobs, E.

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This gives weight to what urban theorists such as the late Jane Jacobs have long argued: that cities foster the exchange of ideas.

ECONOMIST: Urban research

Jane Jacobs envisioned this transformative churning in her landmark book The Economy of Cities--a process in which the poor, making the best of their circumstances, create substitutes for expensive imports and eventually develop superior products for export.

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