#agglomeration

The Fiume/Sušak Question presented by the "Comité Yougoslave" in Paris in 1920.

During the Versailles negotiations, the Italians presented Fiume as a separate city, while the Yugoslavs presented Fiume and Sušak as an agglomeration.

According to the Yugoslav committee, in 1910 45.048 Yugoslavs and 24.870 Italians lived in the Fiume/Sušak region, which includes all surrounding towns.

We often talk about agglomeration economies in terms of their horizontal clustering within cities. But a new paper in the Journal of Urban Economics -- summarized here by Richard Florida -- has looked at the other dimension: the vertical clustering of economic activity within tall buildings. 

Here is an excerpt from Florida’s piece in CityLab:

Economic activity is also sorted vertically, with higher-profile and more profitable firms occupying higher building floors. Law offices are disproportionately represented on the highest floors, taking up more than a third of floor space above the 40th floor, compared to 12 percent of floor space between the second and 40th floors. Finance, insurance, and real estate take up roughly 20 percent of floor space above the 40th floor, compared to 23 percent between the second and 40th floors. Business services, engineering, and miscellaneous other industries are also more likely to take up more space below the 40th floor.

The other takeaway is that there appears to be a greater rent premium attached to higher floors (vertical movement) than for being located closer to the central business district (horizontal movement). This surprised me. But I also don’t have access to the full paper. Is the dataset just US cities?

when I saw them together, the vision struck me as an image of a single many-handed animal, an agglomeration of limbs in space, and Ronald was of course the center of the agglomeration. I felt a pang of jealousy, but could not tell if it was for Ronald or for a position that he seemed to always occupy so effortlessly. he was sitting in a completely relaxed pose, as he often did on the seminars–one leg folded under his graceful body, an elbow placed on the arm of the chair next to him–he had just finished telling a story, and everyone was laughing: Clara threw her head back, her throat open–I had indeed not seen her laughing with such self-forgetfulness before–Flora was the laudest as usual, her mouth so big it was a wonder how it fitted her miniature face–all her face was this terrifying mouth and two huge brown eyes–Miguel was standing behind, hidden behind his beard and glasses, he was also laughing quietly; Diana had started something in connection to the story, but Polly quickly interrupted her with her own anecdote, yet more hilarious. Ronald launched another tirade, throwing a glance at me–his stories usually were on someone’s expenses, and mercilessly funny–it was a disarming glance of greeting, of joy, of acknowledgement, a fleeting sign of special, warm attention, and jealousy released its grip on me for a second. Flora gave me a hug on behalf of everyone, so to speak, and asked how I was. I was sick that spring. on that day I was better though. I thought about agglomeration of people and objects, assemblages coming together and dispersing, like in a kaleidoscope, and that I am now a part of this particular assemblage, another body in a composition of bodies–if a painter did a painting depicting them-us, there would have been a continuity to shadows and forms.

I marveled at that glance of Ronald for a long time after; there was something not fully human to that glance, it was razor quick and so bright it could have me blinded, and it was a glance of not just an exceptionally smart animal but the animal

which included all those people present and all those in the huge hall– as if they were not separate entities, but members of the whole,

in short,

one of such glances evoked to life the very idea of a six-winged seraph many centuries ago first in someone’s mind,

the glance that he gave me was that of an angel who knew all the hidden enigmas of mechanisms populating the earth, and as he did, someone rotated slightly the lousy end of a black fabric belt on their coat, as if Ronald

glanced at me and WAVED HIS TAIL.

the most surreal impression! an eery coincidence

several years later, I asked him if he ever had sex with a woman, and he said, yes. I asked, if he liked it, and he said, yes. “but I am a faggot; I can’t help it.”

always adored him greatly and enviously.