Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

The majority of innovation is generated in cities. The city, an agglomerative space, creates the possibility of interactions. Shared-use transportation adds to the mobility options in cities. Access to mobility increases social and economic opportunities. Jacobs (1969) argued that cities exist to allow for the exchange of ideas and this contributes to the innovation occurring in cities. An increase in mobility options in a city could be the catalyst that increases the rate of interactive collisions, sparking new ideas, therefore generating positive economic growth.

In this paper, I conjecture that a relationship exists between mobility options and the creation of new ideas. When people have access to transportation it allows them to have greater access to opportunities (Preston and Rajé, 2007). As the relationship between work and society changes, physical mobility remains an essential tool for accessing a wide range of opportunities, but also for accessing other people and their ideas. Greater numbers of interactions between people, or “creative collisions,” generate new ideas. These interactions occur because of an individual’s mobility, or the ability to move physically. New mobility services, such as shared rides enabled by platforms, facilitate these interactions.

This paper seeks to better understand how mobility options can leverage social interaction to encourage the spread of new ideas. Measuring the impact of these new technologies is difficult, and yet with a trend toward building partnerships at the local level with new mobility service providers, local governments are gambling on the benefits of welcoming new mobility services into their communities. This paper attempts to measure the impact of the introduction of shared mobility services and uses a difference-in-difference model with the introduction of transportation network companies (TNCs) as a proxy for the catalyst leading to creative collisions. The first stage of analysis reveals that there is a small positive coefficient on the difference in difference estimator. The second stage of analysis will reveal a more complex model incorporating additional avenues for creative collisions. This research will strive to understand the prospects of increased connectivity through technological change, and the application to decision making by policy makers in city governments. The social interactions that are occurring are intimate between the service provider and the customer, perhaps creating more meaningful connections. These models increase the ability for individuals to travel seamlessly and interact with people they would not normally associate with. This research can help us understand the potential implications for a connected community’s impact on economic and social conditions.