In praise of Boise 树城礼赞

MOUNTAIN bikes hang from a rack in the offices of Balihoo, a software firm in Boise, Idaho. Many Balihoo staff cycle to work, including the boss, Pete Gombert. Asked why he moved to Boise, Mr Gombert raves about the quality of life. The sun shines for 300 days a year. Crime is as rare as the colossal steaks. And the great outdoors is only a few blocks away. Mr Gombert loves to fish, hike and ski. Also, since both of his children have taken up golf, he selflessly plays with them at weekends.
在树城，软件公司Balihoo的办公楼前停放着一排山地车——包括老板皮特·戈伯特在内很多Balihoo员工都骑车上班。如果问起戈伯特先生搬来树城的原因，他就会对这里的生活品质大加赞赏：一年之中300天阳光普照，犯罪事件凤毛麟角，而醉心的户外景致就近在咫尺。Gombert先生酷爱垂钓、登山和滑雪，而且自从他的两个孩子玩起了高尔夫，每个周末戈伯特先生又得以忘情地与子女们一起打球。

There is a lot of space in Boise. A 25-mile green belt runs through the city. The nearby foothills are latticed with biking trails. At 3,000 people per square mile, the population density is less than a twentieth of Manhattan’s. Yet although Boise is remote—the nearest big city is 340 miles away—it is no backwater. Since 1978 it has been home to Micron, a large semiconductor firm. (The local potato billionaire was an early investor, leading to inevitable jokes about the shift from chips to microchips.) A cluster of high-tech start-ups has appeared. Surprisingly, between 2005 and 2007 Idaho generated more patents per worker than any other state.
树城地域宽广，长达25英里的绿化带贯穿整个城市，一条条自行车道点缀了她附近的麓山小丘。3000人／平方英里的人口密度比曼哈顿的二十分之一还要稀疏。尽管树城位置偏僻——与最近的大城市相距340英里——但此地绝非穷乡辟壤。自1978年以来，她已成为大型半导体公司Micron的家（当地土豆起家的亿万富翁是其早期的投资者，这使得人们忍不住开玩笑说这是从薯片到芯片的产业变革。），一群高新企业也在这里问世。而更令人惊讶的是，在2005至2007年间，爱荷达洲（树城所在州）技术人员人均取得的专利数为全美第一。更多信息请访问：http://www.24en.com/

Brain workers like to live near each other. It is easier to keep up with the latest ideas if you keep bumping into other people who work in the same field. As Alfred Marshall, an English economist, wrote in 1890: in industrial clusters “the mysteries of the trade become no mystery, but are, as it were, in the air.” That is why geeks flock to Silicon Valley and financiers converge on New York. But such clusters can become victims of their own success. When a hotspot gets too hot, it becomes expensive to live there, which spurs some brainy people—especially those with children—to migrate to places that are not quite so hot but more liveable. The population of the Boise-Nampa metro area has nearly doubled in the past two decades, sparking a property bubble. Yet housing is still laughably cheap: $150,000 buys you a spacious house with a garden. In the nice parts of Palo Alto, it buys you a poky flat.
科技人员喜欢和同行比邻而居。因为如果你不停地和同行巧遇，那么跟上科技的潮流就相对容易。正如英国经济学家阿尔弗雷德·马歇尔在1890年所写：在产业集群里，贸易的奥秘已不再神秘：它一直都是信息的传播。这就解释了为何科学怪才们成群结队的来到硅谷，而金融家自从八方云集到纽约。然而，这些成功的人才们也有可能因福得祸：当一个热点城市变得太过热门，当地的生活用就会变得昂贵。这就促使一些精英人士——尤其是那些有孩子的——迁居到不那么热门而又宜家宜居的地方。树城-南帕地铁区的人口在过去的20年里增加了将近一倍，由此触发了当地房地产泡沫，可房价还是不可思议的便宜：15万美元你就可以买一栋既宽敞还带花园的住宅，而在热门的帕罗奥多（位于加州）同样的价钱买到的是狭窄拥挤的公寓。

The internet lets people compare cities and neighbourhoods by whatever criteria matter to them, from house prices to commuting times. That gives a boost to remote but agreeable locales. Also thanks to the internet, people can now live far from the madding crowd and yet remain abreast of its ignoble strife. “What Karl Marx called ‘the idiocy of rural life’ no longer applies,” writes Joel Kotkin, a demographer, in a book called “The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050”. A brain worker in Boise has the same access to technical and market information as her rival in San Francisco. In her leisure time, she can download the same books and films. She may not have the same choice of avant-garde theatre, but that is a sacrifice she may be content to make.
互联网使得人们能够从任何他们所关心的方面，对城市和街区进行比较：房价、通勤等等。这就促进了一些偏远、但舒适惬意的地区快速发展。同样也是因为互联网，人们得以住在远离喧嚣和尔虞我诈的地段。人口统计学家乔尔·科特金在一本名为《下一百年：2050年的美国》的书中写道：“卡尔马克思所谓的‘愚蠢的乡下生活’已一去不复返”：树城的科技人员与其远在旧金山的对手，拥有一样的、取得技术和市场信息的渠道；在闲暇时光，他能下载一样的书籍和电影；虽然他可能对前卫剧院没得一样的选择，但这应该是（住在树城）他所乐意做出的牺牲。

America’s hinterland is often mocked. Cosmopolitans dismiss it as “flyover country”. Many assume that nothing interesting happens there. Yet as America’s population expands, much of the growth will occur where there is space. Mr Kotkin predicts a resurgence of the heartland, as Americans move away from the coasts in search of more room. The same forces will attract immigrants to places that have traditionally been lily-white. The Boise metro area already has a population that is 17% ethnic minority, mostly Hispanic or Asian. Restaurants serve Japanese cuisine with an Idaho twist: huge portions. “Life is easy here,” says Jinye Huo, a software engineer at Balihoo, whose home in Boise is four times larger than her old flat in Beijing.
美国的内陆常常遭遇冷嘲热讽。世界主义者们戏谑，这些地方只有坐在飞机上才可得见。还有很多人则认为内陆了无生趣。然而随着美国人口的扩增，多数增加的人口将会出现在这些空间充足的区域。科特金先生针对美国人离开沿海搜寻家园的现象，预言将会出现“内陆复兴”的盛况；人口增长的力量同样也会吸引移民们将家安置在传统的白人区。树城地铁区的移民就已经占了总人口的17％，其中大部分为西班牙裔和亚裔，餐厅里供应将日系与爱荷达系结合的菜色，且分量充足。“这里的生活悠闲惬意。”Balihoo的软件工程师霍金叶（音译）说道——她在树城的家比她在北京的老公寓大四倍。

Others are less bullish about America’s wide open spaces. Many greens would prefer it if everyone lived in tiny energy-efficienturban apartments. Some go further. Deborah and Frank Popper, two academics from the north-east, once proposed emptying much of the Great Plains and creating a national park for buffalo. More pragmatically, Edward Glaeser of Harvard University argues that improvements in transport and communications technology will make “idea-producing” cities even denser. When new ideas can easily be sold around the world, he argues, the rewards for generating them rise, and brainy people will be lured to Boston and New York with ever-fatter pay packets.
另一些人则对于内陆广阔无垠的空间不那么看好。很多环保人士更倾向于将人们置于城市里狭小的节能公寓内。另一些则更激进：来自美国东北的学术人士Deborah和Frank Popper曾提议将大部分大平原地区（北美中西部的平原和河谷地区）清空以建立水牛国家公园。当然还有一些务实的，来自哈佛大学的 Edward Glaeser认为交通和通信技术的发展将使信息产业城市的人口更加密集。他解释道，由于新点子能够便捷地销往世界各地，创意的回报就水涨船高，进而导致那些富得流油的精英人士慕名来到波士顿和纽约。

Different strokes
萝卜青菜，各有所爱

Both Mr Kotkin and Mr Glaeser could be right. Some of the next 100m Americans will choose to live in towering mega-cities. Others will crave backyards big enough to play softball in. Who lives where will depend on public policy (zoning rules, petrol taxes, etc), on natural constraints (water, energy) and on individual tastes. But however birth rates and migration patterns change, America’s geographical size will be a huge advantage. It means that Americans can keep reproducing and welcoming immigrants without their country ever feeling crowded. If the population doubled, it would still be only a quarter as crowded as Britain is today, and less than a hundredth as crowded as Singapore. Vast swathes of land are almost empty. David Bieter, the mayor of Boise, says his city could easily double in size again.
科特金先生和格雷泽先生的看法可能都是正确的。在下一亿美国人中，有的将会选择住在高楼林立的大都市，而另一些则对大到可以玩垒球的后院垂涎三尺。人们选择住哪将与公共政策（区域规划准则和汽油税等）、自然因素（水和能源）以及个人品味有关。但无论出生率和迁移模式怎样变化，美国的地理广度都将是巨大的优势。广大的空间意味着,美国人能在不担心自己的国家越来越拥挤的情况下,不断地繁衍和欢迎广大的移民.即使美国人口加倍,其人口密度也只有现今英国的四分之一,甚至还少于新加坡的百分之一. 由于大片大片的土地几乎无人居住,树城的市长大卫·比特放言,他的城市可以轻易地再次扩张一倍。

Wide open spaces and the struggle to settle them are the keys to American culture, argued Frederick Jackson Turner, a historian, a century ago. The practical skills and rugged individualism of the frontiersfolk made the country prosperous, decentralised and democratic. Turner overstated his case, but America is far more decentralised than other rich countries. In Britain “there’s London, London and London,” says Mr Kotkin. In America there are scores of hubs. There is also a libertarian streak in America’s most sparsely-populated states. Only 10% of Idahoans trust the federal government, says Greg Hill, a professor at Boise State University. Butch Otter, the state’s governor, rebelled against both Obamacare and George Bush’s Patriot Act. "Don’t tread on me” was one of the first slogans of the American revolutionaries; and in the open spaces, no one needs to tread on anyone else.
历史学家弗雷德里克·杰克逊·特纳在一个世纪以前就认为,宽广无垠的空间以及致力于在新土地上安居乐业的精神是美国文化的精髓。拓荒者实用的技能和鲜明的个人主义使得美国走向了繁荣、分散和民主。当时的特纳无疑夸大了他的言辞，但现在的美国无疑比任何一个富国都要分散。科特金先生说道，在英国“除了伦敦还是伦敦”，但美国却拥有大量中心城市。在那些人烟稀少的州还有显著的自由特质。博伊西州立大学的格雷格·希尔教授说道,仅有10%的爱达荷州人信任联邦政府. 爱达荷州的官员布奇·奥特则对奥巴马的欧记健保和乔治布什的爱国者法案都持反对态度. 。“不要践踏我”曾是美国革命者的先驱口号,而在广阔无垠的州市,是没有人能”踩到”谁的。