Mapping the New York fashion scene, minute by minute
A new study shows New York fashion designers don’t just flock to trends: They also do nearly all their business within the confines of the city’s historic Garment District.Study co-authors Sarah Williams of MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning and Elizabeth Currid-Halkett of the University of Southern California’s Price School of Public Policy used the social networking app Foursquare to track the movements of fashion workers at apparel firms in the New York metropolitan area over a two-week period — an unprecedented use of social media and smartphones for such research. Their study, published today in the journal PLoS ONE, bears on the larger issue of proximity in urban economies, and suggests that having clusters of firms remains essential to economic activity — whether in New York or in rebuilding cities such as Detroit and Buffalo.The study’s authors found that 77 percent of all trips made by fashion designers...