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Comment by qCOVET | Hacker News Reader

I think Universities need to actively promote common spaces where researchers and graduate students from different faculties could meet and talk about different ideas.

These common and fertile space would allow for collision of ideas to take place and help new innovations emerge.

Much like the english tea houses of the renaissance, Universities need these spaces to help transform ideas and research work into commercial success stories that would have a global and positive impact on humanity.

Author Steven Johnson: 'Where good ideas come from' - http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_johnson_where_good_ideas_com...

Note: For the sake of innovation, I very much support Beer Gardens and I hope it gets funded centrally in every University ~_~

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Few places in the world are as poor in terms of lack of public spaces as the US. Roadside cafes, town squares, etc. are the norm in Europe. In the US, very few cities have such features. They are increasingly common these days in the form of 'suburban town squares', but they are almost always in some shopping mall or similar commercial enterprise, rather than in truly public spaces. To further complicate matters, even in college towns, faculty and researchers prefer driving to work than riding public transport. Nowhere is this more common than in the American Midwest, with its combination of vast sprawls and severe winters.

> but they are almost always in some shopping mall or similar commercial enterprise, rather than in truly public spaces.

why would that matter at all?

Doesn't matter too much. Only problem is that it exists only so long as the mall developer is making a profit on the space. This is hardly true with say, the cultural districts of cities, where taxpayers foot the bill, and where there is intrinsic real estate value. Many cities have been successful with the latter model, Pittsburgh comes to mind- with its very town-square-ish Southside and Portland's Pearl District- both urban rejuvenation projects which did not involve converting the whole place into a massive mall.

How many strangers have you made acquaintance with in a mall?

Maybe it doesn't matter in theory, but in practice they're usually really different. Public spaces tend to emphasize nature more, and tend to be larger and quieter - an ideal environment for relaxing and letting the mind stretch out. Parks don't have an agenda. Commercial spaces typically are small, loud, and filled with kids. They're designed to be more about resting in between commercial activity.

Malls will throw you out if you clearly have no intent of buying anything.

Needs citation.

Noise and context. Mindset. The mall is a place where people go shopping - quick in, quick out, everyone is moving; lots of people in a closed space makes constant noise. It's not a place you go to to slow down and relax.

Whereas a park, and a café near it, are usually much more quiet, slow-going. People expect to be able to slow down and relax. In a café, there is no constant flow of customers, so the owner doesn't have the incentive to kick you out as soon as possible.

In my experience, a good bar or coffee shop on campus or juuuuust off campus is where great gelling happens. You are not 'in lab' and if there is beer, it is a very good indicator that you are relaxing (the chance of drowning sorrows is noted). You are essentially 'open' to conversation and talking about life. Being scientists,most of life is science, and the 'other' space allows for a freedom of thought and truth not afforded in a more sterile work environment. Also, the use of stimulants or depressants helps to kick people out of their ruts in addition to the new space.

Not all gelling happens in bars or cafes, but I do think they have a great correlation to great discoveries. In fact, I wonder what the actual data says? What does HN think are good metrics to measure this? Proximity to lab benches, cost of drinks, variety of foodstuffs, size of the shop?

Also, I wonder what the introduction of legal marijuana to those states will do to their use of 'other' spaces and areas that you can run into and talk with other researchers. Perhaps an alternative to stimulants and depressants, here being a mild hallucinogen with pot, will uncover new thoughts and ideas to benefit research.

They already do. Interdisciplinary is probably the biggest buzzword in academia today, architecture is designed to make people cross paths at the expense of inconvenicing them, etc. any good residental undergrad program has a strong coffee shop culture, debates in dorm common rooms long into the night, and inviting common spaces where faculty and students alike spend much of their time (though usually segregated by faculty/student and sometimes division).

I'd argue that in the US, no one does common spaces like a top-tier school.

One of the many reasons the residential nature of education matters and isn't obsoleted by MOOCs.

I remember reading Richard Feynman saying (in maybe Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!?) that he felt bad for the researchers who went off to think in a cabin in the woods because real breakthroughs came from explaining your ideas to and working with people in other fields.

HHMI, the organization that helped fund both researchers, created their first campus, Janelia (https://www.janelia.org/about-us), with that in mind. The wide open spaces and architecture as well as the pub "Bob's" provides plenty of places to chat. Janelia also holds dozens of conferences a year where researchers can relax together after sessions and chat.

The architecture of Stanford Bio-X's Clark Center (https://biox.stanford.edu/about/clark-center) targeted spontaneous meetings and discussion. There's a coffee shop on the third floor and wide open-air stairs in case you bump into someone.

Through at least the 1980's, the Infinite Corridor at MIT [1] was one of the best interaction generators I've encountered. Every hour, half the student body would walk down the Infinite Corridor in one direction while the other half walked it in the other direction. It was a simply brilliant use of large scale architectural planning, as you encountered half your classmates multiple times a day. It's still a powerful cultural factor but the campus building boom of the past couple decades has led to many students spending much more of their time sequestered in departmentally focused building clusters than was originally the case.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_Corridor

Sandy Pentland: "Social Physics: How Good Ideas Spread" | Talks at Google similar theme. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMBl0ttu-Ow I think its in this video that he talks about the productivity gains of the seemingly random exchanges of ideas, and the possibility to increase them by scheduling and thoughtfully designed common areas.

> I think Universities need to actively promote common spaces where researchers and graduate students from different faculties could meet and talk about different ideas.

I think all of human society could benefit from that. Human spaces should be common by default. Why not?

At the research facility that I worked there were so many talks and lectures from around the world and going around the world to talk I have no idea how they ever get any research done. Maybe it's just the Universities that lack this?

I bet a modern common space would be filled by people looking at their cellphones.

Perhaps it would have worked before smartphones, but I don't think it will any longer.

This is unnecessarily pessimistic. While there should be some smartphone use, people can look at their phones anywhere. People who need to use the space as intended will do so.

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