If You Build It They Will Come

Last month I attended the World Maker Faire in Queens, NY. On the way to the parking location at Citi Field, I stumbled across the most delightful thing: an example of emergence.

I pulled the above image from google maps Street View. It is a photograph from Willets Point, the road next to the parking lot. Amazingly, this entire 10 block area of Queens is totally populated with auto repair shops. There are over 50 of them, packed tightly into a smoggy haze of storefronts.

My first thought was about Laissez-faire economics.

But my second thought was about ants.

How Ants Find Food

This is not a Jackson Pollack:

It is a map of pheromone trails produced by a colony of ants. Notice the thick red lines on the left and right of the image. Those are where, by accident, a single ant discovered food.

Once the first ant nabbed the food, more ants converged on his path. A dense highway of hungry arthropods quickly cut this path from the chaotic web of random trails. This is a type of emergence called stigmergy, which happens when the interactions of elements in a system take the form of environmental modifications.

The Auto Shops at Willets Point

This cluster of auto repair shops is another example of stigmergy. Willets Point was not designed by a city planner; it grew organically through interactions of business owners and customers over time.

It began when someone decided that there was a market demand for an auto repair service in Queens. Within a certain geographic radius, she became the only shop that could repair cars. At first, business was tough because only a few people knew about her service. But over time, word spread about her business, and she was soon enjoying healthy profits.

Then, another businessman noticed how well she was doing. Perhaps he was a customer, and on his way out he noticed that the lot just ahead of her on the street was available for lease.

This gave him an idea.

“Perhaps I could open up an auto shop just ahead of hers, and take some of her customers!”

Thus, shop #2 was born.

These two competing services became locked in a price war to claim marketshare. Over time, their total addressable markets grew as people flocked from further away for the lower prices. This allowed the market to stabilize and both owners to remain operational.

Over time the street acquired a reputation as “the place in Queens for auto repair.” Thus, when a new entrepreneur decided to start a new auto shop, Willets Point was the only logical location. This feedback loop persisted for several years, and today there are over 50 services in this single block. These business owners probably have the same vendors, swap best practices, and hang out at the same places. A brand new “Queen’s auto repair” culture has been created from simple market dynamics.

That is emergence, a neighborhood designed not by a city planner, but rather the aggregated actions of individuals.

That was going to be this entire blog post, but I showed a draft to a friend who decided to research this area of Queens in more detail. I’m glad he did, the place has a name: “The Iron Triangle.” We also found this short documentary, which highlights the culture that has developed in the area. Within the first 30 seconds, it even describes how price cutting increased the total addressable market of the community of auto repair services.

__________________________________________________________________

More From Sean Newman Maroni at seanmaroni.com