Findings#
What 32 cities and 16 dimensions reveal about participation infrastructure.
No city has broken 50#
The highest CommonScore is 44 (Singapore). The “strong participation infrastructure” band starts at 40 — and only one city has reached it. Singapore did it through comprehensive government engineering: hawker centres, community centres in every constituency, SkillsFuture credits for every citizen, ActiveSG memberships for the entire population.
No city has achieved this through organic, bottom-up infrastructure alone. The closest are London and New York (both 38), which combine deep institutions (City Lit, CUNY, three library systems) with grassroots participation (Parkrun, off-off-Broadway, Borough Market).
The question for every city: what would it take to break 40?
Civic infrastructure is the strongest predictor#
In 28 of 32 cities, Civic & Community is the top or second dimension. Cities with strong public library systems lead the rankings. This is not a coincidence — libraries with meeting rooms, maker spaces, and event halls are the closest existing model to a commons.
| Top civic scores | Infrastructure |
|---|---|
| Helsinki 7.7 | Oodi (purpose-built commons) |
| Singapore 5.9 | 108 Community Clubs |
| New York 5.9 | 3 library systems, 200+ branches |
| Boston 5.9 | BPL system |
| Toronto 5.9 | TPL 100 branches + 152 rec centres |
| DC 5.9 | MLK Library + federal access |
Implication: If you want to raise your city’s CommonScore, invest in libraries and community centres. They’re already doing the work.
Convention center size doesn’t predict score#
McCormick Place is 2.6 million sq ft — the largest convention center in North America. Chicago scores 26. Oodi is 185,000 sq ft — not even a convention center. Helsinki scores 30. The building’s programming matters more than its size.
| Convention center | Size | City score |
|---|---|---|
| McCormick Place | 2.6M sq ft | 26 |
| Messe Berlin | 1.7M sq ft | 33 |
| ExCeL London | 1M sq ft | 38 |
| RAI Amsterdam | 915K sq ft | 32 |
| Oodi (library) | 185K sq ft | 30 |
Three models of participation#
| Model | Cities | How it works |
|---|---|---|
| Government-engineered | Singapore, Seoul, Mexico City | State builds and operates infrastructure at national/city scale |
| Institutional depth | New York, London, Boston, Toronto | Libraries, universities, and arts institutions accumulate over decades |
| Organic/distributed | Taipei, Portland, Austin, Medellín | Markets, food carts, tool libraries, maker spaces built from the bottom up |
No model is better — they produce comparable scores (35-44, 32-38, 24-28). But the government-engineered model reaches higher because it fills every dimension systematically, while organic models leave gaps.
The hawker centre is the highest-scoring single institution#
Singapore’s 122 hawker centres score 6.9 on Food — higher than any single institution in any dimension in any city. Pike Place Market scores 4.9. Oodi scores 7.7 on Civic but that’s for a purpose-built commons covering 7 dimensions.
Hawker centres are: government-built, vendor-operated, daily, universal access, UNESCO heritage, multigenerational. This is what “induced demand” looks like after 50 years of systematic investment.
Music cities aren’t participation cities#
Nashville’s “Music City” scores 14 — last in the dataset. Austin’s “Live Music Capital” scores 27, same as Seattle. The brand emphasizes watching bands (consumption). Participation infrastructure — rehearsal studios, open mics, affordable all-ages venues — is a different thing.
The highest Music dimension scores: Melbourne 3.4 (465 venues), Seoul 2.2 (Hongdae busking + noraebang), Nashville 2.8 (songwriter rounds — the one thing that IS participation).
Convention centers contribute 14-25% of city scores#
Every city follows the same pattern: the convention center contributes to Industry Networking and Mega-Events, and nothing else.
| City | CC share of score |
|---|---|
| San Diego | 25% (highest — thinnest city-wide infrastructure) |
| Seattle | 16% |
| Chicago | 15% |
| Helsinki | 10% |
| Singapore | 9% (lowest — deepest city-wide infrastructure) |
The policy question: What if the building served the other 14 dimensions too?
The tool library pattern#
Three cities have tool libraries scoring as maker participation infrastructure: Seattle (Capitol Hill Tool Library, since 2007), Toronto (Toronto Tool Library, 3 locations, 5,200 members), and Denver (Denver Tool Library). All are volunteer-run, community-funded, pay-what-you-can or low-cost.
This is the Phoenix Comics pattern applied to fabrication: proven daily demand at retail scale. The bottleneck is always space, never demand.
It doesn’t have to be a convention center#
The dataset is organized around convention centers, but the CommonScore framework applies to any large underutilized space. Former factories, vacant office towers, old department stores, decommissioned industrial sites — the participation question is the same: what if this building served the dimensions where the city scores lowest?
The precedents are already in the data:
| Conversion | Original use | What it became | City |
|---|---|---|---|
| 798 Art District | Electronics factory | 400+ galleries and studios | Beijing |
| Songshan Cultural Creative Park | Tobacco factory | Studios, workshops, performance | Taipei |
| De Hallen | Tram depot | Food hall, cinema, maker store | Amsterdam |
| NDSM Wharf | Shipyard | 250+ artist workspaces | Amsterdam |
| Westergasfabriek | Gas factory | 17-building creative complex | Berlin |
| Kaapelitehdas (Cable Factory) | Cable factory | Largest cultural center in Finland | Helsinki |
| The Brewery | Pabst brewery | 120+ artist live/work lofts | Los Angeles |
| Carriageworks | Railway workshop | Contemporary arts centre | Sydney |
| Michigan Central | Train station | Ford mobility campus | Detroit |
But scale matters. An art walk in a repurposed office building works at one scale — it’s a proof of concept, like Phoenix Comics for gaming or the Capitol Hill Tool Library for fabrication. Art Basel in a convention center works at another — 268 galleries, 83,000 attendees, $640M in renovated facility. Songshan Creative Park (former tobacco factory) is closer to the second than the first: institutional-scale repurposing with government backing, permanent studios, year-round programming.
The CommonScore doesn’t prescribe which buildings to repurpose. It identifies which dimensions have the largest gap between proven demand and available space — and the gap analysis works whether the candidate building is a convention center, an empty Macy’s, or a decommissioned power plant.
Geographic inequality shapes scores#
Cape Town (27) is the first city in the dataset where geographic inequality directly shapes the CommonScore. Participation infrastructure exists on both sides of the divide — Woodstock studios and township art projects, Sea Point pools and township sports clubs — but the distribution is uneven in ways other cities don’t face at the same scale.
The CommonScore measures what exists, not how equitably it’s distributed. A city where half the population can access participation space and half cannot scores the same as a city with universal access — as long as the total capacity exists. This is a known limitation.