You know,, Berlin is the capital city of Germany, so your Berlin example exactly supports my point. People who are motivated to succeed naturally flock to a city with access to the largest audience, as long as they can afford it, since that raises your chance of success.
I was just pointing out this Patti Smith person is completely mistaken about what made herself successful, she thinks it's all her doing but she's forgetting she was at the right place at the right time (and of course with the right content she provided). My whole argument is if you compare larger cities with any other smaller towns, everything is easier (only drawback is money), and that's why people naturally flock to larger cities. My argument has nothing to do with whether legwork is necessary or not, it's just about how people can only create "scenes" where it makes sense. It's delusional to think that they could have created it anywhere else.
Right, Berlin is the capital of Germany, but the reason I brought it up as a counterexample for New York is that the Cold War and aftermath left it economically depressed for decades. Until quite recently, rents there were very cheap (on all kinds of interesting spaces), and the art scene flourished.
(And meta note: thank-you for editing your post to be more civil. It looks like your account is relatively new, so I'm going to leave a link here to HN comment etiquette in case you haven't seen it before [1].)
I think art has existed and will exist no matter how shitty the situation is. I'm not even arguing New York is better than Germany. This is where I think there was a misunderstanding, because I've been just talking about how "creating a scene" is not something you can just do anywhere, it has nothing to do with money and has everything to do with population and audience.
To create a scene, you go to a concentrated enough place to gather people. Why would anyone decide to go to middle of nowhere and try to create a group of like minded people? (Again, i'm talking about the past, I do think it is possible nowadays with the Internet)
When you say rents were very cheap and depressed in Berlin, I doubt that it was cheaper or more depressed than other parts of Germany. Where would German artists go for larger population? Berlin. Unless you think german artists should have and could have created a "scene" from a smaller town in germany, I don't think we are disagreeing about anything.
I was just pointing out this Patti Smith person is completely mistaken about what made herself successful, she thinks it's all her doing but she's forgetting she was at the right place at the right time (and of course with the right content she provided). My whole argument is if you compare larger cities with any other smaller towns, everything is easier (only drawback is money), and that's why people naturally flock to larger cities. My argument has nothing to do with whether legwork is necessary or not, it's just about how people can only create "scenes" where it makes sense. It's delusional to think that they could have created it anywhere else.