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Top 3 Spots Where New Yorkers Say They Do Their Best Thinking

By Nicole Levy | May 19, 2016 10:27am | Updated on May 19, 2016 10:31am
 Respondents to a Wakefield Research survey said these are their top three most inspiring places: Central Park, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Times Square.
Respondents to a Wakefield Research survey said these are their top three most inspiring places: Central Park, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Times Square.
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DNAinfo/Trevor Kapp; Getty/Spencer Platt; Twitter/TImesSquareNYC

Kvetch all you want about your daily subway commute — you're probably getting some good ideas from it.

Three out of four respondents to a survey on New Yorkers' creative tendencies said they come up with at least one creative idea while riding the subway. The online survey, conducted by Wakefield Research and scheduled for publication Thursday, reported that those subway brainstorms generated an average of four creative ideas a week.

Asked to rank the city's most inspiring places, respondents put Central Park (20 percent), the Metropolitan Museum of Art (17 percent) and Times Square (16 percent) at the top of their lists.

(Let's pause to reflect on this: out of the 1000 New Yorkers who were surveyed, 160 New Yorkers said they find Times Square's huge electronic billboards, milling tourists and tip-hungry costumed characters more inspiring than flowers at the New York Botanical Garden or the Brooklyn Bridge.)

Brooklynites showed a preference for the Brooklyn Bridge as their favorite spot for creative thinking, 18 percent choosing it compared to 11 percent of New Yorkers overall. And 20 percent of Bronx natives chose Yankee Stadium, compared to 8 percent of all respondents.

We're not surprised that, according to survey results, most New Yorkers find the "white noise of the city" more conducive to creative thinking than the hush of suburbia; they do choose to live here. Roughly two-thirds of the survey's respondents said they agreed with that statement.

New York creative types also hate thinking inside the corporate box, 68 percent agreeing with the claim that "a typical office conference room is a horrible environment for creative brainstorming."

They apparently prefer a different kind of box: three out of four survey takers said they "do some of their best work thinking in the bathroom," in the study's words. This was more true for parents than childless survey takers.

Data for the study was collected the week of May 4 from adult residents of the five boroughs who had previously agreed to take a profiling questionnaire and participate in academic and market research.

The study was commissioned by DesignIt, a design firm celebrating the opening of its first office in the Big Apple on Thursday.