All Annotations of Richard Florida and The Creative Class Exchange: Mega Debate[Preview]

saved byYule Heibel on 2008-04-15

• It is also increasingly clear that urbanization, in general, is an important component of productivity.  Careful studies of US-Canadian regional productivity and competitiveness by my colleague Roger Martin and the Institute for Competitiveness and Prosperity show that urbanization is a key component of the difference. Anyway you slice it urbanization is important to economic growth.
• agent-based models which show how clusters, then cities, then metros and then mega-regions form based on these human capital externalities.
• The Santa Fe Institute PNAS paper on urban scaling also shows how urban metabolic rates essentially speed up to offset "negative spillovers" like traffic congestion which Krugman mentions.
• But let me get to the nub of the matter. Nations are political jurisdictions. Metros are constructed from data on commuting patterns and the like.  Mega-regions, as we define them, reflect an observable physical reality.  If an alien were to descend from space into the earth's atmosphere what would he see?  He would not be able to discern the world's 191 or so nation-states, nor would he be able to easily pick up metros (which blur into megas). He would see mountains and oceans in the daytime, and mega-regions at night. Mega-regions of all man-made geographic phenomena are a readily observable unit.