# Big cities, small cities, and automation

By [Brandon Donnelly](https://brandondonnelly.com) · 2017-03-20

ai, automation, education, new-york-times, segregation, uncategorized, urban-segration, urbanism, urbanization

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It’s fine to talk about [the importance of big cities](http://brandondonnelly.com/post/158525947428/top-10-city-regions-by-gdp-and-comparable) in today’s world, but there’s another side of this coin to consider. What happens to the towns and smaller cities who aren’t guiding the global economy?

Here is an interesting snippet from [the NY Times](https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/03/16/opinion/why-im-moving-home.html?emc=eta1&_r=0&referer=&utm_content=buffer9906d&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer) that recently caught my attention:

> _As one of my college professors recently told me about higher education, “The sociological role we play is to suck talent out of small towns and redistribute it to big cities.” There have always been regional and class inequalities in our society, but the data tells us that we’re living through a unique period of segregation._  

If you combine the above with the fact that [a significant number of jobs are likely to be automated](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/12/stephen-hawking-this-will-be-the-impact-of-automation-and-ai-on-jobs) in the near term, one has to wonder what the world is going to look like assuming the status quo continues.

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*Originally published on [Brandon Donnelly](https://brandondonnelly.com/big-cities,-small-cities,-and-automation)*