December 28, 2025 · View original
Canadian geographer Mario Polèse’s book, The Wealth and Poverty of Regions: Why Cities Matter, is not new. It was originally published in 2010. But it’s perhaps a good follow-up to yesterday’s post about the untethering of wealth. Here’s an excerpt from a review of the book by Jeb Brugmann:
> All cities, Polèse explains, share the same basic economic causes and effects. These are economies of localization (i.e., locating activities close together) and of urbanization (i.e., clustering lots of diverse activities together at scale). Polèse shows how these urban economies—usefully distinguished and defined in detail as economies of scale, proximity, diversity and concentration—combine with unique natural features and resource endowments, technology and infrastructure investments, national boundaries and market controls, and historical events to create quintessentially local and unique places. Every time he explains the status of another place—New York, London, Chicago, Paris, Montreal, the northern Mexico border, the North American west coast—he demonstrates again how the source code of geography combines with specific local and historical conditions to create a momentum of wealth or poverty.
The rich may have the means to tax-optimize through physical mobility, but the draw to established urban clusters remains strong, which is why it can be a challenge to stay away from them for more than 183 days. There is a “stickiness” to established cities that is the result of momentum and compounding over centuries.
Still, nothing is guaranteed, and there’s only so much that can be done if you’re swimming against a global landscape that is shifting away from you. Geography does matter. And today, the world’s economic center of gravity is rapidly shifting toward Asia. This is good for some cities and bad for others.
Cover photo by Zhu Hongzhi on Unsplash
