# Winner-take-all cities

By [Brandon Donnelly](https://brandondonnelly.com) · 2017-11-07

alpha-cities, billionaires, cities, global-cities, innovation, knowledge-economy, richard-florida, super-rich, superstar-cities, uncategorized, urbanism, winner-take-all

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![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/919a8611681b78de51b7f75afc086fb6.png)

Richard Florida, Charlotta Mellander, and Karen M. King have a new working paper out called [Winner-Take-All Cities](http://martinprosperity.org/media/2017-MPIWP-002_Winner-Take-All-Cities_Florida-Mellander-King.pdf).

It is about the phenomenon of “winner-take-all urbanism” and how a select number of alpha cities seem to overrepresent when it comes to talent, economic activity, innovation, and wealth creation.

In this study they look at economic output, innovation (venture capital-backed startups), and billionaire wealth in each city. They then compare these factors to the distribution of the population.

Here are the Alpha cities they looked at:

![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/8e52e3280a04714aa5d3b8dc130494ec.png)

In some cases the above concentrations were multiples of what the city’s population would lead you to predict. Their conclusion: “We find clear evidence of a winner-take-all urbanism across the global economy and the world’s cities.”

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*Originally published on [Brandon Donnelly](https://brandondonnelly.com/winner-take-all-cities)*