In Why America’s Richest Cities Keep Getting Richer, a 2017 article in The Atlantic, urban studies professor and author Richard Florida wrote: “The most important and innovative industries and the most talented, most ambitious, and wealthiest people are converging as never before in a relative handful of leading superstar cities that are knowledge and tech hubs. This small group of elite places forge ever forward, while most others struggle, stagnate, or fall behind… They are not just the places where the most ambitious and most talented people want to be - they are where such people feel they need to be.”
Knowledge-intensive industries have long been centered in cities and surrounding metropolitan areas, where they’ve had the most access to a college educated, high skill workforce. But, - from Milan to New York, - high density, globally connected urban areas have been ground zero for the spread of Covid-19. Are cities now at risk of losing the superstar status they’ve enjoyed over the past several decades?
This is not the first time we’ve asked this question in the recent past. In the mid-late 1990s, some predicted that the Internet would lead to the decline of cities, because it would enable people to work and shop from home, be in touch with their friends over e-mail, and get access to news and entertainment online. But, instead of declining, megacities have continued to generate the greatest levels of innovation and good jobs, and thus attract a disproportionate share of the world’s talent.
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