For decades, America’s big coastal cities have been magnets for the nation’s best-educated and most highly skilled workers seeking not just good jobs but the amenities and diversity that those cities afford. Those cities attract “citizens of the world” working in occupations integrated with an increasingly globalized economy. As has been widely noted in the past few years, the social and political consequences of these “agglomeration effects”—the self-compounding ability of big cities to attract and deploy talent—has not been wholly positive, sparking socioeconomic resentment between the urban centers and the interior of the country.
Scholars and commentators on this phenomenon, like Richard Florida, described this talent concentration as a keystone of “winner-take-all-urbanism.” This is where the smart, wealthy, and happy become smarter, wealthier, and happier over time, while smaller cities, towns, and rural areas assume supportive roles in the national economic story or atrophy entirely. Imbalances also built up in our major cities, with the supply for housing and other services struggling to keep pace with demand, leading to rapidly escalating housing costs.
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