
What Makes Cities Great - rglovejoy
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/08/what-makes-cities-great/
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pchristensen
He's being too specific. Each city/region has relative strengths and
weaknesses, and each of these vary in importance over time. To remain
competitive, cities must use their current competitive advantage to build the
next one. This is more likely to happen if the value created by the current
advantage is shared among many agents.

Detroit and Pittsburgh suffer b/c too much of their value was held by a few
companies. Cities with a broader base of firms (financial industry in NYC,
tech in SV, entertainment in LA, etc) have a better chance to remain
competitive over time. Incidentally, this doesn't bode well for Seattle's long
term future as a tech center. Incidentally, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Cleveland,
etc were incredibly prosperous in their heyday because their competitive
advantage was so important and their firms so efficient at creating value from
it. Their fall from that point was therefore that much farther and more
poignant.

Cities like Cincinatti, St Louis, and Buffalo suffer because their original
advantage (access to inland waterways in the US) is less important now that
more manufacturing and trade is international. Ocean port cities like LA, NYC,
Tacoma, New Orleans, Tampa, etc have an advantage here.

Norway is a good example of using one advantage (North Sea oil and gas) to
fund future advantages (education, health care, sovereign wealth fund), while
the Texas/Houston energy economy is a good example of how having a rich
ecosystem of firms is more stable than a few vertically integrated firms.

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rmason
I think he is overlooking governance. In Michigan the leaders were in denial
over the loss of manufacturing and to this day spend millions chasing a
shrinking base of jobs. <http://www.mackinac.org/article.aspx?ID=11457>

Add to it a series of Detroit mayors who drove business away and looted the
city and its schools and you have a modern day third world city.

