The Wealth of Cities and the Poverty of Nations

A corrective to the view that cities are only ever “good”, arguing that the same urban properties which make cities so extraordinarily proficient at producing the good innovations also provides fertile ground for the development of the bad ones, on which urban elites have syphoned off wealth from other localities and regions.
Cities are seen as essentially good: innovative, pro-growth, poverty-reducing. In a challenging corrective to this common portrayal, Christof Parnreiter argues that the same urban properties which make cities so extraordinarily proficient at producing the good innovations agglomeration economies, network externalities and a massive built environment also provides fertile ground for the development of the bad ones, on which urban elites have syphoned off wealth from other localities and regions.The book scrutinizes the interconnections between wealth creation and poverty generation by putting cities centre stage as a f