The Post-Partisan Emporium

Any city whose lifeblood ultimately depends on  hyper-globalization  and  hyper-financialization  will no longer be viable. The human migration from the countryside to cities has been an enduring feature of civilization.  Cities concentrate wealth, productivity and power, and so they're magnets to talent and capital, offering newcomers the greatest opportunities. Cities are efficient, packing population, productivity and wealth creation into small areas.  Slums and sweatshops are immensely profitable, and cramming people into centers of manufacturing is far more efficient than scattering people and production across a landscape. Cities generally arose on coastal harbors, navigable rivers  or the confluence of overland trade routes, as these hubs enabled profitable trade and transport of goods protected by defensible barriers. In sum, cities offered unmatchable advantages over more widely distributed settlements, trade and production. Given their typica...