The Rise and Fall of Urban Economies: Lessons from San Francisco and Los Angeles (Innovation and Technology in the World Economy)

Michael Storper

Cover of The Rise and Fall of Urban Economies: Lessons from San Francisco and Los Angeles (Innovation and Technology in the World Economy)

Today, the Bay Area is home to the most successful knowledge economy in America, while Los Angeles has fallen progressively further behind its neighbor to the north and a number of other American metropolises. Yet, in 1970, experts would have predicted that L.A. would outpace San Francisco in population, income, economic power, and influence. The usual factors used to explain urban growth—luck, immigration, local economic policies, and the pool of skilled labor—do not account for the contrast between the two cities and their fates. So what does? The Rise and Fall of Urban Economies challenges many of the conventional notions about economic development and sheds new light on its workings. The authors argue that it is essential to understand the interactions of three major components—economic specialization, human capital formation, and institutional factors—to determine how well a regional economy will cope with new opportunities and challenges. Drawing on economics, sociology, political science, and geography, they argue that the economic development of metropolitan regions hinges on previously underexplored capacities for organizational change in firms, networks of people, and networks of leaders. By studying San Francisco and Los Angeles in unprecedented levels of depth, this book extracts lessons for the field of economic development studies and urban regions around the world.

Author
Michael Storper
Additional authors
Thomas Kemeny, Naji Makarem, Taner Osman
Edition published
September 2, 2015
Publication year
2015
My rating
3/5
Goodreads rating
3.61/5 from 33 ratings and 3 reviews
Read
November 4, 2016
Publisher
Stanford Business Books
Edition
Kindle Edition · 416 pages
Language
English
Genres
Economics
ISBN
9780804796026
Added
September 12, 2016
Times read
1
Owned copies
0
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