Tom Forth @tomforth.co.uk · Aug 13 In most of the world, bigger cities have stronger economies. It happens in France, the USA, the Netherlands, Belgium, and on, and on. But not in Britain. In Britain, the bigger a city gets the weaker its economy is, except for London. This costs us dearly.
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If a key part of city growth is attracting skilled people, would the change in population over time also be a good indicator of city benefits? I.e. if Bordeaux population is increasing each year more than Sheffield,would that be a reason why businesses don't feel like Sheffield is a good investment?
I would be very curious to run the numbers for the US based on census designated metropolitan areas. I suspect that the highly fragmented nature of US municipal government affects the data quite a bit.
How does this count commuters? Bunch of ways that this could skew the stats. And the demographics of commuters are surely quite different between cities. Eg Oxford commuters are probably mostly people pushed out by rents (and therefore lower earners), whereas Brum commuters probably more mixed.
I think that part of why we're not fixing the problem is that most of our expert economists think about agglomeration and cities wrongly. They try and isolate the effect of city size from other thinks like sector mix and skill levels that are inseparable from city size.