Is the World Still Spiky?

Richard Florida insists the world is spiky. Geography still matters. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Touting that geography still matters is a straw man. Geography matters whether or not the world is spiky. Spiky is one pattern (economic divergence). The flat world pattern (economic convergence) is another. Urbanists fawn over Richard Florida's normative spiky geography. Denser cities are the best way to organize space. Sprawl (flat world) is bad. If the world is more spiky (spikier?), urbanism is winning. Suburbanism is losing. Urbanism is dying:

It’s been dubbed the e-change movement, where people move from the city to the country, using the internet to make a living. Garlick is not alone in making the move. The recent Super Connected Lifestyle Locations (SCLL) report identified more than 600 “lifestyle towns”, from Kiama in NSW to Ballarat in Victoria. With the rise of silicon suburbs in regional areas outside our capital cities, demographer Bernard Salt says, “We are witnessing a quiet lifestyle revolution in suburban Australia.”

Since I own the nauseating X place is dying meme, I get to explain. There is no zero-sum game between urban and rural. There is no zero-sum game between urban and suburban. Spiky and sprawl are not mutually exclusive geographic patterns. Sometimes, the world is flatter because it is so spiky. London is flatter because it is so spiky:

I’d expect future London émigrés to consider the European sunbelt, which stretches from Lisbon to the delightful Albanian coast. The Mediterranean is the perfect place to live as long as you aren’t part of the local economy. London is the opposite: the ideal is to be part of the economy without living there. The logical thing to do (presuming Brexit doesn’t happen) is to arbitrage the two: live on the Med and work for a London company. This will be an obvious decision for the next generation of knowledge workers, for whom the concept of a daily commute to an office will probably seem baffling.

For the next generation of knowledge workers, it will be dubbed the e-change movement. Work in London, live in Lisbon. Technology will make today's daily commute seem baffling. The world is flat for workers who have a remuneration connection to spiky London.

One can't arbitrage London unless one lives and toils there. The world is spiky. To live and toil in London is to desire escape. The world is flat.

The Rust Belt is spiky. The Sun Belt is flat. The spiky Rust Belt made the flat Sun Belt possible. For African-Americans, Atlanta is Chicago sprawl.