Today’s article in the New York Times tracks the recent trend of large, multi-national corporations returning to cities as the location of their corporate headquarters. Companies like McDonald’s and General Electric, to name just two, are relocating to cities. We’ve known for some time that new economy companies like Zappos have invested in cities as a way to attract talent that would prefer the urban lifestyle. Even Detroit is having a renaissance of startup companies lured by the low rents and the dynamism of an urban setting. These developments mean a great deal for urban and regional economic development, but they can also threaten to accelerate gentrification and increase economic inequality.
In our book How Cities Will Save the World: Urban Innovation in the Face of Population Flows, Climate Change, and Economic Inequality, my co-editor, John Travis Marshall, and I, together with our authors from various disciplines, explore some of these issues and help chart out a course for urban innovation to grapple with the changes that are afoot for our urban centers, where seventy percent of the world’s population will live by 2050.
Check out How Cities Will Save the World here.
the Future of Change 
Leave a Reply