On top of America’s long-running political divide between red and blue states, and its widening economic divide between the rich and the poor, there is a troubling gap between its geographic winners and losers. The United States is growing spatially more unequal, in ways that are ripping the country apart and threaten to undermine prosperity for all of us.
New data released earlier this week by Mark Muro and Jacob Whiton of the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program get to the heart of the matter. Bigger cities are prospering more than smaller cities, and much, much more than rural areas. And the trends are accelerating.
Between 2010 and 2016, the 53 largest metropolitan areas accounted for two-thirds of growth in economic output and almost three-quarters of job growth, despite making up just 56 percent of the country’s population. Between 2014 and 2016, these same metros accounted for 72 percent of economic growth and 74 percent of job growth.
[For more on this story by Richard Florida, go to https://www.citylab.com/equity...s-to-undo-us/551483/]
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