The author claims that cities create the environments that fuel productivity, but not all cities do an adequate job. Those that do will fuel future economic growth.
Productivity at the national level has stalled since the Great Recession and even before. Productivity growth was 1.9 percent in the third quarter and just 1.5 percent for the past year. A number of leading economists, led by George Mason University's Tyler Cowen, argue that the United States has in fact entered into a period of prolonged stagnation, having exhausted its capacity for innovation and productivity improvement.
A very different picture emerges when we consider the United States not just as a single national economy but as a collection of city and metro economies. Some have dramatic productivity growth, while others are stagnating.
