The Wealth of Cities and the Poverty of Nations

By: Prof. Christof Parnreiter

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Paperback | 26 November 2024

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160 Pages

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23.4 x 15.6 x 1.2

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Cities are seen as essentially "good": innovative, pro-growth, poverty-reducing. In a challenging corrective to this common portrayal, Christof Parnreiter argues that the same urban properties which make cities so extraordinarily proficient at producing the "good" innovations - agglomeration economies, network externalities and a massive built environment - also provides fertile ground for the development of the "bad" ones, on which urban elites have syphoned off wealth from other localities and regions.

The book scrutinizes the interconnections between wealth creation and poverty generation by putting cities centre stage as a fundamental explanatory category for understanding how the wealth of nations is produced as well as for grasping how the poverty of nations is created. It seeks to correct the developmentalist enthusiasm, commonplace in urban and regional studies, for cities' efficiency, which has displaced interest in cities' role in uneven development.

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Parnreiter presents an urgent corrective lens to pierce the proliferating facades of urban recreation to reveal the grim state of nations. Whether this is caused by cities is a question Parnreiter explores. This vista should inform the nascent discourse about making new cities that are neither shanty towns nor gleaming bunkers.

-- Saskia Sassen, Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology, Columbia University

Just as the idea of the "triumph" of the city and the driving force of agglomeration economies has become hegemonic, Christof Parnreiter reminds us of the important counterpoint of the city's dark side. This is required reading for those that want to know what the "urban age" is really about.

-- Michiel van Meeteren, Assistant Professor in Human Geography, Utrecht University

Cities are inherently complex. The development of cities never creates simple outcomes. These truisms are often missing from recent studies of contemporary urbanization. Parnreiter provides a convincing, and very necessary, corrective to laudatory promotions of cities today.

-- Peter J. Taylor, Director of Globalisation and World Cities (GaWC) research network

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