Keys to the City : How Economics, Institutions, Social Interaction, and Politics Shape Development.

What explains the geographical unevenness of economic activity, people, and innovation such that prosperous cities like San Francisco, Shanghai, and London exist simultaneously with destitute cities like Detroit, Halle in Germany, and Bytom in Poland? Storper (geography and urban planning, UCLA) argues that sorting can be explained by four factors: the forces driving industrial location; institutions such as informal networks of entrepreneurs; social interactions emanating from local face-to-face contacts; and political conditions such as fragmented governance structures and redistributive policies. A good deal of emphasis is placed on innovation and the "local genius" (chapter 10) that generates new technological changes when innovations inevitably diffuse into the wider economy. Storper's central claim is that "economic development is fundamentally about the productive forces of a region [that] largely determine its skill mix, population changes, and income level." Written for a reader already well versed in spatial economics, this work makes rich use of the literature and offers a strong point of view that distinguishes among opposing theories and seemingly irreconcilable research. This is an intelligent, important book. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, researchers. R. A. Beauregard Columbia University