Economic Geography
In 2009 the
World Bank published “Reshaping Economic Geograpy” a report on the field of
economic geography,
The report
is a full and detailed study on local, regional and global patterns of economic
geography. There are many subsections all of them very interesting. One of the
very first findings, the report describes, is about how people concentrate in
cities as economic development progress.
Cities
provide better economic opportunities than the countryside when countries are
poor. That generates migrations of peasants from the countryside looking for a
better quality of life in the city.
Interestingly,
when countries become rich the countryside starts to perform better and the
opposite migration happens. Concentration of population, gross product, and household
consumption levels off when countries are rich.
How can
economic geographic dispersion be measured? In page 76 of the same report, they
use Distance in time to sizable settlements.
Greenland,
north-eastern Siberia and Tibet
Apart from
geographic reasons, cultural differences is another obstacle for economic and
population concentration. Africa probably one
of the less concentrated is also one of the most cultural diverse.
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