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By Root 1632 0

they get from discussions with other skilled professionals. They need to share information and ideas it might be hard to spell out in writing—economists use the phrase “tacit knowledge” for this. In traditional manufacturing, say auto assembly in the 1970s, it was relatively straightforward to set out a lot of what workers needed to know in a manual or teach it in a brief training course. Experience accumulated over many years would certainly make them better at their job, more productive. But by comparison, it would be almost impossible to train a new programmer the same way—she or he will have a college degree at least and will also need the continual stimulus of discussion and brainstorming with colleagues.

The fact is that the most productive parts of the economy now are, counterintuitively perhaps, dependent on face-to-face contact. The fact that computers have taken over much of the mundane activity that used to constitute work mean that humans are now much more likely to have to do the things that computers can’t—have ideas, be creative, provide service. New ideas or creative impulses tend to come from other people. Universities have always known this, bringing scholars together in one place, and students to the same place to learn in person. Very many more of us now need the stimulus of other people to do our jobs productively.

Figure 11. Urban Babel.

So we are congregating more than ever in what are often called “global cities,” very large and still growing urban agglomerations with concentrations of high-value industries making heavy use of ICTs. And there is a snowball effect. Concentrations of highly skilled and well-paid professionals lure other industries to the same place and particularly service industries. All those high-value-added creative people need schools, hospitals, restaurants, cleaners, and shops. So the same global cities have also attracted large numbers of migrants—often immigrants from much poorer countries—to fill all of those jobs. These urban agglomerations have grown substantially since 1980 and have a diversity of population that is remarkable compared to a generation ago. They combine in the same exciting, dynamic, diverse geographical area both the extremes of the modern economy, the highly paid, creative professionals and the poorly paid workers in drudge service industries. They have museums and expensive shops alongside slum housing and discount stores, often just across the street. They have the best and the worst, and they are the dynamos of the whole economy.29

The global cities are the frontier of the economy. They are both exciting and alarming places, magnets for all that’s good and bad in modern societies. Most have pockets of seemingly intractable poverty and crime, while some seem to be irredeemably scarred by social disorder and crime. They are the hubs of global multinational enterprises, centers of the drugs and people trafficking trades. Yet other parts of many huge global cities are astonishingly peaceful and civilized given the number and variety of people living and working in them, and the strains of urban life in a megacity. The level of trust prevailing is a marker of the city’s economic success. A face-to-face city at the leading edge of the economy can only function if there is a high level of trust or social capital.

Take my home city, London. Its population has increased from 6.8 million in 1981 to 7.6 million today. Twenty five years ago, 18 percent of the population were immigrants to the United Kingdom, mainly (three-quarters) from former colonies. Now 31 percent are foreign born and they originate from more than forty-seven countries. In 1981 14 percent of Londoners were not of “white British” origin (either because they are immigrants or are the children of nonwhite immigrants); the figure is now 42 percent.30 It is a large city geographically, but these millions still live at quite a high density per square mile. Their languages and cultural expectations vary hugely. Over that same quarter century, crime rates have fallen, and particularly crimes