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

Why do some cities grow economically while others decline? Why do some show sustained economic performance while others cycle up and down? In Keys to the City, Michael Storper, one of the world's leading economic geographers, looks at why we should consider economic development issues within a regional context--at the level of the city-region--and why urban economies develop unequally. Storper identifies four contexts that shape urban economic development: economic, institutional, innovational, interactional, and political. The book explores how these contexts operate and how they interact, leading to developmental success in some regions and failure in others. Demonstrating that the global economy is increasingly driven by its major cities, the keys to the city are the keys to global development. In his conclusion, Storper specifies eight rules of economic development targeted at policymakers. Keys to the City explains why economists, sociologists, and political scientists should take geography seriously.

Michael Storper is professor of economic geography at the London School of Economics and Political Science, professor of economic sociology at Sciences Po in Paris, and professor of urban planning and geography at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of The Regional World: Territorial Development in a Global Economy.