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 are, according to this, the most remote regions.

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.