World Development Report 2009 : Reshaping Economic Geography

Places do well when they promote transformations along the dimensions of economic geography: higher densities as cities grow; shorter distances as workers and businesses migrate closer to density; and fewer divisions as nations lower their economic borders and enter world markets to take advantage o...

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Main Author: World Bank
Language:English
Published: World Bank 2012
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10986/5991
id okr-10986-5991
recordtype oai_dc
spelling okr-10986-59912021-04-23T14:02:24Z World Development Report 2009 : Reshaping Economic Geography World Bank decentralization economic activity economic concentration economic geography economic integration income industrialization inefficiency mercantilism per capita incomes Places do well when they promote transformations along the dimensions of economic geography: higher densities as cities grow; shorter distances as workers and businesses migrate closer to density; and fewer divisions as nations lower their economic borders and enter world markets to take advantage of scale and trade in specialized products. World Development Report 2009 concludes that the transformations along these three dimensions density, distance, and division are essential for development and should be encouraged. The conclusion is controversial. Slum-dwellers now number a billion, but the rush to cities continues. A billion people live in lagging areas of developing nations, remote from globalizations many benefits. And poverty and high mortality persist among the world’s bottom billion, trapped without access to global markets, even as others grow more prosperous and live ever longer lives. Concern for these three intersecting billions often comes with the prescription that growth must be spatially balanced. This report has a different message: economic growth will be unbalanced. To try to spread it out is to discourage it to fight prosperity, not poverty. But development can still be inclusive, even for people who start their lives distant from dense economic activity. For growth to be rapid and shared, governments must promote economic integration, the pivotal concept, as this report argues, in the policy debates on urbanization, territorial development, and regional integration. Instead, all three debates overemphasize place-based interventions. Reshaping Economic Geography reframes these debates to include all the instruments of integration spatially blind institutions, spatially connective infrastructure, and spatially targeted interventions. By calibrating the blend of these instruments, today’s developers can reshape their economic geography. If they do this well, their growth will still be unbalanced, but their development will be inclusive. 2012-04-06T19:46:30Z 2012-04-06T19:46:30Z 2009 978-0-8213-7607-2 http://hdl.handle.net/10986/5991 English CC BY 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo World Bank World Bank
repository_type Digital Repository
institution_category Foreign Institution
institution Digital Repositories
building World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection World Bank
language English
topic decentralization
economic activity
economic concentration
economic geography
economic integration
income
industrialization
inefficiency
mercantilism
per capita incomes
spellingShingle decentralization
economic activity
economic concentration
economic geography
economic integration
income
industrialization
inefficiency
mercantilism
per capita incomes
World Bank
World Development Report 2009 : Reshaping Economic Geography
description Places do well when they promote transformations along the dimensions of economic geography: higher densities as cities grow; shorter distances as workers and businesses migrate closer to density; and fewer divisions as nations lower their economic borders and enter world markets to take advantage of scale and trade in specialized products. World Development Report 2009 concludes that the transformations along these three dimensions density, distance, and division are essential for development and should be encouraged. The conclusion is controversial. Slum-dwellers now number a billion, but the rush to cities continues. A billion people live in lagging areas of developing nations, remote from globalizations many benefits. And poverty and high mortality persist among the world’s bottom billion, trapped without access to global markets, even as others grow more prosperous and live ever longer lives. Concern for these three intersecting billions often comes with the prescription that growth must be spatially balanced. This report has a different message: economic growth will be unbalanced. To try to spread it out is to discourage it to fight prosperity, not poverty. But development can still be inclusive, even for people who start their lives distant from dense economic activity. For growth to be rapid and shared, governments must promote economic integration, the pivotal concept, as this report argues, in the policy debates on urbanization, territorial development, and regional integration. Instead, all three debates overemphasize place-based interventions. Reshaping Economic Geography reframes these debates to include all the instruments of integration spatially blind institutions, spatially connective infrastructure, and spatially targeted interventions. By calibrating the blend of these instruments, today’s developers can reshape their economic geography. If they do this well, their growth will still be unbalanced, but their development will be inclusive.
author World Bank
author_facet World Bank
author_sort World Bank
title World Development Report 2009 : Reshaping Economic Geography
title_short World Development Report 2009 : Reshaping Economic Geography
title_full World Development Report 2009 : Reshaping Economic Geography
title_fullStr World Development Report 2009 : Reshaping Economic Geography
title_full_unstemmed World Development Report 2009 : Reshaping Economic Geography
title_sort world development report 2009 : reshaping economic geography
publisher World Bank
publishDate 2012
url http://hdl.handle.net/10986/5991
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