Inside the black box of regional development

Jacobs (1961, 1969) emphasized the role of cities and regions in the transfer and diffusion of knowledge; as the scale and diversity of cities increase, so do the connections between economic actors that result in the generation of new ideas and innovations. [...] The second key issue in the current debate is over the factors that affect the geographic distribution of human capital or the creative class in the first place. [...] The third approach to the factors that influence the flow of talent among regions argues that tolerance and openness to diversity affect the level and geographic distribution of education and skill. [...] And fourth, it enables us to parse the relations between tolerance, consumer services, and universities and the distribution of human capital and the creative class which in turn act on regional wages and income. [...] It is important to note that the bohemian measure here which is based on the household survey of the US Census thus differs considerably from the occupational measures used in the talent and creative class measures described above which are from the employer surveys of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.