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How knowledge workers are reshaping the map of the global economy.
Zurich, Switzerland’s largest city, may be, for many, a perfect place to live. Residents can enjoy modern art in the Kunsthaus and shop along Bahnhofstrasse while eating macarons from a shop in Paradeplatz, one of the country’s most famous squares. On nice days, they picnic in parks, reached using the city’s fast-moving ZVV transit or the free bike-sharing system. At night, they can sample from the city’s 500 bars and clubs, some of which even have their own swimming pools.
The backdrop for all of this is the Alps — and a skills-based economy. With about 400,000 residents, Zurich is a global financial center, but its real economic might also come from cutting-edge industries beyond finance. Zurich has Google’s largest engineering office in Europe (dubbed “the real Mountain View” for the panoramic vistas visible from its windows) and two of the world’s top universities. Switzerland ranks among the global leaders in patent applications per capita and percentage of its gross domestic product spent on research. Zurich’s GDP per capita is $82,000, more than any other city worldwide, according to the Brookings Institution. All this makes Zurich a magnet for brainpower — a Nerdopolis.
In the 19th century, cities in Europe drew unskilled, cheap labor from the countryside to operate the machinery in their burgeoning factories. In the 20th century, cities fostered the multinational corporations that encouraged the spread of global capitalism. This is the century of global cities as brain hubs. Zurich is one such city, but the same rising tide is lifting workers in Oslo, Norway; San Jose, California; Paris; and Washington, DC, among other places. These cities are attracting fast-growing industries such as information technology, software, life sciences, digital entertainment, and finance.
In the 1970s, most new jobs involved routine tasks that could be performed by lower-skilled workers, according to Thor Berger of Lund University in Sweden and Carl Benedikt Frey of the University of Oxford. Since the 1980s, however, most new jobs — the kind that drive economic growth — are being performed by highly skilled workers, they say.
Those workers are increasingly gathering in urban centers. In his book Triumph of the City, Harvard economist Edward Glaeser writes that the central paradox of the modern city is that “proximity has become ever more valuable as the cost of connecting across long distances has fallen.” As a result, a Nerdopolis tends to bring together the brightest minds and the most productive employees. There, they share ideas that can generate value relatively quickly — by being turned into software code, for example, that costs almost nothing to distribute around the world. No factory, freight, or port is required.
High-skilled jobs raise average wages throughout a city, and spur the growth of a host of other jobs. Cracking the code means surging ahead, which is why cities around the world are trying to turn themselves into the next Nerdopolis, and cities that are already nerd magnets want to stay that way.
