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The high cost-of-living in “superstar” US metropolitan areas has become an area of increasing scholarly and policy concern. One question relates to whether low socioeconomic status (SES) and other historically disadvantaged residents are getting pushed out of these city-regions. To unpack what is occurring with respect to migration out of large expensive metros, I examine who is moving out of these areas in the US and where they are going. I use regression, coarsened exact matching, and latent class analysis to understand who is staying within large expensive US metros and who moves out of them, as well as what revealed preferences underlie these moves. I find evidence that lower SES households are slightly more likely to leave superstar US city-regions, though Black, Latinx, and immigrant households are less likely to leave than White and US-born households. Rather than leaving, many low SES households may instead continue to live in these areas while enduring increasingly crowded living arrangements and/or long commutes. The results also highlight substantial heterogeneity in where households go to once they move, suggesting migration out of these urban areas may be more complex than simply the push of high cost-of-living.

Purpose While conventional views of foreign investment activity primarily relate to efficiency-seeking investments, the authors argue that most other outward foreign direct investments (OFDIs) likely have positive effects on income development in the home region. Data on the US urban system not only illustrates this but also shows that this impact is not equal in all city-regions. The purpose of this paper is to develop an explanation as to why high- and low-income cities are associated with self-reinforcing cycles of OFDI activity that have different home-region impacts. Design/methodology/approach Conventional views assume that inward foreign direct investments (IFDIs) have a positive impact on target regions, while OFDIs are often treated as the flip side of this story, being seen as having negative effects by shifting jobs and income abroad. This paper counters this logic by developing a conceptual argument that systematically distinguishes different types of OFDIs and relates them to economic development effects in the home (investing) region. Findings Using a co-evolutionary conceptualization, this paper suggests that many high-income cities are characterized by a virtuous cycle of development where high, successful OFDI activity generates both positive income effects as well as incentives to engage in further OFDIs in the future, thus leading to additional income increases. In contrast, it is suggested that low-income cities are characterized by what we refer to as vicious cycles of development with low OFDI activity, few development impulses and a lack of incentives and capabilities for future investments. Originality/value This paper develops a counter-perspective to conventional views of OFDI activity, arguing that these investments have a positive impact on regional income levels. The authors develop a spatially sensitive explanation which acknowledges that OFDIs do not trigger a linear process but are associated with diverging inter-urban development paths and may contribute to higher levels of intra-urban inequality. From these findings, the authors derive conclusions for future research and public policy.

This contribution describes the investigation of flow channels which are designed to be directly integrated into an aerospike engine by means of additive manufacturing with laser powder bed fusion (LPBF). During the experimental testing of a previous aerospike engine in 2019, it was observed that high surface roughness of such additively manufactured integrated channels caused a significant reduction in the mass flow rates of the propellants ethanol and liquid oxygen as well as the coolant due to increased pressure drop. In an extensive study within the CFDmikroSAT project, various factors influencing this surface roughness are, therefore, being investigated, which include the geometry of the channels as well as selected manufacturing parameters of the LPBF process, such as layer thickness and component orientation. To further reduce the roughness after manufacturing, suitable post-processing methods are also being investigated for internal cavities, initially analysing the abrasive flow machining process. Within the paper, the overall investigation approach is presented, such as the overview of the considered specimens, and the initial results of a various studies with selected specimens are discussed. These studies consist of the examination of surface roughness reduction, shape accuracy and flow behaviour of post-processed cooling channel specimens. Finally, a brief overview of the already manufactured aerospike demonstrator is presented.

A growing body of research is demonstrating a robust positive relationship between the diversity of a city’s foreign-born population in the USA and worker productivity. Other research has focused on diversity within firms, similarly finding positive effects in many cases. Although it appears that diverse teams within firms are better at problem-solving and are more creative, the exact mechanism(s) that drive the relationship between diversity and productivity at the scale of city-regions are less apparent and underexplored in extant research. Drawing on research from several fields, I describe four mechanisms that might drive the relationship between immigrant diversity and productivity at the urban level. I explore each mechanism with a pseudo panel of workers and fixed effects OLS regressions across U.S. Metropolitan Statistical Areas between 2011 and 2017. The results most strongly support that at the urban level, diversity enhances productivity through what I call ‘exposure effects’ and ‘interactive problem-solving’, wherein workers become more productive and more creative through exposure to new cultures and ways of thinking and through joint problem-solving. These results suggest that positive externalities arise when coupling rising immigrant diversity with the social integration of people from diverse backgrounds.

Considering stagnating regional prosperity levels and growing inter-regional disparities in many economies, this paper appeals for a renewed research agenda to deepen our understanding of regional economic development. This is done by discussing different conceptual perspectives, their empirical applications and open questions and suggestions for future research. Conventional approaches view development as an outcome of and dependent upon local economic structure. That is, high regional performance is associated with specific regional industrial and human capital mixes. We argue that to deepen our understanding of the mechanisms that drive regional economic development it is helpful to apply a relational approach that pays attention to the networks between economic actors across different spatial scales, from local to global. These generate knowledge as well as access to technologies, resources and markets, thereby catalyzing income growth. To support regional policy agendas, it is further necessary to go beyond identifying regularities that structure development and engage with differing regional pathways by conducting systematic comparative analyses of local contextual and institutional conditions.

After a century of inter-regional income convergence, average incomes have been diverging between U.S. cities since the 1980s, calling for new policy agendas. We argue that policy research should move beyond its current focus on the effects of inter-city divergence from technological change, migration, and trade, to include the effect of outward foreign-direct investments (OFDIs). This paper suggests that OFDIs have contributed to income divergence across U.S. cities. We argue that OFDIs can positively contribute to average income levels in investing (home) cities through labor, knowledge, multiplier and trade effects – a relationship that has not been systematically investigated in prior research. It is suggested that regional income levels and OFDIs are subject to a virtuous co-evolutionary process for high-income cities while having weaker effects for lower-income cities. This is tested with a combination of fixed-effects panel regressions and quantile regressions, before and after the 2008/2009 financial crisis. Our key finding is that, while OFDIs have a positive effect on regional income levels in the post-crisis period, their effect is largest for cities with incomes around the 60th to 80th percentiles of the income distribution. This suggests that the benefits of OFDIs primarily accrue to already successful city-regions, allowing them to further their pre-existing lead.

Economic geographers have extensively acknowledged the importance of the cultural industries to many regional economies and have begun to establish that these industries have economically important interactions with local “underground scenes.” Less well known however is how these scenes themselves develop. Based on archival research on zines, or small circulation independently produced magazines, I illustrate how the 1980s San Francisco Bay Area punk rock scene was a vibrant cultural community. I demonstrate how what was once an underground scene also became a commercialized one, with bands like Green Day and Rancid becoming hugely popular in the 1990s “wave” or growth of the genre. I develop a framework for understanding the growth of local scenes, arguing that the essential ingredients are a robust mix of organizations, institutions and networks. Of particular importance are institutional practices of frequent communication and inclusivity and networks on both local and extra local scales.