The World is Spiky- Richard Florida

The author presents to sides to globalization. The first is Thomas Friedman's view; globalization has created a 'flat' world in which new technological innovations give the countries competing within the economy an equal chance. The flip side, Florida's view, is that globalization is polarizing and magnifying the differences between the highly populated economic centers, and the rural 'valleys' of the world. Florida argues that the growing disparities between rural and urban centers will inhibit future economic innovations because of the political climate that will occur from this stratification. This theory supports central place theory. They both represent the centralization and clustering of innovations and people in large city-regions such as New York, London, and Tokyo. A large availability of jobs, services, and goods all  bring people to these regions to reduce transportation and transaction costs, resulting in a cluster. This leaves agricultural workers in the 'valleys'. For study abroad, I will be traveling to Dakar, Senegal. Dakar has a population of about 2.5 million, making it by far the largest city in the country. It is also one of the largest cities in Western Africa, and acts as a main port for the area. Dakar has hospitals, an international airport, universities, and government buildings. There are a few other places in the continent of Africa that would rival Dakar in terms of largeness and 'spikiness', and those include Cairo and Johannesburg. A regional city would be St.Louis. It has a population of 176, 000. It has national parks, a university, museums, and regional government offices. A town would be Rao, and I was unable to find any useful information on the town. Of course, in the rural areas of Senegal, there are villages, or hamlets, where there are only a few dozen people living, give or take.