Think of the wild variety of economies just within the American state of California. San Francisco is a tourism and finance hub and the most economically unequal urban area in the country. Silicon Valley designs and innovates many of the products produced throughout Asia—even in high-tech Japan—but has to import everything: concrete, steel, power, food, water, labor. Los Angeles’s urban sprawl disguises a wealth of small-scale industrial production sites. The Central Valley is both an agricultural powerhouse and home to some of the country’s poorest communities. And that’s just one state.
