An intrepid Reddit user has produced a striking visualization for the economic importance of the country’s urban areas by splitting the nation’s GDP into two—the top 50 percent and the lower 50 percent.
Reddit user Alexandr Trubetskoy has created a map that visualizes the country in two colors, with blue representing the bottom half of the country’s gross domestic product and orange representing the top half. On the map, a shocking amount of the country is covered in blue, and what’s left are the country's largest cities and metropolitan areas.
Writing for the Washington Post’s “the Fix,” Chris Cillizza shares one possible take away from the map: “ Those numbers make clear that while you may like to hate on big cities, you -- and we -- need them.”
FULL STORY: The case for big cities, in 1 map
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City of Albany
UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies
Mpact (formerly Rail~Volution)
Chaddick Institute at DePaul University
City of Piedmont, CA
Great Falls Development Authority, Inc.
HUDs Office of Policy Development and Research