The Diverging Economies of L.A. and San Francisco

L.A. and San Francisco are two of America’s leading urban economies. The Bay Area is the world’s leading center for startups and new technologies, and the home of companies like Intel, Apple, Genentech, Google, Twitter, and Uber, while L.A. is the center of film, entertainment, and pop culture. But when it comes to income, wages, and other key metrics for economic development, San Francisco has done far better than L.A. over the past several decades.

In a recent book, The Rise and Fall of Urban Economies, the economic geographer Michael Storper—along with his colleagues Thomas Kemeny, Naji P. Makarem, and Taner Osman—explores why and how San Francisco has performed so much better than L.A. Storper is one of the world’s leading urbanists, and has conducted definitive research on both regions in addition to authoring some of the most important books and articles on urban development of the past few decades.