He's being too specific. Each city/region has relative strengths and weaknesses, and each of these vary in importance over time. To remain competitive, cities must use their current competitive advantage to build the next one. This is more likely to happen if the value created by the current advantage is shared among many agents.<p>Detroit and Pittsburgh suffer b/c too much of their value was held by a few companies. Cities with a broader base of firms (financial industry in NYC, tech in SV, entertainment in LA, etc) have a better chance to remain competitive over time. Incidentally, this doesn't bode well for Seattle's long term future as a tech center. Incidentally, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, etc were incredibly prosperous in their heyday because their competitive advantage was so important and their firms so efficient at creating value from it. Their fall from that point was therefore that much farther and more poignant.<p>Cities like Cincinatti, St Louis, and Buffalo suffer because their original advantage (access to inland waterways in the US) is less important now that more manufacturing and trade is international. Ocean port cities like LA, NYC, Tacoma, New Orleans, Tampa, etc have an advantage here.<p>Norway is a good example of using one advantage (North Sea oil and gas) to fund future advantages (education, health care, sovereign wealth fund), while the Texas/Houston energy economy is a good example of how having a rich ecosystem of firms is more stable than a few vertically integrated firms.
I think he is overlooking governance. In Michigan the leaders were in denial over the loss of manufacturing and to this day spend millions chasing a shrinking base of jobs. <a href="http://www.mackinac.org/article.aspx?ID=11457" rel="nofollow">http://www.mackinac.org/article.aspx?ID=11457</a><p>Add to it a series of Detroit mayors who drove business away and looted the city and its schools and you have a modern day third world city.