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Diversity and Specialisation in Cities: Why, Where and When Does it Matter?

Department of Geography and Environment, London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, UK, G.Duranton{at}lse.ac.uk

Diego Puga

Department of Economics, University of Toronto, 150 St George Street, Toronto, Ontario M5S 3G7, Canada, dpuga{at}chass.utoronto.ca

Why are some cities specialised and others diversified? What are the advantages and disadvantages of urban specialisation and diversity? To what extent do the structure of cities and the activities of firms and people in them change over time? How does the sectoral composition of cities influence their evolution? To answer these and related questions, we first distil some key stylised facts from the empirical literature on cities and the composition of their activities. We then turn to a review of different theories looking at such issues, and study the extent to which these theories contribute to the understanding of the empirical regularities.

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