CITIES are booming. The world's largest 300 metropolitan economies account for 19% of the global population and almost half the world's GDP. Last year, incomes and jobs tended to grow faster in these urban areas than their national averages, according to a report from the Brookings Institution, a think-tank. The fastest growing metro areas are in poor countries. Places in Asia and Latin America never faced a recession or have enjoyed a recovery, unlike most cities in the West. (In North America, some urban centres only reached pre-recession levels of income and employment in 2012.) Most regions of the world saw modest economic and jobs growth last year, but Western Europe has been walloped by the euro area crisis. For instance, Spain's three biggest cities have seen employment atrophy by around 3% every year since 2007. Yet the rich world's metro economies still make up around two-thirds of the world's 300 largest metropolitan economies' combined GDP.
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