Anti-agglomeration Policies

 The entire developed world is facing an extremely acute housing crisis; as agglomeration effects drive more global talent into a smaller number of international supercities, local incentives bias towards increasing real estate values. These incentives are in direct conflict with a clear national and international interest in increasing the rate of technological development, as real estate extracts an increasing amount of value from the innovation created via agglomeration.

Historically, technology development was widely distributed - the unique geographic features of distinct regions and the high cost of transportation allowed individual cities to leverage their unique natural environment to facilitate the development of localized supply chains and innovation hubs. Toledo was a glass city, producing windows and windshields for Detroit; Pittsburgh's access to iron and coal made it a natural place where steel could be produced.

However, with the rise of container transportation, global air travel and widespread internet access, goods, people and information are now able to move across space much more quickly. As a result, the physical barriers to agglomeration have been largely eliminated - the natural result is a drive towards consolidation around a smaller number of winning cities.

This effect is particularly acute in America, a country accustomed to boomtowns and their inevitable busts. But it is not limited to America. Innovation-driven capitalism naturally optimizes for agglomeration as density creates the human connections which fuel the development of new ideas and creation of new products and services.

One obvious solution is to examine the spatial distribution of major government functions. The United States is a federal republic; our government does not need to be geographically localized in Washington. By intentionally picking new locations for critical government agencies, policymakers could redirect their employees to communities which need investment. Much like universities can create geographic gravity wells around college towns, moving large swaths of the federal government into states would create similar hubs - helping agglomeration revitalize cities across the country that have been left behind by our increasingly globalized logistics systems and airborne travel networks.

It should be easy to organize a dedicated lobbying effort to rally Congressional support to eliminate all executive presence in Washington, DC. The Department of Agriculture could move to Des Moines; HHS could move to Cleveland; the Department of Energy could move to Houston; the Department of the Interior could move to Bozeman. Put each agency close to a city which already has an affinity for that kind of work, but which has lost population over the past 50 years. Critically, this should be extremely popular within the legislative branch - with the exception of Virginia and Maryland, every state could be a winner of a meaningful part of the ever-expanding federal bureaucracy.