Fast read, but felt incomplete. I liked Moretti’s ability to make me think of America as a collection of countries, each on a different trajectory of economic development, and that those trajectories are getting further apart. However I kept expecting some notes on the countervailing forces that prevent innovation centers from growing exponentially away from the rest of the country: these are things like exorbitant real estate costs, high costs of living, and local economies that do not rationally expand to accommodate newfound wealth. So we get a description that paints the world as if there will be exponential growth in innovation centers, and I would have liked to se him address the potential reasons that growth could end up looking like an S curve.
Still, since this book was published, economic growth in the bay area has not slowed down, so maybe I’m just overly pessimistic about this area.