The Mystery of Cities

Shortly following the release of the bestseller The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, I had the opportunity to work from Bangalore, the world-f­lattening centre of Thomas Friedman’s thesis about the end of geography in the internet era. This gave me an occasion to meet the founders and senior executives of Infosys, the 24/7 business software services company at the heart of Friedman’s argument. I wanted to hear their first-hand stories about why the centre of gravity for business process outsourcing (BPO) emerged in Bangalore, of all Indian cities, and of all places in the world.

Canadian geographer Mario Polèse would have been gratified to hear their answers. The ambition of his new book, The Wealth and Poverty of Regions: Why Cities Matter, is to explain the mysteries of why great things (or unfortunate ones) happen in very specific places like Bangalore, even in the age of advanced technology.

“Could your...