Many economists argue that larger cities are more productive than smaller cities, and become ever more productive as they grow due to something called “agglomeration benefits”.
There are many other factors that contribute to productivity, but this simple law seems to hold well in economies like the USA, Germany, France, and the Netherlands. For example, Lyon, the second largest city in France, is more productive than Marseille, the third largest city, which is in turn more productive than Lille.
Almost uniquely among large developed countries, this pattern does not hold in the UK. The UK’s large cities see no significant benefit to productivity from size, especially when we exclude the capital.
The result is that our biggest non-capital cities, Manchester and Birmingham, are significantly less productive than almost all similar-sized cities in Europe, and less productive than much smaller cities such as Edinburgh, Oxford, and Bristol.
Giancarlo Angulo's Blog