Why Cities Exist

Cities exist because they are the nodes of exchange and production of capital and knowledge. Cities must fulfill both functions to be viable today. If a city was all brain, with no body what can that city do to feed itself. For knowledge can be produced anywhere online but physical capital requires cities for at least its exchange, and transportation. But cities need more than brawn for brawn is not the source of value but the mind producing the capital goods needed for production.

Table 1: Cities and their largest employer

City	Employer
Houston	Chevron
Chicago	Amazon Logistics
Atlanta	UPS
New York City	Citibank
San Jose	Google

Let us list why various cities exist by looking at an exemplar large private employer outside of health care (see Table 1). Some Cities like Houston or San Jose have an engineering production exemplar employer, others have a logistics exemplar employer and others still have banks as their exemplar employer. Some classes of industries are less capital intensive, so that the work can be done at home, but other industries require more physical capital. Software development or securities trading can both be easily done at home, while logistics, chemical engineering, or oil exploration have a lot more on site work. Try replacing (baytown) in a day. This means that cities that rely on more physical industries will do better than less physical industries.

The material cities when well run are in the best shape for a post covid future. With Trump's industrialization agenda the US will harness her cheap feedstock prices for manufacturing: plastics, chemicals, metals and other energy intensive industries; will make Houston an even more important center of the world economy.