Geographic distribution of U.S. economic activity

I wasn’t surprised that cities are responsible for the majority, but the degree of concentration is striking.

There’s some debate in the Reddit thread about whether this actually represents where the economic activity is taking place—in other words, do people commute from cities out to worksites? I don’t think accounting for that would change things substantially. Gizmodo seems to have some issues with it, too, but they don’t specify what they are.

And while the map is thought-prokoving, I think it’s unfair to rural regions. After all, without them, cities couldn’t exist.

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