How will your geographical location play a role in your lifetime earning ability?

Richard Florida is a researcher and author of best-selling books such as “Rise of the Creative Class”, “Flight of the Creative Class” and most recently, “Who’s Your City?”.

You might be familiar with his concept that places that show the greatest economic and cultural growth share three social features: talent, tolerance, and technology. A familiar example is that cities that welcome maligned groups and encourage the arts tend to have the most expressive and robust economies. Reviewing articles about Florida’s latest book, “Who’s Your City”, it appears Florida goes a step further when it comes to finding the best geographic places to live and work.

I haven’t read the book yet but it appears that Florida maintains a specific prediction about the future. His prediction based on research? In order for individual cities (and the people in them) to compete in the coming years they’ll need to join forces, quite literally, with their economic neighbors. Regionalism will grow in importance. Large industrial cities and smaller ones will need to merge into regions that can compete globally. This, in turn, makes transportation such as fast rail or other public transportation between cities and towns even more critical.

Above is his map of the “spiky” world he describes. I look forward to reading more!

At 11am EST we’ll feature reporting from WomenCo.com about the top 25 American cities with the best forecasted economic growth. If you’re considering a move, check out this list.