The World Bank has published a framework for understanding how cities function as engines of economic development, shifting focus from national-level growth strategies to urban-scale mechanisms. This matters because it gives policymakers and development organizations a shared language for identifying which urban investments (infrastructure, education, clustering of industries) actually produce measurable economic returns rather than guessing.
Why it matters
For decades, development economics focused on country-level policy — but cities are where most people actually live and work, and where productivity differences are sharpest; having a coherent framework for measuring what makes cities grow changes where development money actually gets spent.