"A deep urban-rural divide persists between southern coastal cities with economies increasingly driven by ideas and towns to the north and east that depend on extracting resources of diminishing availability and value"


Does Homer-Dixon really think that an economy driven by real estate is an economy driven by ideas? There is a heck of a lot more brain power involved in developing the oil sands, one of the greatest engineering feats in Canadian history, than ever went into selling and flipping real estate in Vancouver.