Abstract
The topodynamic theory is summed up. Polarization and economic development result from a spatiotemporal evolution marked by development trajectories. Economic development is polarized, and it is characterized by the appearance of urbexplosions and economy-worlds including a center constituted of merchant states and city-states, a semi-periphery made of territorial states, and a periphery. The semi-periphery tends to follow a very hierarchical “central place” logic, whereas, the periphery and the relations between the center and the periphery are marked by the tentacular logic of the “network systems.” The spatiotemporal succession of the economy-world centers occurred historically inside three topodynamic corridors. The world evolution is marked by a fundamental phenomenon of “topodynamic inertia.” Topodynamic inertia has an entropic character in the sense that it is fed by the process of disintegration of the old dominant poles. The evolution of urbexplosions is marked by a change in the interplay of attractive and repulsive forces.
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Some researchers have concluded that even the nuclear cataclysm of Hiroshima and Nagasaki may have had no effect at all on the long-run evolution of the Japanese urban system. See Davis and Weinstein (2002).
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Multiplier effects generally benefit the economic poles. However, through transfer payments, economic poles also finance the periphery. About ten percent of the total income of cities like Paris or London is redistributed to the peripheral areas through transfer mechanisms. See Davezies (1999).
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Redfield and Singer (1954).
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Midlarsky (1999).
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Tellier, LN. (2019). Conclusion: The Broad Patterns of History. In: Urban World History. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24842-0_17
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