LONDON may be Europe's commercial capital,but not all Britons are thrilled about that. In a poll conducted in 2014,two-thirds of non-Londoners reckoned that London had a positive impact on the British economy as a whole, but fewer than a third thought London's strength was good for their city. London lures skilled workers and productive companies away from other parts of Britain. It also lures workers and firms from across Europe—something that makes many Britons, both in London and beyond, bristle.Indeed, London's mop-topped mayor, Boris Johnson, this week joined the campaign to persuade Britons to withdraw from the European Union.
伦敦或许是欧洲的商业首都，但不是所有英国人都对此感到兴奋。在
2014
年进行的一次民调中，三分之二的非伦敦人认为，总的来说，伦敦对英国经济具有正面影响。但是，三分之一弱的人认为，伦敦的优势有利于他们的城市。伦敦吸引高级技工和高效企业离开英国其他地区，亦吸引工人和企业离开欧洲大陆——这是让包括伦敦人和非伦敦人在内的许多英国人感到恼火的事情。事实上，伦敦的卷毛市长鲍里斯·约翰逊本周已经加入了劝说英国人退出欧盟的造势活动。
London dominates Britain, accounting for 23% of its population and about a third of its economic output. The city grew to enormous size in the 19th and early-20th century, when it served as the political and economic hub of a global empire. The post-war decline in its population, a result both of the loss of empire and of policies intended to curb its growth, ended in the 1980s, when the globalisation of finance rejuvenated the city's main industry. Greater London is the fifth-largest metropolitan economy in the world, according to the Brookings Institution, a think-tank. It is the EU's largest city, by both population and output.
伦敦称霸英国，占其人口的
23
％，经济产出的大约三分之一。这个城市曾在充当一个全球性帝国的政治和经济中心的
19
世纪和
20
世纪早期发展到了巨大的规模。战后因为帝国之失去以及倾向于抑制增长的政策所导致的人口衰落，在金融全球化让这个城市的主要工业实现复兴的上世纪
80
年代结束了。据智库布鲁金斯研究所，大伦敦地区是世界第五大城市经济体。无论是按人口还是产出计算，它都是欧盟最大的城市。
Yet London should arguably be bigger than it is. It is Europe's most important financial centre, and one of its biggest hubs for information industries and professional services—the European analogue to New York city. But London accounts for just 4.5% of the EU's output, after adjusting for variation in the cost of living, and just 2.9% of its population,whereas New York accounts for 8.1% of America's GDP and 6.3% of its population. Were European integration ever to yield something like a United States of Europe (and Britain ever to be part of such an enterprise), London would probably swell in size and importance.
然而，说起来，伦敦应该比现在还要大。它是欧洲最重要的金融中心，并且是信息产业和专业服务的一大中心——相当于欧洲的纽约。但是，在剔除生活成本后，伦敦在欧盟产出和人口中的占比仅为
4.5%
和
2.9%
；而纽约在美国
GDP
和人口中的占比却达到了
8.1%
和
6.3%
。倘若欧洲融合最终诞生出一个类似于欧洲合众国（而且英国也成为这大企业的一部分）的东西，伦敦在规模和重要性方面会大幅上升。
Why should that be the case? Economists have touted the benefits of cities since 1826, when a German one named Johann Heinrich von Thünen tried to explain why farmers gather in villages rather than living by their fields. Paul Krugman, in a paper published in 1991, homed in on the role of “increasing returns to scale” in driving the growth of cities.Because it is expensive to move people and goods, customers want to be where producers are and vice versa. As cities grow, increasing returns kick in: the more people who live in a particular place, the more attractive that place becomes to others. Mr Krugman focused on clustering in manufacturing. Two trading regions with a slight imbalance in population would naturally evolve into a developed core and an underpopulated periphery, he argued. In the paper, which the Nobel committee cited when awarding him the prize for economics, Mr Krugman pointed as an example to Europe, where industrial activity is concentrated in the north-west.
为什么这么说呢？经济学家自德国人约翰·海因里希·冯·杜能试图解释农民宁愿群居在村庄中也不愿住在田边的原因的
1826
年起，就一直在大力宣扬城市的种种好处。保罗·克鲁格曼曾在
1991
年发表的一篇论文中，着重论述了“收益递增渐成规模”在推动城市发展中的作用。由于移动人口和商品成本高昂，客户希望位于生产商所在地，生产商也希望位于所在地。随着城市发展，收益递增效应开始显现：生活在一个地方的人越多，这个地方就会变得对其他人更具吸引力。克鲁格曼聚焦了制造业的聚集。他指出，两个人口稍不平衡的贸易地区会自然地进化为一个发达的中心和一个人口稀少的外围。克鲁格曼在这篇诺贝尔奖评委会在授予他经济学奖时所引用的论文中所举的例子就是工业活动聚集于西北部的欧洲。
Manufacturing no longer drives urbanisationin the rich world. In 2009 Edward Glaeser and Joshua Gottlieb of Harvard University surveyed recent research in order to distil the nature and causes ofthe “wealth of cities”. Although manufacturing firms have grown less likely to concentrate together in dense areas, thanks to the falling cost and hassle of shipping, firms in knowledge-based industries like technology and finance have become more prone to clustering. In cities with lots of skilled workers, productivity tends to rise with population density. The authors reckon that itis now the advantage of associating with other clever people, and the intellectual stimulation and exchange that results, that gives the biggest cities their magnetism.
工业化已经不再推动富裕世界的城市化了。
2009
年，哈佛大学的爱德华·格莱泽和
Joshua Gottlieb
曾为总结“城市财富”的性质和原因，进行过一次最新的调查。尽管制造业企业已经因为成本下降和航运不便而变得不大有可能集中在人口稠密的地区。但是，像技术和金融等以知识为基础的企业却变得更易于集中了。在拥有大量技工的城市中，生产力往往是随着人口密度的上升而提高。作者认为，如今与聪明之人有联系的优势以及这种优势所带来的智力方面的启发和交流，赋予大城市以磁力。
Congestion slows cities' breakneck growth: housing and transport infrastructure seldom keep pace with demand. As a result,rather than a single metropolitan goliath, economies tend to develop a series of cities distributed by size according to “Zipf's law” (named after GeorgeZipf, an American linguist). The largest city tends to be twice the size of the second-largest, three times the size of the third-largest, and so on. American cities roughly follow this pattern. In the less-integrated EU, however, there is instead a jumble of big cities and a dearth of medium-sized ones.
拥堵放慢了城市的高速增长：住房和交通等基础设施几乎没有与需求保持同步。结果，除了一个单独的大都市之外，各个经济体往往会按照（以美国语言学家乔治·齐普夫命名的）“齐普夫定律”发展出一系列依大小分布的城市。最大城市的规模往往是第二大城市的
2
倍，第三大城市的
3
倍，以此类推。美国的城市大致就是依照这个模型而来的。然而，在融合程度有所欠缺的欧洲，却是大型城市林立，中等城市匮乏。
Deeper integration would push Europe toward a more American distribution. London would probably be the main beneficiary,given its particular strengths. Europe's financial markets remain highly fragmented. Its stockmarkets are about half the size of America's, despite the similar size of the two economies; European corporate-bond markets are about a third of the size. Few Italian firms, for instance, turn to their country's relatively small equity or bond markets for funding. Instead, they simply borrow from Italian banks, which tend to have their headquarters in Milan. The EU is currently trying to rectify that by making it easier to borrow, lend and invest across its internal borders, in the hope of reducing funding costs for European firms. If such efforts bear fruit and Britain remains a part of the union, firms based in London would help more foreign companies issue shares or bonds there, at the expense of other European financial centres. Easing the cross-border provision of services, another thing on the EU's long-term agenda,would likewise prove a boon for London.
