Europe has lots of pleasant cities but too few that matter

Charlemagne (an opinion column) argues Europe’s dispersed urban map is a handicap in winner-takes-most industries like AI. Reported data: Paris, the EU’s largest city, has a third of Shanghai’s population and less than half New York’s output; America’s ten biggest urban areas produce a third of its output versus about a sixth in the EU (Oxford Economics); of 82 urban areas above 5m people, only Paris and Madrid are in the EU; the OECD links doubling a city’s size with double-digit productivity gains. The column’s example: a tech graduate from Graz must choose between Berlin, Dublin and Paris, while an American simply heads to San Francisco. Counterweights it acknowledges: linking nearby cities (Amsterdam, Antwerp, Cologne, Brussels) doesn’t replicate agglomeration because benefits fade with distance, but a dispersed map may limit “left behind” resentment.