Despite all the talk about the "death of distance," geography matters more than ever. Regional differences within many countries have increased in the past decades, and where a person lives today has a very large impact on many aspects of his or her life. This course is a journey through the current economic landscape. We will explore places that are growing and places that are declining. For instance, we will discover why the labor market in New York and Boston has been so much better than the one in Detroit and Cleveland in the past 35 years. The course will investigate the industrial districts of Italy and study how knowledge diffuses among firms located near each other, and the implications for local productivity and innovation. We will study how British and Canadian local labour markets are affected by the fact that certain industries and occupations are dying. We will travel to Africa and discuss the extent to which investment from Asia serves to catalyze economic development in Ethiopia's regional economies. In doing so, we will try to understand the economic forces driving trends in wages, productivity and innovation across cities and regions. These are the forces that will define the geography of future jobs and will shape the economic destiny of local communities around the world.