The prospect of better opportunities, better services, and protection from the effects of conflict and climate change influences where people choose to live. More and more, that choice is to move to cities, a decision that has major implications for a person’s standard of living, particularly in developing countries. However, many are unable to make that choice or are bound by strong cultural ties to their homelands.

In the most prosperous areas of low-income and middle-income countries today, living standards—measured by household consumption—are more than twice that of similar households in economically lagging areas. In high-income countries, the differ-ence is only 50 percent higher. Large and sustained gaps in living standards in different locations within countries have led to increased concern, even alarm, in policy circles about “places left behind.” 

Place-based policies—spatially targeted interventions aiming to boost economic development in particular geographical areas—are increasingly being adopted around the world to shore up fortunes in places left behind. Their results, however, have fallen short of expectations. When spatial policies fail to deliver desired outcomes as fully as promised, leaders are entitled to ask: Why? What went wrong? And how can such dAs with the previous five volumes in the World Bank Productivity Project, Place, Productivity, and Prosperity: Revisiting Spatially Targeted Policies for Regional Development provides a new analytic framework, based on recent advances in economic geography, to help policy makers translate new research into effective programs when choosing among place-based policies or other options that might work better.isappointments be prevented?