A recent newsletter from the Bloomberg Center for Cities/ Harvard University provided information on Metroverse, a research-based digital tool that explores a city's economy and compares it to other cities.
Metroverse was built at the Growth Lab at Harvard University. This program delivers new insights on these questions:
- What is the economic composition of a city?
- How does a city compare to other cities?
- Which cities look most like mine?
- What are the technological capabilities that underpin a city' current economy?
- Which growth and diversification paths does this suggest for the future?
Metroverse places a city's technological capabilities and know-how at the heart of its growth prospects, where the range and nature of existing capabilities strongly influences how future diversification unfolds. Metroverse makes visible what a city is good at today to help understand what it can become in the future.
Metroverse helps analyze the economics of cities through the lens of Economic Complexity Analysis. This approach asks what we can learn about a city's knowledge base by looking at the industries in which it is active.
The report provided the following information on Shreveport:
2020 Population: 180,600
2020 GDP per capita: $54,921
2020 Ranking: 277th most populated city in U.S. with 83rd Highest GDP per capita
2024 Most Intensive Industries: Leisure and Hospitality, Education and Health Services, Financial Activities
Selected Similar Cities:
- Davenport (Iowa)
- Pensacola (Fla.)
- McAllen (Tx.)
This detailed report can be viewed at metroverse.cid.harvard.edu.