Dozens of other cities in developing countries are loading and sorting catalogues for libraries in developed countries, processing land records, managing law records. One day, they may process national censuses, national accounts and any other large-scale data operation. A dozen or more cities in Asia do the software programming for Silicon Valley. On the other side, developing countries are strong in labor-intensive services, so they would need to get into developed countries to provide a service. Thus, a Bangladeshi or Brazilian company could tender for the contract to clean the streets of New York, to run the hospital laundries of Germany or to staff a giant supermarket in Japan.
Governments hate it.
But, more and more, goods or services are no longer made in one place, but in dozens. In the end, reality will have to be accepted. The spread of innovations is, of course, immensely uneven. Cities force technological change. And they are transformed by technology.