The globalization of markets and rapid changes in technoklgy during the 1980's both heightened international competition and created new opportunities. The high-tech, high innovation "New Economy" of the 1980's was an urban economy, requiring access to information and highly specialized services. Earnings rose for the better-educated in urban, but not in rural areas, over the decade. Some of the forces acting to centralize the economy were clearly economic or related to industrial organization; others were demographic, related to the size and characteristics of the cohort entering the labor force; and others were related to a shift in federal influence on local policy and federal distribution of funds. The inner city and rural areas fared most poorly in the newly deregulated environment, while suburban nodes expanded. Metro-nonmetro and regional inequalities are parts of a larger post-industrial process that is widening the economic gap between specific groups. The past decade has made clear that remoteness and small size have continuing importance to economic success.