I have often talked about how the recession will reshape America's geography where cities like Detroit will turn into ghost towns.

Without saying as much, demographer Richard Florida seems to be saying that in his latest book, an extract of which is republished here.

Florida argues that we are now seeing the mass relocation of highly skilled, highly educated, and highly paid people to a relatively small number of metropolitan regions, and a corresponding exodus of traditional lower- and middle-class people from those same places.

Florida writes: "The most successful cities and regions in the United States and around the world may increasingly be inhabited by a core of wealthy and highly mobile workers leading greatly privileged lives, catered to by an underclass of service workers living in far-off suburbs.

"The consequence is this: the means migration is dividing the world into two kinds of regions with very different economic prospects. A small number of means metros attract the lion's share of the mobile and the skilled, who see their incomes and real-estate values climb, while the masses witness the exact opposite."

All this will be exacerbated by the economic crisis. It will create a society that will emerge even more divided than it was when the economy was booming. And that's unlikely to change when the recovery finally comes.