Conclusion: The Broad Patterns of History

The topodynamic theory is summed up. Polarization and economic development result from a spatiotemporal evolution marked by development trajectories. Economic development is polarized, and it is characterized by the appearance of urbexplosions and economy-worlds including a center constituted of merchant states and city-states, a semi-periphery made of territorial states, and a periphery. The semi-periphery tends to follow a very hierarchical “central place” logic, whereas, the periphery and the relations between the center and the periphery are marked by the tentacular logic of the “network systems.” The spatiotemporal succession of the economy-world centers occurred historically inside three topodynamic corridors. The world evolution is marked by a fundamental phenomenon of “topodynamic inertia.” Topodynamic inertia has an entropic character in the sense that it is fed by the process of disintegration of the old dominant poles. The evolution of urbexplosions is marked by a change in the interplay of attractive and repulsive forces.