  Over the years, the growing availability of extensive datasets about
registered patents allowed researchers to better understand technological
innovation drivers. In this work, we investigate how the technological contents
of patents characterise the development of metropolitan areas and how
innovation is related to GDP per capita. Exploiting worldwide data from 1980 to
2014, and through network-based techniques that only use information about
patents, we identify coherent distinguished groups of metropolitan areas,
either clustered in the same geographical area or similar from an economic
point of view. We also extend the concept of coherent diversification to patent
production by showing how it represents a decisive factor in the economic
growth of metropolitan areas. These results confirm a picture in which
technological innovation can lead and steer the economic development of cities,
opening, in this way, the possibility of adopting the tools introduced here to
investigate the interplay between urban development and technological
innovation.
