These places are, per person, among the wealthiest and most productive in the world.

Not every middleweight city has what it takes to become a knowledge capital, but Joseph Parilla, a fellow at Brookings and co-author of the report, thinks St. Louis does. We have strong research universities and a relatively high percentage of college-educated residents.

Among the middleweight metros, in fact, St. Louis ranks first in research citations, one of three numbers Brookings uses to measure innovation. We’re a respectable seventh in both patents and venture capital.

We rank at or near the bottom, however, in foreign direct investment, economic growth per worker and traded-sector productivity. (Foreign investment, by the way, measures spending on new plants and equipment by foreign companies; we don’t get to count the billions of dollars foreigners paid to acquire St. Louis companies.)

Despite those shortcomings, Parilla says St. Louis “is arguably as well-positioned as any of these American middleweights to complete a long-term transition from an industrial economy to a mix of advanced manufacturing and traded services.”