Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
BOX 5.1
EXAMPLES OF EVOLUTION OF
SPATIAL TYPES
(1) As we will see in Chapter 7, the rise of the so-called 'global
cities' - a topic that, as discussed in Chapter 2, was first touched
on by Hymer - is associated primarily to widespread agglom-
eration effects. These cities have longstanding agglomeration
advantages, which are actually reinforced under the current era
of globalization. As such, over time the evolutionary transition
process is one of a shift from pure agglomeration reaping the
home-market effects within the national domestic economies, to
pure agglomeration reaping home-market effects which operate
across a multi-country or global scale. As we have seen above, the
largest MNEs' headquarters are strongly and increasingly concen-
trated in the major world cities, where the local urban transactions
and networks are strongly information- and power-intensive, and
where the degree of connectivity is maximized in order to guaran-
tee an efficient functioning of corporate global control functions.
(2) The early development of the global automobile industry on
both sides of the Atlantic approximated to being something akin
to pure agglomeration (Hall 1998; Boschma and Wenting 2007),
but over time this system evolved to represent the classic indus-
trial complex model we now see (Best 1990), which is dominated
by large oligopolistic producers, clustered in particular localities,
with complex and highly organized input-output supply chain
systems (Markusen 1996). The evolutionary process of this
location-specific sector has therefore been primarily from pure
agglomeration to industrial complex.
(3) The transformation from a pure agglomeration to a competence-
based network system as an evolutionary transition may probably
be best represented by knowledge-intensive service industries
within 'creative cities'. Some of the numerous examples here are
the theatre industries associated with Broadway, New York, and
the West End of London, and the video-game industry in Montreal
(Grandadam et al. 2012). The initial advantages provided by the
large urban agglomeration of Bangalore in attracting both MNEs
and indigenous firms in the software industry, and the subse-
quent upgrading of both local and global competence, may be at
least partially seen in this specific evolutionary trajectory (Athreye
2005; Chaminade and Vang 2008).
