Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Information and Communication (ICT) technologies, and the emergence of
corporate central organizational service functions (financial, legal, accounting,
and other business and professional services) that permit business operations in
multiple countries,
(b) A twofold shift to a
'Knowledge Economy'
, comprising of
first
a shift away
from production that is dependent on material resources, physical capital, and
low skill labor to one which increasingly exploits knowledge as the key
ingredient of competitiveness and innovation, and
second, the emergence of
knowledge-intensive business services, which promote a growing shielding of
manufacturing products in a 'service jacket', which exploit the economies of
scale in human capital, and which promote knowledge dissemination and
productivity effects in other parts of the economy and,
(c) The growing role of
spatial proximity
in offering in large metropolitan areas
knowledge-rich environments. Such knowledge-intensive environments offer
(1) service (urban) spaces where enterprises can function as knowledge,
innovation, and expertise transfer agents [as in (b) above], and (2) where a
disproportionate concentration of the corporate coordinating central functions
[noted in (a) above] thrive in large metro areas in the Megalopolis.
Thus as Economic History and Geography suggest, economic evolutionary
developments in the Megalopolis over recent decades are
joint consequences
of
innovations in transport and Information and Communication technologies (ICT),
the emergence of global economy, and the onset of dynamic new knowledge in the
form of physical and institutional technologies in the manufacturing and service
economies. This paper aims to offer a rich nuanced treatment of this complex
subject of the multi-dimensional economic structural change and evolution in the
Megalopolis.
Part II of the paper focuses on the rise and evolution of a multivalent transport
system in the Megalopolis. Over recent decades, U.S. transport systems have
undergone a major transformation, induced by new transport technologies and
major institutional reforms pertaining to overall economic governance of transport,
in the context of new information technologies. Such changes have promoted new
transport logistics capacities in an increasingly global economy, where goods are
sourced and markets serviced globally. In this context, the historically modally
organized transport system in the Megalopolis has transformed itself into a
multi-
valent and multimodal transport system
, which in turn unleashes various economic
mechanisms and processes underlying the broader economic consequences of
transport investments over time. Part II organizes such economic mechanisms
into (1) Gains from Trade, (2) Technology Diffusion, and (3) Gains from urban
agglomerations induced by transport improvements.
Part III provides a survey of the demographic, urban, and economic evolution
over recent decades in the BOSWASH corridor. An analysis of urban development
patterns in the I-95 Corridor over a long time (six decades) suggests different
patterns of urban development of
urban decline and resurgence.
This evolution
ranges from the dense and compact
industrial era spatial pattern
(pre 1957—
manufacturing production and working class households concentrated in dense
