Chapter Four - Place and transportation infrastructure variation across high-tech zones

Abstract

Clustering and active transportation infrastructures have an imperative impact on emergent place-based economic development strategies for attracting high-tech firms. High-tech clusters usually emerge as the result of the benefits of economies of scale; and, in theory, these clusters are expected to favor walkable and transit accessible locations following the preferences of footloose workers of the creative class. Attracting creative class could be justification for pro-walkability and transit-accessible development strategies, such strategies fail to consider other countervailing factors including changes in logistics, land values, the rise of e-economy, and gig workers which could result in a preference for auto-centric locations. This chapter focuses on this ambiguity and investigates the differences in location behaviors of six high-tech sectorial categories with respect to transportation infrastructures. The analysis in this chapter uses a firm-level microdataset provided by Esri and multiple Logit Regressions to explore the relationship between high-tech firm locations and transportation amenities in 627 high-tech clusters found and analyzed Chapters 2 and 3Chapter 2Chapter 3.