Clustering: Concentration of the Knowledge-based Economy in Sydney

Abstract

Sydney is Australia’s top global city positioned in a global urban hierarchy as measured and ranked in an increasing number of global city literatures (Beaverstock, Taylor, & Smith, 1999; Friedmann, 1986, 1995; GaWC, 1998, 2009; Godfrey & Zhou, 1999; MasterCard Worldwide, 2008; etc.). Saskia Sassen, the author of the term ‘global city’, defines a global city’s status from the perspective of its capacity to provide such ‘producer services’ as financing, banking, accounting, advertising, marketing and management consultancy and attests that these complexes of knowledge-based economy activities are usually located in central business districts (CBDs) of a few global cities (Sassen, 1995, 2001). This theorization of global city and the clustering of the knowledge-based economy in the central city area is supposed to be applicable to Sydney too given the scholarly consensus on Sydney’s status as a global city. A group of researchers have testified the argument of Sydney’s status as a global city and the clustering of advanced producer services or the ‘financialization’ of workers in Central Sydney (Baum, 1997; Daly & Pritchard, 2000; O'Connor & Stimson, 1995; O'Neill & McGuirk, 2003; Searle, 1996, 1998b, 2008). However, an empirical study of how the knowledge-based economy has been concentrated in Central Sydney compared to Metropolitan Sydney in a systematic manner, and how this concentration has shifted temporally, will contribute to the literature and help testify the theories.