Deciphering the Spatial Stickiness, Co-occurrence, and Co-change of Industries at the Scale of City

Abstract

This paper analyzes the location of industries in two metropolitan cities to investigate how firms are spatially distributed, and identify the prevailing trends in firm location choice. By defining a “Region Index” metric, we show how industries have concentrated in or diffused from the regions-of-interest over time. We apply this metric to the Central Area (CA) of Singapore and the London Region to decipher the relative tendency of industries to locate at CA as well as London. To analyze the spatial co-location of industries, we constructed a community network, which reveals subtle spatial relationships between firms. Extending this approach temporally to create a co-change network, we deduce the occurrences of industries in Singapore and London that move into or out of a spatial region synchronously. Based on this approach, we elucidate firm types that not only co-change but also co-occur in space and remain within a region-of-interest. Overall, we observe certain common and contrasting patterns of industry movements in the context of Singapore and London through the analysis. “Other Activities Auxiliary to Financial Services” is found to have the consistent tendency of diffusing out of CA and London throughout the period of study. Conversely, opposite movement patterns are observed where we see the proclivity of IT and digital service firms to locate in London but relocate out of CA, while the Media, Financial Services, and Life Insurance subsectors tend to diffuse out of London but concentrate in the CA of Singapore.