The geographic disparity of agglomeration economies: Evidence from industrial activities in China's emerging greater bay area

Abstract

There has been growing interest in understanding how industrial variation and locational preferences are connected in recent years. However, little research has focused on the geographic disparities of industrial activities within megacities in terms of their spatial and functional variations. This study aims to addresses this issue by examining industrial agglomerations in China's Greater Bay Area (GBA) using points of interest (POIs) data. By extracting keywords from POIs' names that provide valuable insights into the specific characteristics of local industrial sectors, it first identifies different thematic topics related to industrial activities using topic modeling. Industrial agglomerations are then clustered, given their topic importance, in order to depict the spatial and functional variation within the region. In this connection, a dual-center layout with distinct professional tendencies is reported in the central and southeastern GBA. These two subregions are further selected and investigated to understand their spatial-functional characteristics and locational preferences. Our findings indicate that the garment and electronic sectors are the dominant sectors in the central and southeastern subregions, respectively, whereby industries can obtain more competitive advantages by concentrating geographically. Practical implications of regional industrial activities, including upgrading conventional manufacturing modes and spatial-functional inequality, are discussed.