Ubiquitous digital technologies and spatial structure; an update

Emmanouil Tranos,Yannis M Ioannides,Shihe Fu

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0248982

Emmanouil Tranos, Yannis M Ioannides + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0248982

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Abstract

This paper examines the impact of widespread adoption of information and communication technologies (ICT) on urban structure worldwide. Has it offset agglomeration benefits and led to more dispersed spatial structures, or has it strengthened urban externalities and thus resulted in more concentrated spatial structures? Theoretical and empirical studies on this question have produced contradictory findings. The present study recognizes that assumptions made earlier about the evolution of technological capabilities do not necessarily hold today. As cutting-edge digital technologies have matured considerably, a fresh look at this question is called for. The paper addresses this issue by means of several data sets using instrumental variable methods. One is the UN data on Urban Settlements with more than 300, 000 inhabitants. Estimation methods with these data show that increased adoption of ICT has resulted in national urban systems that are less uniform in terms of city sizes and are characterized by higher population concentrations in larger cities, when concentration is proxied the Pareto (Zipf) coefficient for national city size distributions. Two, is disaggregated data for the urban systems of the US, defined as Micropolitan and Metropolitan Areas, and for the UK, defined as Built-up Areas in England and Wales, respectively. These data allow for the impacts to be studied for cities smaller than those included in the cross-country data. Increased internet usage improved a city’s ranking in the US urban system. Similarly, increased download speed improves a built-up area’s ranking in England and Wales.

Highlights

Geographers, planners and urban economists spent effort in exploring the spatial footprint of the internet even at its early stages
This paper reports empirical findings on a question at the heart of urban economics and economic geography: has the proliferation of information and communication technologies offset the benefits of agglomeration economies and resulted in more dispersed spatial population structures, or has it further reinforced such urban externalities and led to more concentrated
Ubiquitous digital technologies and spatial structure; an update spatial structures? Previous studies have led to contradictory results regarding whether information and communication technologies (ICT) adoption and urban agglomeration externalities are complementary or substitutable

Summary

Introduction

Geographers, planners and urban economists spent effort in exploring the spatial footprint of the internet even at its early stages. They theorized about the spatial impacts that rapid internet penetration might generate on individual cities and the national spatial structure. Cases in point are celebrations of the emergence of telecottages [1], the rise of a borderless world [2], the death of cities [3, 4], and, more generally, the end of geography [5], the death of distance [6] and the emergence of a new flat world [7].

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