Urban Hierarchy Research Articles

Are Chinese Cities Too Small?

This paper models and estimates net urban agglomeration economies for cities. Economic models of cities postulate an inverted U shape of real income per worker against city employment, where the inverted U shifts with industrial composition across the urban hierarchy of cities. This relationship has never been estimated, in part because of data requirements. China has the necessary data and context. We find that urban agglomeration benefits are high—real incomes per worker rise sharply with increases in city size from a low level. They level out nearer the peak and then decline very slowly past the peak. We find that a large fraction of cities in China are undersized due to nationally imposed, strong migration restrictions, resulting in large income losses.

The Netherlands: Adaptation of the Carefully Planned Structure

to be checked) The facility structure in post war areas in The Netherlands is probably one of the most intricate in the world, with facilities clustered in neighbourhood units that are functionally ordered across the cities. However, developments in society harmed the viability of the hierarchic structure and forced to adaptation or dismantling of the neighbourhood centres of the lower end of the pyramid, a process still continuing. Economic viability competes with social desirability of a neighbourhood centre as a social heart of the neighbourhood. As a reaction to the problems of pre World War II urban areas, most post-war developments in The Netherlands, constructed during the 1950s and 1960s, were designed according to the principle of the neighbourhood unit, each with its own schools and shops within walking distance and, perhaps typically Dutch, larger centres at cycling distance to serve two or perhaps more of those neighbourhoods. City centres provided facilities at the highest level of the urban hierarchy. A neighbourhood was considered as both an area where individuals could live in a safe and familiar surroundings and one that provided all daily facilities. However, this well thought out structure for facility provision experienced viability problems in later decades, due to developments in society, and changes in population, in neighbourhood centres and within the facility structure itself. These developments led and will continue to lead to adaptations of the structure of facility provision. In this article the history and development of post-war neighbourhood centres in The Netherlands is examined. The aim is to analyse the origins of the intricate facility structure, to determine what developments have threatened and changed this structure and what the future prospects of neighbourhood centres in The Netherlands will be. The next section discusses the origins, the ideas behind the layout plans, the construction and the outcomes of the neighbourhoods and their centres. The following section deals with the developments of these centres up to the present day. General demographic, economic, societal, political and other developments has changed their positions, in general in a negative way as is described in the following section. Several strategies are being tried to adapt or revitalize these centres. This links with general policies to renew neighbourhoods. The last part goes into the future of these neighbourhood centres; a future that could be a change in function, for example into housing. Or it could be that other services fill in the gap, for example small firms. Moreover, future general trends and policies can change the local position of neighbourhood centres. The article is illustrated with a case study of the South-West district of The Hague, an example of a large 1950s and 1960s development with an intricate structure of facilities. The original ideas, the development afterwards and future prospects are examined. The Origins of Neighbourhood Planning in the Netherlands

Mondialisation, concurrence et métropoles

Globalization, competition and cities Authors show how the building of polycentric cities with smaller labour market areas is likely to restore the firms’ competitiveness without reducing the welfare of the workers. Such a strategy of urban development is so likely to help the big cities to support their rank in the urban hierarchy, preserving their position on international markets. JEL classification : F02, R1

Les caïds de la ville à Jakarta

Jérôme Tadié - The boss man and the city in Jakarta. Small-time criminal or godfather, the boss man -preman in Indonesia - is a figure on the fringes of society and the city. As a presence in the urban hierarchy and public spaces, he occupies an interstitial place in the power games between formal actors and the population. He thus contributes to the informal regulation of petty crime and even high crime areas. We analyze the importance of this character in Jakarta, and, through him, how life on the edge allows people to integrate civic life and leads to the formation and appropriation of key areas in the city — its public spaces.

The New Location Pattern of Stores in The Cyber Space

Transportation infrastructure such as highways and high-speed rail, which reducespace resistance, have historically changed the urban hierarchy and structure. In the near future, they will be influenced by increasing development of Information Technology, but no surveys have examined this topic. This study is intended to elucidate the updated distribution pattern of cybershop location in Japan by extracting them from the internet. Results clarify that cybershops tend to concentrate in the Tokyo region more than usual shops. Some cybershops locate in rural regions in which usual shops cannot be located.

Migration up and down the urban hierarchy and across the life course.

In this article, we begin by reviewing the concept of step migration that originated in E. G. Ravenstein's seminal papers "The Laws of Migration" (1885, 1889). As a result of the forces of the Industrial Revolution underway in 19th century Great Britain, migrants moved from farms to villages, from villages to towns, from towns to county seats, and thence to large cities. Throughout much of the industrialization era in the United States, net population movements similarly were upward within the urban hierarchy, and step migration today remains widespread throughout much of the still developing world. Our investigations of recent data and trends, however, suggest that the latest U.S. migration-pattern regime is a strongly contrasting one. Many of the major movements in the system of internal (or domestic) migration are flows down the urban hierarchy, although we note highly differentiated patterns for persons and households at specific stages of the life course. We make use of the newly defined metropolitan and micropolitan Core-Based Statistical Areas (CBSAs) and a seven-level size typology to tabulate origin-destination-specific migration flow data from both Census 2000 and IRS tax-return administrative records for the period 1995-2000. We discuss the causes for net movements being either upward or downward in the national urban hierarchy, including the effects of spatially focused immigration, and movement preferences at various ages, including migration in young adulthood associated with entering and leaving college and the military, as well as moves characteristic of the stages of family formation, childrearing, and retirement.

Gentrification as Corporate Growth Strategy: The Strange Case of Charlotte, North Carolina and the Bank of America

ABSTRACT:In keeping with calls for gentrification research to show greater sensitivity to contextuality, this article uses Charlotte, North Carolina as a case study to illustrate a geography of gentrification in which motivations to gentrify and stage trajectories do not quite fit traditional expectations. In this mid-sized Southern city, gentrification was first introduced in the early 1970s when corporate leaders recognized the importance of revitalizing central city space in a manner that would enhance their corporate identity and advance their strategic goals. Early stage gentrification in Charlotte was characterized by the production of gentrifiable space in one of the city’s most deteriorated districts, the absence of marginal gentrifiers and traditional urban pioneers, unconventional profit motives, and significant deviations from traditional stage theory. Beyond providing an analysis of gentrification at a level of the urban hierarchy (and in a region) that has long been overlooked, the article contributes a critical and contextual perspective to our understanding of gentrification’s causality and process.

Modelling gambling time and economic assignments to weekly trip behaviour to gambling venues

The study of gambling and its socio-economic structures should be an area of growing interest to a society-relevant geography. In Australia, electronic gaming machines (EGMs) have dominated recent gambling industry growth. As EGMs have diffused through the urban hierarchy, there is a growing recognition that EGM distribution often correlates with levels of socio-economic status. Marshall and Baker (2002) showed that a similar EGM socio-economic assignment model evolved in the capital cities of Sydney and Melbourne, Australia, even though these cities have substantially different historical and legislative EGM environments. This paper looks at a related space–time model in the context of trip-making to gaming venues, relative to an Index of Economic Resources from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. A simulation of the model predicts different types of gambling behaviour. It also shows that venue hours can affect time–economic trip behaviour. The model is then applied to EGM gambling data gathered in an urban hierarchy on the north coast of New South Wales, Australia. The results define a gaussian-type low involvement ‘recreational random’ gambling for patrons, whereas for more involved gamblers (in terms of time spent gambling), there are discrete behavioural periods over the week for a wider economic cohort. This leads to the possibility of a spectrum of time–economic EGM gambling assignments for participating households in metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas.

The Portuguese urban system: An opposition between its hierarchical organization in cyberspace vs. physical space

The advent of computer and information technologies during the past decades, and their widespread use, is radically transforming the dynamics of communication and our understanding of spatial relationships. This empirical analysis intends to question how this kind of technological changes affect past trends in urban and regional development, specifically if they have enough potential to generate substantial adjustments on traditional Portuguese urban hierarchy, or instead, if it is an unexpected contribute to reinforce territorial disintegration tendencies. We analyse some geographic measurements of Internet ownership, especially the density of .pt domains and the presence of each Portuguese city in the most used web search engines, in order to verify the plasticity of space throughout Portugal by the growing use of information and communication technologies (ICTs), and the ways it has been stretched or compressed. The findings of this study suggest that the role of ICTs in the struggle against spatial inequalities in Portugal is less relevant than expected.

Do numbers count? Towns in early modern Wales

Although early modern Welsh towns were small by European standards, appearing to follow Clark's model for Europe's northern periphery of localized settlements not closely integrated within a wider urban hierarchy, Welsh towns showing greatest expansion were commercial outlets for specialist produce within the wider commercial matrix of southern Britain. Their smallness indicates a role within this wider, integrated network rather than constriction born of isolation.

Planned Villages in South-West Scotland, 1730–1855: Analysing Functional Characteristics

Planned villages proliferated in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Scotland. Their development was directly related to the social and economic era often referred to as the Enlightenment. This article examines the functional characteristics of these planned villages. It presents a case study of south-west Scotland, where villages with a diverse range of functions were developed between approximately 1730 and 1855 at coastal and inland sites. These villages were dynamic settlements whose characteristics, functions and position within the local urban and economic hierarchies changed, often over short periods of time. Their functional characteristics were more complex than earlier publications would suggest, highlighting the importance of detailed regional case studies in historical geography.

State policy and the globalization of Beijing: emerging themes

An emerging body of work has attempted to capture the formation and functions of the emerging global cities in Asia to add a new dimension to the global city literature. With economic reforms and open door policy, Chinese cities have become more and more integrated with the global economy and the global urban hierarchy, spearheaded by Shanghai, Beijing, and Guangzhou. This paper analyzes the salient features of emerging global cities in China and highlights the role of the state in globalizing Chinese cities. We examine the efforts of Beijing to make itself into a global city: attracting foreign investment, building a world-class central business district (CBD), constructing Zhongguancun as “China's Silicon Valley,” and preparing for the 2008 Olympic Games. These themes are state-directed and involve many aspects of globalizing the city, which testifies to the difference in the process and mechanisms of the globalization in Chinese cities from their counterparts in the developed countries.

The Saga of the ‘Second industrial divide’ and the history of the ‘third Italy’: Evidence from export data

The idea of the Third Italy has achieved an iconic status in geography. It has come to represent one of the main geographical manifestations of the so‐called second industrial divide between Fordist mass production and flexible specialisation. Yet the idea has received limited critical attention since acquiring its elevated status. It deserves to do so, because it involves confusing a localised model of economic development with the economic character of a larger geographic region. Examining province level export data for the years 1985, 1991, 1995 and 1999 for both total exports and two key sectors using exploratory spatial data analysis, provincial rankings and LISAs (local indicators of spatial association) suggests that the export‐based homogeneity and dynamism of the Third Italy can be exaggerated. Italy's urban hierarchy, particularly the centrality of Milan, continues to play a significant role in the Italian economy. Common use of the term ‘Third Italy’ confuses an economic process with a specific geographical configuration.

Changes in the Working Population and Domestic Service in a Peripheral Spanish Town: A Coroña, 1900–1960

A Corona is an interesting case study, firstly because compared to other medium-sized Spanish towns it had a stronger tertiary economic structure. Secondly, because it showed a high percentage of population working in domestic service, although the town did not exactly follow the pattern of Spanish cities. In 1900, A Corona was the 7th Spanish town according to the percentage of female population working in domestic service, while it occupied the 19th position within the Spanish urban hierarchy. It was only surpassed by San Sebastian which has persistently showed the highest percentage of domestic service during the whole period, by some other larger cities such as Bilbao or Madrid, which received an important female immigrant flow, and by small towns such as Guadalajara, Avila, Soria or Salamanca. What this reveals is that the presence of domestic service was unusually high for a town that was not able to attract roral immigration as compared to the biggest Spanish cities.

POROUS EUROPE: EUROPEAN CITIES IN GLOBAL URBAN ARENAS

ABSTRACT The notion that there is a European ‘system of cities’ or ‘urban hierarchy’ has been an attractive idea, since it appears to provide a coherent subset of cities to study within a regional context. Under conditions of contemporary globalisation, however, the spatial order of European cities can only be properly understood as a ‘porous Europe’. That is, it is impossible to sensibly discuss European intercity relations separate from an encompassing world city network. This paper therefore analyses 88 European cities in the context of a global urban analysis of 234 cities around the world. The main conclusion is that leading European world cities are specifically distinguished through their forming of global urban arenas. They should therefore not be thought of as being un‐European, but as a special kind of world city that is highly cosmopolitan in its intercity relations.

Culture, Language, and the Location of High-Order Service Functions: The Case of Montreal and Toronto

Today, there is plenty of evidence of metropolization—the concentration of economic activity, particularly of high-order services—in the world’s largest cities. Furthermore, within most national systems, the urban hierarchy is stable, especially toward the top: cities that were the largest 100 years ago continue to dominate their respective systems today. In Canada, however, this is not the case. Over the past 40 years, there has been a reversal at the top of the urban hierarchy, with Montreal losing its dominance in favor of Toronto. In this article, we document the reversal and elaborate a model that accounts for the spatial shifts in high-order services. Our analysis reveals the continued relevance of culture and language and suggests that there are limits to the concentration of high-order service activity. This finding is corroborated by a more detailed look at occupational shifts within a variety of key economic sectors in Montreal and Toronto. We conclude by suggesting that these results and the model we put forward to explain them have implications that go beyond Canada: even in a globalizing world in which the constraints of distance are lessened, cultural and linguistic factors will continue to play an important role in determining the spatial distribution of high-order economic activity.

Global cities in East Asia: empirical and conceptual analysis*

East Asia is now the scene of very rapid and dynamic urban growth. Its great cities range from Tokyo (unquestionably a key “global city”) to Hong Kong, Seoul, and Taipei (ascending through the “world city” ranks) to Jakarta or Ho Chi Minh City (usually regarded as developing world “megacities”). How are social scientists to understand this dynamic of urbanisation and (under‐) development? This paper argues that we must begin with a framework that locates cities in global urban networks and in relation to world‐systemic changes. It sketches how the East Asian regional patterns “fit” with global ones. Finally, the essay suggests renewed focus on the “dependent / peripheral” cities at the “bottom” of the world urban hierarchy.

Immigration and ethnic economies in giant cities

Globalisation studies claimed that Third World immigrants flock to world cities because of changed income distributions. On this argument, the increasingly hourglass‐shaped income structure of world cities, a product of global restructuring, creates self‐renewing demand for skilled and unskilled workers in those very world cities. Critics have already shown that this argument neglects the intermediary role of migration networks, and that, when account is taken of these networks, a basis exists for explaining why migrations to world cities continue and even accelerate despite deteriorating economic conditions in the destinations. This paper addresses the role of ethnic economies in this perplexing process, arguing that ethnic economies buffer migrations from deteriorating economic conditions in the reception cities. This buffer expands effective demand for immigrant workers while guaranteeing pre‐migrants still at home employment and housing in the destinations prior to their actual departure. Assuming continuing immigration, a given of globalisation, the buffer itself is finally saturated after a lag. When combined with loss of local political toleration, which accompanies increasing poverty among migrants, the buffer's economic saturation finally diverts the migration network to lesser cities of the urban hierarchy where the process of mainstream saturation – buffer expansion – buffer saturation – dispersal repeats. The durability of buffer economies in localities does not depend only on economic conditions. Local political toleration of buffer economies importantly affects the durability of the immigration buffer in any city. To this extent, immigration policy is in the hands of cities, not of states.

Fuzzy approach to the spatial games in the total market area

The paper presents a fuzzy approach to building up a model of spatial hierarchy based on spatial games. It is derived from the analytical model by Bogataj and Bogataj (Int. J. Prod. Econ. 71 (1–3) (2001) 277). The main strategic problems of a supply chain are connected with the question of location and capacity of individual activity cells to achieve the best supply chain coordination. The results of supply chain coordination between two activity cells on the plain originate from Girlich's research paper (Inventory Modelling, Lecture Notes of the International Postgraduate Summer School, Vol. 2, ISIR, Budapest-Protoroz, 1995, pp. 13–24) and have been later transformed in frequency space, using the methodology of input–output analysis, Laplace transforms and MRP developed at Linköping Institute of Technology by Grubbström and his research group. The analytical results developed by Bogataj and Bogataj (2001) are compared with the results achieved by fuzzy set approach. In our paper the problem is formulated as a non-constant sum game. In this case the total market area is constant and the conditions for lower central places are described for different positions of these central places in an urban hierarchy in the case of two-level production. The results of fuzzy approach in logistic games are compared with analytical results.

Digital Divide in Internet Use Within the Urban Hierarchy: The Case of South Korea

The paper examines a digital divide of in the Internet use from a geographical perspective. The digital divide is examined on different levels within the urban hierarchy and by different activities for which the Internet is used. This study also explores the role of the geographical dimension in explaining the variation of determining engagement rates. Netizens living in areas other than out of Seoul (the capital of Korea) are found to have relatively lower rates of engagement. The relative difference, however, is rather smaller in engagement than in access. Meaningful use (engagement) of the Internet divides the urban hierarchy into two layers, Seoul and other areas. The divide in Internet access shows a clear three-layered structure: Seoul, other cities, and rural areas. Internet activities that can help overcome distance show higher engagement rates in local provinces. In contrast, netizens in Seoul show higher engagement rates in such activities as ticketing, e-auction, e-party, and e-banking, which require a more complicated set of institutional and cultural infrastructure. Finally, the regional setting plays a significant role in explaining determining the variation of engagement rates.