Cities and Their Vital Systems Infrastructure Past, Present, and Future (1988) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
4 Urban Systems and Historical Path Dependence
4 Urban Systems and Historical Path Dependence
Pages 85-97
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 85... ...
, tended to see industry location as process-dependent, almost geographically stratified, with new industry laid down layer by layer on inherited, previous locational formations. Again, geographical differences and transport possibilities were important, but here the main driving forces were agglomeration economies the benefits of being close to other firms or to concentrations of industry.
|
From page 86... ...
" Certain key personsthe Packards, the Varians, the Shockleys of the industry happened to set up near Stanford University in the 1940s and l950s, and the local labor expertise and interfirm markets they helped to create in Santa Clara County made subsequent location there extremely advantageous for the thousand or so firms that followed them. If these early entrepreneurs had had other predilections, Silicon Valley might well have been somewhere else.
|
From page 87... ...
That is, regions' shares of the industry must converge to the constant vector q. In this simple model then, even though well-def~ned "chance historical events" are present, a unique, predetermined locational pattern emerges and persists.
|
From page 88... ...
It is easy to see that in this case firms are added incrementally to regions with probabilities exactly equal to the proportions of firms in each region at that time. This random process, in which unit increments are added one at a time to one of N categories with probabilities equal to current proportions in each category, is known in probability theory as a Polya process.
|
From page 89... ...
This means that each time this spin-off locational process is "rerun" under different historical events (in this case a different sequence of firms spinning off) , it will in all likelihood settle into a different pattem.
|
From page 90... ...
Chance and Necessity: Location Under Agglomeration Economies Firms that are not tied to raw material localities and that do not compete for local customers are often attracted by the presence of other firms in a region. More densely settled regions offer better infrastructure, deeper labor markets (David, 1984)
|
From page 91... ...
In this model of unbounded agglomeration economies, monopoly of the industry by a single region must occur. But which region achieves this "Silicon Valley" locational monopoly is subject to historical luck ire the sequence of firm-types choosing.
|
From page 92... ...
Therefore proportions should settle down, and fluc / // Probability Regi o n 1 receives next fi rm. // o / 1 O Proportion of i ndu~trg i n Region 1 FIGURE 4-4 Proportion-to-probability mapping (arrows indicate expected motions)
|
From page 93... ...
It takes powerful theoretical machinery to prove this conjecture, but it turns out to hold under unrestrictive technical conditions (see Hill, Lane, and Sudderth, 1980; and Arthur, Ermoliev, and Kaniovski 1983, 1986, 19871.* Further, and significantly for us, where there are multiple stable fixed points, each of these would be a candidate for the long-run locational pattern, with different sequences of chance events steering the process toward one of the multiple candidates.
|
From page 94... ...
, it has a unique minimum; therefore, the locational process that corresponds to it has a unique determinate outcome which expected motions lead toward and which historical chance cannot influence. If, on the other hand, this potential function is nonconvex, it must have two or more minima with a corresponding *
|
From page 95... ...
Certain firms, such as steel manufacturers, need to be near sources of raw materials; for them, spatial economic necessity dominates historical chance. Certain other firms, such as gasoline distributors, need to be separated from their competitors in the same industry; for them, the necessity to spread apart again dominates historical chance.
|
From page 96... ...
It is also the result of where immigrants with certain skills landed, where early settlers met to market foods, where wagon trains stopped for the night, where banking services happened to be set up, and where politics dictated that canals and railroads be built. We therefore cannot explain the observed pattern of cities by economic determinism alone without reference to chance events, coincidences, and circumstances in the past.
|
From page 97... ...
1927. Reine und historische Dynamik des Standortes der Erzeugungszweige.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.