Planning question: existing agglomeration economies vs. new agglomeration economies

[azzzu]

When having to plan, hypothetically, development of a country with a primate city, would it be better to encourage spill over from existing agglomeration economies into regions close to the primate city, or to encourage growth of NEW agglomerations in cities further away from primate city.

[gkmo62u]

I am going to need a translator for this question, its written in Canadian!

[Tranplanner]

I'll give you the standard planning answer: "it depends".

[Floridays]

That's difficult to answer without knowing what type of analysis has been done so far.

[Lee Nellis]

You can't just let the urban economy spill over, if you want to have a healthy countryside, healthy smaller towns, and a healthy city. There are separate complementary strategies for development in every setting. You need to look into the literature on uneven development. You need to think about sprawl has made so many central city economies in the US weak.

[Nor Cal Planner Girl]

A primate city? Well, the rest is sprawl as Lee said.

[Cardinal]

When having to plan, hypothetically, development of a country with a primate city, would it be better to encourage spill over from existing agglomeration economies into regions close to the primate city, or to encourage growth of NEW agglomerations in cities further away from primate city.

Yes.

Maybe one or the other.

Or both.

Read the writings of Allan Scott, who links the locational choices of firms to varying degrees of corporate dis-integration and production characteristics.

[DetroitPlanner]

All I can tell you are the old agglomeration economy cities are having a hard time. Detroit was built on engineering and manufacturing. In the face of global comptetition for jobs, we have been shedding jobs to other parts of the world for decades now.

I'm all for following an export-base theory, but you should not try to build an entire economy on it any longer. Portions of the overall economy is fine, but diversification is needed more for economic health than agglomeration in my opinion. Cetrainly there are cases that can be made for both sides. Safer agglomerations can take place in health care, utilities, and clustering tech jobs (but beware remember the .com bust).

Therefore some agglomeration is good for the primate city, because it allows you to use the export base theory to grow your economy and create jobs but too much of it is a bad thing.