A metropolitan economy refers to the cohesive, naturally evolving concentration of industries, commerce, markets, firms, housing, human capital, infrastructure and other economic elements that are comprised in a particular metropolitan area. Rather than the definition of distinct urban and suburban economies that evolve and function independently, a metropolitan economy encompasses all interdependent jurisdictions of particular regional clusters. This type of economy has all its units functioning together in a trans-boundary landscape that often crosses city, county, state, province, and even national lines. [1] Metropolitan economies expand from the parochial view taken in urban economics which focuses entirely on a city's spatial structure, and broadens it into a metropolitan's spatial and social/economic structure.
In the latest evolution of global economic restructuring, metropolitan economies have become as experts at the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program assert, "the engines of the New Economy". [1] Globalization has essentially reconfigured localities, placing value on the unique, innovative assets that have been historically formed and attuned to the local area. Embodied within metropolitan economies is what Saskia Sassen describes as the global city but branches out to include the central business district and its satellites. [2] The accelerated advancement of transportation and communications, particularly with capital flight, outsourcing, and supply chain logistics, has virtually removed factor endowments and comparative advantage concepts. In its wake, metropolitan economies are competing globally in specialized sectors and fields tailored to their regional clusters, a term coined by Harvard Professor Michael Porter (i.e., information technology in greater San Francisco; leather shoe and apparel textiles industry in Florence, Italy; digital media and electronics in Seoul, South Korea). [3]
More and more developed nations are becoming defined and fueled by their local, metropolitan economies. [1] Before, analysis focused on what happens inside companies, how inputs of labor and capital are used for productivity of output. Now, what happens outside companies in the immediate business environment is just as important. [3] With global competition in innovation of processes and products, the clustering of knowledge (such as the research community), consulting firms, skilled laborers, financial institutions, legal services, government entities, and specialized technology industries have become vitally important. Such agglomeration and diversity, unique to a metro, catalyzes growth. Additionally, auxiliary industries in local services and trades evolve in such metropolitan areas, such as the production of wind turbines in the automotive industry of the greater Detroit and Cleveland areas. [3] Cultural ambience even emerges with the area's quality of place and historical heritage in the form of the arts (art galleries, music halls, publishing houses), non-profit venues (museums, performing arts theaters), and public assets (libraries, parks).
Consequently, this new configuration of metropolitan economies requires equally new and adaptive government policymaking. [1] For effective legislation, contemporary nations must[ according to whom? ] reformulate their understanding of place, moving away from disparate states, provinces, and regions and embracing a network of integrated metropolitan economies. Hence, metros must[ according to whom? ] become a recognized actor among the usual federal-state-local apparatus. Additionally, government departments and ministries must[ according to whom? ] acknowledge the interplay of arenas such as the inflexible tandem of housing and transportation as well as energy and the environment. Coordinated efforts across agencies and programs must[ according to whom? ] take place to ensure best performance outcomes and high efficiency. Even more, management must[ according to whom? ] change from prescriptive, formulaic, hierarchical leadership to more nimble, networked, and compact collaborations. [1] These organizational reforms would influence a host of policies including among others transportation infrastructure, housing systems, employment hubs, energy standards, green spaces, and environmental protection.
For instance, the incorporation of metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) in US DOT programs and emergence of metropolitan governments worldwide are evidence of the impact of metropolitan economies. [1] Other concrete examples include building the Metrorail system, which required coordinated agreement between the Washington, D.C., Virginia, and Maryland environs; [4] likewise, high-speed rail in Spain which connects virtually every large metro in the country. Chicago's Plan for Transformation in overhauling the city's public housing stock has to work together with local stakeholders on lease agreements, land use, economic development, and local taxes. [5] The Triangle Area's high tech life sciences research hub, the Research Triangle Park, continually works together with surrounding research universities in Durham, Raleigh, and Chapel Hill. [6] Denver's expanded metropolitan transportation system needed a surrounding mayor caucus for joint efforts. [7] The Hong Kong Airport and Shenzhen Airport dual services link that aim to capitalize on "the synergy of their complementary flight networks" required agreement between Hong Kong and China. [8] The Channel Tunnel, an undersea rail tunnel under the English Channel, required cooperation and financing between the French and Britain governments. [9] The Port of Rio de Janeiro serves the city and surrounding states in Brazil. [10] All these partnered, comprehensive initiatives are crucial in metropolitan economies.
Many examples of the metropolitan economies worldwide include (see links below):
Hong Kong is a special administrative region of the People's Republic of China. With 7.4 million residents of various nationalities in a 1,104-square-kilometre (426 sq mi) territory, Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated territories in the world.
The economy of Hong Kong is a highly developed free-market economy. It is characterised by low taxation, almost free port trade and a well-established international financial market. Its currency, called the Hong Kong dollar, is legally issued by three major international commercial banks, and is pegged to the US dollar. Interest rates are determined by the individual banks in Hong Kong to ensure that they are market driven. There is no officially recognised central banking system, although the Hong Kong Monetary Authority functions as a financial regulatory authority.
Economic geography is the subfield of human geography that studies economic activity and factors affecting it. It can also be considered a subfield or method in economics. There are four branches of economic geography.
One of the major subfields of urban economics, economies of agglomeration, explains, in broad terms, how urban agglomeration occurs in locations where cost savings can naturally arise. This term is most often discussed in terms of economic firm productivity. However, agglomeration effects also explain some social phenomena, such as large proportions of the population being clustered in cities and major urban centers. Similar to economies of scale, the costs and benefits of agglomerating increase the larger the agglomerated urban cluster becomes. Several prominent examples of where agglomeration has brought together firms of a specific industry are: Silicon Valley and Los Angeles being hubs of technology and entertainment, respectively, in California, United States; and London, United Kingdom, being a hub of finance.
Urban economics is broadly the economic study of urban areas; as such, it involves using the tools of economics to analyze urban issues such as crime, education, public transit, housing, and local government finance. More specifically, it is a branch of microeconomics that studies the urban spatial structure and the location of households and firms.
Metro Detroit is a major metropolitan area in the U.S. state of Michigan, consisting of the city of Detroit and over 200 municipalities in the surrounding area with its largest employer being Oakland County. There are varied definitions of the area, including the official statistical areas designated by the Office of Management and Budget, a federal agency of the United States.
A global city, also known as a power city, world city, alpha city, or world center, is a city that serves as a primary node in the global economic network. The concept originates from geography and urban studies, based on the thesis that globalization has created a hierarchy of strategic geographic locations with varying degrees of influence over finance, trade, and culture worldwide. The global city represents the most complex and significant hub within the international system, characterized by links binding it to other cities that have direct, tangible effects on global socioeconomic affairs.
The 2000s in Hong Kong began a new millennium under the People's Republic of China (PRC).
A business cluster is a geographic concentration of interconnected businesses, suppliers, and associated institutions in a particular field. Clusters are considered to increase the productivity with which companies can compete, nationally and globally. Accounting is a part of the business cluster. In urban studies, the term agglomeration is used. Clusters are also important aspects of strategic management.
The Detroit–Windsor region is an international transborder agglomeration comprising the American city of Detroit, Michigan, the Canadian city of Windsor, Ontario, and the Detroit River between them. The Detroit–Windsor area acts as a critical commercial link straddling the Canada–United States border and has a total population of 5,976,595. It is North America's largest cross-border conurbation.
The metropolitan area surrounding and including Detroit, Michigan, is a ten-county area with a population of over 5.9 million, a workforce of 2.6 million, and about 347,000 businesses. Detroit's six-county Metropolitan Statistical Area has a population of about 4.3 million, a workforce of about 2.1 million, and a gross metropolitan product of $200.9 billion. Detroit's urban area has a population of 3.9 million. A 2005 PricewaterhouseCoopers study estimated that Detroit's urban area had a gross domestic product of $203 billion.
Spatial inequality refers to the unequal distribution of income and resources across geographical regions. Attributable to local differences in infrastructure, geographical features and economies of agglomeration, such inequality remains central to public policy discussions regarding economic inequality more broadly.
Economic restructuring is used to indicate changes in the constituent parts of an economy in a very general sense. In the western world, it is usually used to refer to the phenomenon of urban areas shifting from a manufacturing to a service sector economic base. It has profound implications for productive capacities and competitiveness of cities and regions. This transformation has affected demographics including income distribution, employment, and social hierarchy; institutional arrangements including the growth of the corporate complex, specialized producer services, capital mobility, informal economy, nonstandard work, and public outlays; as well as geographic spacing including the rise of world cities, spatial mismatch, and metropolitan growth differentials.
In China, a megalopolis is a designation by the government to promote the development of a group of cities through transportation and communication links.
Innovation economics is new, and growing field of economic theory and applied/experimental economics that emphasizes innovation and entrepreneurship. It comprises both the application of any type of innovations, especially technological, but not only, into economic use. In classical economics this is the application of customer new technology into economic use; but also it could refer to the field of innovation and experimental economics that refers the new economic science developments that may be considered innovative. In his 1942 book Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, economist Joseph Schumpeter introduced the notion of an innovation economy. He argued that evolving institutions, entrepreneurs and technological changes were at the heart of economic growth. However, it is only in recent years that "innovation economy," grounded in Schumpeter's ideas, has become a mainstream concept".
Rapid transit or mass rapid transit (MRT), commonly referred to as metro, is a type of high-capacity public transport that is generally built in urban areas. A grade separated rapid transit line below ground surface through a tunnel can be regionally called a subway, tube, or underground. They are sometimes grade-separated on elevated railways, in which case some are referred to as el trains - short for "elevated". Unlike buses or trams, rapid transit systems are railways, usually electric, that operate on an exclusive right-of-way, which cannot be accessed by pedestrians or other vehicles.
Yehua Dennis Wei is a Chinese-American geographer. He is a professor in the Department of Geography and a senior scholar in the Institute of Public and International Affairs at the University of Utah. His research has been funded by the NSF, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, National Geographic Society, Ford Foundation and Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC). He has received awards for research excellence from the NSFC, Association of American Geographers' (AAG) China, Asian and Regional Development and Planning Specialty Groups, and University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Innovation districts are urban geographies of innovation where R&D strong institutions, companies, and other private actors develop integrated strategies and solutions to develop thriving innovation ecosystems–areas that attract entrepreneurs, startups, and business incubators. Unlike science parks, innovation districts are physically compact, leverage density and high levels of accessibility, and provide a “mash up” of activities including housing, office, and neighborhood-serving amenities. Districts signify the collapse back of innovation into cities and is increasingly used as a way to revitalize the economies of cities and their broader regions. As of 2019, there are more than 100 districts worldwide.
The economy of Chongqing, China, has developed rapidly since it was separated from the Sichuan and became a centrally-administered municipality in 1997. In 2019, it was the sixth-largest Chinese city economy and ranked as China's third-largest municipal economy. In China's overall layout, Chongqing is also important for connecting China's underdeveloped western region with its more advanced eastern region, as well as promoting the economy of the mid-lower reaches of Yangtze river and the central western region.
The Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area, commonly as the Greater Bay Area (GBA), is a megalopolis, consisting of nine cities and two special administrative regions in South China. It is envisioned by Chinese government planners as an integrated economic area aimed at taking a leading role globally by 2035.