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The economic base of American metropolitan areas relies increasingly on business and professional services. We explore the causes for fast growth of these sectors in metropolitan areas for 1976–86. Business and professional services produce new types of inputs to a large number of sectors. They encompass far more than externalization of activities once produced internally by manufacturers. We emphasize localization of business and professional services in selected metropolitan areas driven by the demand for skilled labor and information. Using employment data for SMSAs, we present empirical evidence verifying the concentration of business and professional services in the largest metropolitan areas and a temporal lag in their market penetration of smaller metropolitan areas. We introduce a new measure called a growth quotient to show that these services are growing rapidly in selected regional metropolitan areas. SMSAs in the industrial belt, especially in their central counties, rely on business and professional services to generate new jobs. Elsewhere metropolitan growth is more diversified.

Sun Belt cities have a reputation for sprawling disarray. Although Phoenix is often depicted as the ultimate large fast‐growing, low‐density Sun Belt metropolis, we found considerable order in the location of business establishments. We tested spatial pattern to show that establishments in a variety of sectors are significantly clustered and found that while clustering declines outside the central business district (CBD) and subcenters, all sectors remain significantly clustered in the suburbs. A new method that we developed to assess spatial relationships of establishments across sectors revealed that spatial intersectoral associations are evident between some intermediate‐sector establishments and within final demand. These intersectoral associations mostly carry over to portions of the urbanized area beyond the CBD and subcenters. A cartographic analysis details sectoral locational patterns across the metropolitan area and the relationships between the function of subcenters and the transportation network. We compare the economic structure of the CBD and five subcenters. Phoenix has a distinctively specialized CBD. Some subcenters are functionally diversified, while others are specialized. The rank‐size rule is a good approximation of the size order of centers. We conclude that continued forces of accessibility, externality, and regulation shape the spatial structure of Phoenix.

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