Invisible Infrastructure and the City

Abstract

This article explores the linkage between telecommunications infrastructure and high-tech industry growth in cities of two metropolitan areas, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota and Phoenix, Arizona. Results indicate that cities with greater telecommunications capacity are more likely to have positive growth in high-tech industry and all sectors analyzed. Yet, the results also suggest that while we often think of high-tech industry as a single entity, it is important to disaggregate the industry to determine whether certain production processes and services make the firm react differently to telecommunications as a location factor. Where high-tech firms are locating and the degree to which telecommunications infrastructure is attractive to these firms is of great import given that cities desire to take part in the New Economy. The findings suggest that local policy makers may have more success in attracting high-tech business that fit the city's current telecommunications profile.The explosion of fiber-optic cable deployment and increase in fiber capacity has created a new infrastructure foundation that is not as readily apparent as highways, roads, and water lines. However, although much of this telecommunications infrastructure is following the routes of railroads and highways, it is an invisible foundation for today's voice, video, and data communications in our society. Walcott and Wheeler (2001) explain that hair-thin threads of glass utilizing laser light pulses in digital computer code, with multiple glass fibers in each cable-some sending messages from A to B and others from B to A-are the standard physical paths for global Internet telecommunications for major numeric data and word and graphic information. (p. 321) Cronin, Hebert, and Colleran (1992) found that the heavy investment in telecommunications in the 1960s decreased its prices and made it a cheaper input. They estimated the intensity of telecommunications usage to increase 167%

Broadband Provision and Firm Location in Ohio: An Exploratory Spatial Analysis

“…Second, the use of two‐digit NAICS industries to decompose industry‐level establishment relationships with broadband may be insufficient given the variety of firms included at the two‐digit level of aggregation. A more disaggregated analysis of the relationship between broadband and more Internet intensive firms (Hackler 2003), such as those producing Internet content (Zook 2000), may yield higher correlation coefficients than those produced in this study. Third, the results of this analysis assume a simultaneous relationship exists between broadband and establishments, which may be unrealistic, particularly if a lagged effect exists.…”

“…To better examine such a relationship, a correlation analysis was performed for establishments in aggregate, establishments by industry, and establishments by firm size. Given the deviations of establishment data from a normal distribution, a Spearman rank correlation coefficient was used to analyse these relationships, similar to the approach implemented by Hackler (2003).…”

“…The industries selected include: Manufacturing, Retail, Information, Finance and Insurance, Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services and Management 6 . Prior quantitative analyses have utilised Manufacturing and Retail (Sohn et al 2002) as well as Finance, Insurance and real estate (Hackler 2003) in their studies. The suburbanisation and locational preferences of business and professional services (Gong & Wheeler 2002) has also been evaluated previously.…”

“…Gong and Wheeler (2002) and O’hUallachain and Reid (1991) examined trends in Business and Professional Services. Hackler (2003) has examined firm location trends at a more disaggregate level for firms within the finance and insurance, and information sectors.…”

Environmental Impacts of Infrastructure Development under the Belt and Road Initiative

“…Economic activities are dependent on physical infrastructures (especially transport and energy), and increase demand for them [103,104]. Communications infrastructure often plays an "invisible" supporting role but can also stimulate certain types of economic activity [105]. Other infrastructure which promotes economic activity, such as Special Economic Zones (SEZs; [105]), can also be very influential in shaping economic activities and interactions [106][107][108].…”