Los Angeles employment concentration in the 21st century

Abstract

This paper is an empirical analysis of employment centers in the Los Angeles region from 1997-2014. Most extant work on employment centers focuses on identification methodology or their dynamics during a period of industrial restructuring from 1980-2000. This timely study examines hypotheses derived from more recent perspectives on urban concentration and dispersion including New Urbanism, Smart Growth, sustainable cities, and the recent Global Financial Crisis. We use point-based, rather than census tractbased employment data to analyze concentration across five key industries: knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS), retail, creative, industrial, and high-tech, emphasizing changes in center composition and boundaries. While using point data necessitates slight changes to the nonparametric identification method typically used, results show far greater change across centers than previous longitudinal studies. Only 43% of the land area that is in an employment center is part of one in both 1997 and 2014. Using a persistence score, centers range from stable to highly fluctuating, but emerging, persisting, and dying centers are found in core and fringe areas alike. KIBS are most associated with stable centers, while high tech employment is attracted toward emerging areas and retail exists throughout. Emerging centers are more likely to have greater accessibility, while industrial employment becomes far more concentrated in centers by 2014.

The Geography of Borrowing Size: Exploring Spatial Distributions for German Urban Regions

“…His argumentation is based on the fact that the contemporary economy is not purely divided into agglomerations (place) and networks (space) but consists also of enclaves of export processing zones and arenas of trade fairs – which are labelled interplaces. Other concepts about polycentrism (Burger & Meijers ; van Meeteren et al ; Rauhut ), Edge Cities (Garreau ) or New economic sub‐centres (Krehl ; Kane et al ) see urban regions as economic and social entities in which processes of concentration and deconcentration take place.…”

A longitudinal study of changes in intra-metropolitan employment concentration in Beijing: Decentralisation, reconcentration and polycentrification

“…Redfearn (2009) also documented the medium- and longer-term stability of the location of employment centres in Los Angeles. In a more recent study, Kane et al (2018) analysed the changes in employment centres in Los Angeles from 1997 to 2014 using more sophisticated data and methods, and found that despite a small proportion of total employment in centres, growth in centres outpaced overall employment growth in the region.…”

Parcels, points, and proximity: Can exhaustive sources of big data improve measurement in cities?

“…The Irvine Company maintains exceptionally tight control over zoning and land-use regulations, and the street networks consist largely of winding, high-speed arterial roads with residential communities set between them. While its business subcenter nearly rivals downtown Los Angeles for regional dominance (Kane et al, 2016), it is a rare example of being entirely synthetic in that its location has no historical precedent (Forstall and Greene, 1997).…”