Rethinking Urban Policy Urban Development in an Advanced Economy (1983) / Chapter Skim
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3 The New Urban System
3 The New Urban System
Pages 38-58
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From page 38... ...
In these centers, strategic economic and political decisions are made that affect both these cities and the rest of the urban system. The centers contain high concentrations of corporate and government headquarters, producer services, and higher education and cultural resources.
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We fit the 140 largest metropolitan areas into four classes: (1) diversified service centers, (2)
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Rethinking Urban Policy COMMAND AND CONTROL CENTERS DIVERSIFIED SERVICE CE NTE RS \ 1 | Regional | | Subregional | | Functional I (e.g., Phila- (e.g., (e.g., Detroit) delphia)
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120 4 Specialized service centers Functional centers Detroit, Mich. 5 1 Pittsburgh, Pa.
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140 4 2. Subordinate centers Consumer-oriented centers Residential centers Nassau, N.Y.
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Santa Barbara, Calif. Production centers 29 43 55 68 79 95 108 122 4 4 4 4 Manufacturing centers Buffalo, N.Y.
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Cities like Akron have recently strengthened their roles as specialized centers as their production roles have declined, and places like Pittsburgh and Cleveland are undergoing obvious transformations from specialized service centers to diversified regional centers.
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as diversified service centers include three subgroups: national, regional, and subregional centers. In some respects they perform a hierarchy of service functions, the largest national centers providing the greatest agglomerations of corporate complexes and the most sophisticated producer services.
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Because of their concentration of services, even major corporations that have their headquarters offices in other cities often maintain offices in the national centers to improve their access to the services that are provided there. Regional Centers The 19 regional centers are not as sophisticated as the national centers in the range of producer services they provide, but they are both more highly diversified and more specialized than other cities in the system.
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From page 47... ...
Transformation in the Diversified Service Centers One of the problems in developing a clearer understanding of the current and future roles of any part of the urban system has been the persistence of the belief that population growth as well as growth of manufacturing jobs is essential for the economic health of a metropolitan area. This has been a special problem in dealing with the economies of the diversified service centers.
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From page 48... ...
Such service jobs now make up almost 10 percent of all jobs in New York City, and 87 percent of them are concentrated in Manhattan (New York Times, October 16, 1981; March 13, 19821. At the same time producer services were growing and increasing their centralization in Manhattan, many corporations were shifting their routine clerical operations to the suburbs or to distant smaller cities as rising Manhattan rents made moves desirable and technology made it feasible (New York Times, November 21, 1981~.
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From page 49... ...
Because of their higher degree of specialization, firms located in these places tend to rely on the national and regional centers for the most highly specialized services, such as international banking and advertising. There are three subgroups of specialized service centers: functional centers, government-education centers, and education-manufacturing centers.
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Central business districts tend to be weaker than in comparably sized diversified service centers, often because the headquarters of the leading corporations were initially located with the production facilities outside the central business district, and competitors put some distance between themselves. Each corporate complex often generates a competing center of urban activity.
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From page 51... ...
There is also an additional factor that seems important in assessing the future of the functional centers. The presence of the home offices of major industrial corporations has meant, for many of these places, a historically strong commitment of the corporate leadership to the community and its nonprofit sector.
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metropolitan areas included in the government-education and education-manufacturing centers include Washington, D.C., and the capitals of 12 states. Others are university towns.
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The presence of government and universities tends to build a metropolitan labor force that is concentrated in professional and administrative occupations, making it an attractive market for some service industries. Such factors as these suggest a mild increase in diversification of these centers without overwhelming their primary specialization.~° SUBORDINATE CENTERS Consumer-Oriented Centers Only 12 of the 140 largest metropolitan areas are primarily consumeroriented centers.
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They are less likely to contain major corporate headquarters, and the producer services sector is relatively small. Instead they are often the sites for specialized branch plants of manufacturing industries.
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The tendency of the most vital services sector corporate complex and producer services to concentrate in the command and control centers is well established. The result is to give these centers a high degree of economic autonomy and to place them in the mainstream of urban economic development.
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As a result, as the mix of industries and occupations changes, such cities are likely to join the command and control centers. As a group, the subordinate centers have not experienced an absolute loss of jobs, but their new service jobs tend to be consumeroriented rather than in producer services.
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From page 57... ...
Studies of the behavior of corporate headquarters functions and of producer and other services, as well as the mounting evidence of continuing and wider dispersion of manufacturing, strongly suggest that the command and control centers will continue to enjoy a strong attraction for the management functions of the economy. Of the components of the urban system, they alone offer easy access to the entire array of services that the modern
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From page 58... ...
While some traditional headquarters activities, such as records centers, can and will be relocated in the suburbs or in subordinate centers, management functions are becoming more heavily concentrated in the major national, regional, and functional centers (Cohen, 1977; Noyelle and Stanback, 19831. Not many more national and regional centers are likely to arise in the near future, especially if the nation continues to approach zero population growth.
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