A mind mapping-based literature review on urban agglomeration
Joseph Kim-keung Ho
Independent Trainer
Hong Kong, China
Abstract: The topic of urban agglomeration is a main
one in housing studies, a subject that has been taught by the writer. This
article makes use of the mind mapping-based literature review (MMBLR) approach
to render an image on the knowledge structure of urban agglomeration. The
finding of the review exercise is that its knowledge structure comprises five
main themes, i.e., (a) Definitions
of urban agglomeration, (b) Mechanisms and
theories related to urban agglomeration, (c) Typologies related to urban agglomeration, (d) Issues and concerns
related to urban agglomeration, and,
finally, (e) Impacts of urban agglomeration. There is also a set of key
concepts identified from the urban agglomeration literature review. The article offers some academic and
pedagogical values on the topics of urban agglomeration, literature review and
the mind mapping-based literature review (MMBLR) approach.
Key
words: literature review, mind
map, the mind mapping-based literature review (MMBLR) approach, urban agglomeration
Introduction
Urban
agglomeration is a main topic in housing
studies[1].
It is of academic and pedagogical interest to the writer who has been a
lecturer on housing studies for some tertiary education centres in Hong Kong.
In this article, the writer presents his literature review findings on urban
agglomeration using the mind mapping-based literature review (MMBLR) approach.
This approach was proposed by this writer this year and has been employed to
review the literature on a number of topics, such as supply chain management,
strategic management accounting and customer relationship management (Ho,
2016). The MMBLR approach itself is not particularly novel since mind mapping
has been employed in literature review since its inception. The overall aims of
this exercise are to:
1. Render an image of the knowledge structure of
urban agglomeration via the application of the MMBLR approach;
2. Illustrate how the MMBLR approach can be
applied in literature review on an academic topic, such as urban agglomeration.
The findings from this
literature review exercise offer academic and pedagogical values to those who
are interested in the topics of urban agglomeration, literature review and the
MMBLR approach. Other than that, this exercise facilitates this writer’s
intellectual learning on these three topics. The next section makes a brief
introduction on the MMBLR approach. After that, an account of how it is applied
to study urban agglomeration is presented.
On mind mapping-based literature review
The mind mapping-based
literature review (MMBLR) approach was developed by this writer this year (Ho,
2016). It makes use of mind mapping as a complementary literature review
exercise (see the Literature on mind
mapping Facebook page and the Literature
on literature review Facebook page). The approach is made up of two steps.
Step 1 is a thematic analysis on the literature of the topic chosen for study.
Step 2 makes use of the findings from step 1 to produce a complementary mind
map. The MMBLR approach is a relatively straightforward and brief exercise. The
approach is not particularly original since the idea of using mind maps in
literature review has been well recognized in the mind mapping literature. The
MMBLR approach is also an interpretive exercise in the sense that different
reviewers with different research interest and intellectual background
inevitably will select different ideas, facts and findings in their thematic
analysis (i.e., step 1 of the MMBLR approach). Also, to conduct the approach,
the reviewer needs to perform a literature search beforehand. Apparently, what
a reviewer gathers from a literature search depends on what library facility,
including e-library, is available to the reviewer. The next section presents
the findings from the MMBLR approach step 1; afterward, a companion mind map is
provided based on the MMBLR approach step 1 findings.
Mind mapping-based literature review on urban agglomeration:
step 1 findings
Step 1 of the MMBLR approach is
a thematic analysis on the literature of the topic under investigation (Ho,
2016). In our case, this is the urban agglomeration topic. The writer gathers
some academic articles from some universities’ e-libraries as well as via the
Google Scholar. With the academic articles collected, the writer conducted a
literature review on them to assemble a set of ideas, viewpoints, concepts and
findings (called points here). The points from the urban agglomeration literature
are then grouped into five themes here. The key words in the quotations are
bolded in order to highlight the key concepts involved.
Theme 1: Definitions of urban agglomeration
Point 1.1.
“…the existence of urban areas is explained in terms of increasing returns to scale at the city
level, which is referred to as urban agglomeration economies comprising localization economies and urbanization economies” (Tabuchi,
1998);
Point
1.2.
“During
the 19th Century, in Belgium and neighbouring countries, people and houses were
said to be ‘‘agglomerated” …. if they clung to one another and were so closely knitted together as to make up
urban texture or what was then called the city’s
extensions” (Zitouni, 2012);
Point 1.3.
“The
term ‘‘agglomeration economies’’ is used to denote the mechanisms that drive employees and firms to co-locate geographically” (Jofre-Monseny,
Marín-Lópex and Viladecans-Marsal, 2011);
Theme 2: Mechanisms and theories related to urban agglomeration
Point 2.1.
“….‘Spatial
differentiation is a universal characteristic of capitalist urbanization
although its degree and form depend on the specific conditions of different
societies’…” (Phelps
and Ozawa, 2003);
Point 2.2.
“Agglomerating in a city, firms can exchange information by face-to-face
communications and reduce various kinds of transaction costs between firms. In
addition, consumers can enjoy easy access to a variety of differentiated
products. These are typical positive
externalities inducing urban concentration of firms and consumers” (Tabuchi,
1998);
Point 2.3.
“Central cities have
retained their position at the forefront of the structural transformation of
advanced economies from industrial to post-industrial economies. However, an increasingly complex pattern of
specialization within and between urban areas has emerged with high
value-added office functions being retained in city centres and with suburban
centres acquiring back-office functions …. There are also some signs of
instability in this hierarchical division of labour with selective
decentralization of high-order service functions” (Phelps and Ozawa, 2003);
Point 2.4.
“Consumers use space for housing at a location and commute
to the city center in a monocentric city setting. Land market equilibrium yields land rent, land use, and population
density as functions of distance from the city center” (Tabuchi,
1998);
Point 2.5.
“In pre-industrial societies, where factors are relatively
unspecialized, economic functions and organizations tend to be uniform, simple
and scattered . . . the small urban nuclei which often develop . . . are
essentially service centres of an agrarian way of life . . . the bulk of
so-called primary and secondary
activities remain undifferentiated in space and are tied to the
‘self-sufficient’ hinterland” (Phelps and Ozawa, 2003);
Point 2.6.
“Major accounts of the growth of urban systems and urban
industrial agglomeration have drawn attention to the intimate relation of the principles of specialization and division of labour to the expansion of
capitalism ….. The evolving division of labour in capitalism results in an
increasing ‘roundaboutness’ …. or ‘abstractness’
…. of the economy at every spatial scale” (Phelps and Ozawa, 2003);
Point 2.7.
“The fundamental idea underlying urban economics is that the economic
performance of different urban poles
and their regions is influenced by the number, size and functional composition
of the cities as well as by their urban hierarchy” (Agnoletti
et al., 2015);
Point 2.8.
“Young individuals prefer to work
in cities with a thriving business environment and are willing to incur the
associated congestion costs, while retirees primarily care about consumption
opportunities and tend to settle in places, where these are abundant” (Grafeneder-Weissteiner
and Prettner, 2013);
Point 2.9.
“..local
protectionism among China’s various regions obstructs China’s industrial
agglomeration while Marshallian
externalities facilitate the process of spatial concentration of
manufacturing industries” (Lu and Tao, 2007);
Point 2.10.
“…agglomeration economies also operate on the demand side. … cities offer
a great number of people a large assortment of consumption goods and services.
….the advantages associated with variety …. as being so large that the question
is changed from “Why live in the city?” to “Why not live in the city?” (Ottaviano and Thisse, 2004);
Point 2.11.
“…agglomerations of similar firms reduce consumer search costs ….
As spatial concentration fosters the discovery and evaluation of a variety of
offerings across different firms. Reduced search costs for consumers increases
the probability that consumers will visit the agglomeration for their purchase
relative to isolated locations, leading to higher demand for co-located firms”
(McCann
and Folta, 2009);
Point 2.12.
“…four basic locational
patterns that can be created by processes of economic growth: localisation, whereby new industry
arises at a series of points away from old industrial areas; clustering, such that one start-up area
surges ahead of others; dispersal-growth
peripheries, in which peripheries of new industries arise away from core
areas; and shifting centres, where
new centres of industry rise up to challenge the old” (Coe,
2001);
Point 2.13.
“…the efficient
size of urban poles varies according to the different contexts, being
affected by the functions, dimensions, reciprocal distances and levels of
interaction with other cities. This sort of consideration is common to the theory of city networks” (Agnoletti
et al., 2015);
Point
2.14.
“…the founding
mechanism posits that geographic concentration can also persist if industry
clusters attract more investments than other places …. Given the promise of
exclusive economic gains from collocation, investors are more likely to found
their businesses within industry clusters.
Moreover, entrepreneurs in industry clusters are embedded in local
social networks and are therefore more likely to observe and explore investment
opportunities” (Wang, Madhok and Li, 2014);
Point 2.15.
“…the rationale behind a territorial organization of human activities (number and size of
cities, mutual relationships, and so on) changes over time together with the
levels of technological development, the ways of transport, the dominant
productive systems and the size of competition markets” (Agnoletti
et al., 2015);
Point
2.16.
“At a high level of abstraction spatial
imbalances have two possible explanations. First of all, uneven economic
development can be seen as the result of the uneven distribution of natural
resources. This is sometimes called ‘first nature’ …. The aim of spatial
economics is precisely to understand what are the economic forces that, after
controlling for first nature, account for ‘second
nature’, which emerges as the outcome of human beings’ actions to improve
upon the first one” (Ottaviano
and Thisse, 2004);
Point 2.17.
“Ever since Marshall, it has been recognized that the geographical
concentration of firms and workers within clusters may be explained by mutually reinforcing external effects”
(Ottaviano and Thisse, 2004);
Point 2.18.
“Excess concentration
in large cities brings negative
externalities due to congestion, such as longer commuting costs and scarce
land for housing and offices. These space constraints work as a dispersion
force” (Tabuchi, 1998);
Point 2.19.
“For geographers and economists,
urban agglomeration remains an enduring
feature of the industrial landscape and a perennial source of theoretical
and empirical interest. Curiously, despite this long-standing interest, there
has been a remarkable tendency to explain agglomeration with reference to
Alfred Marshall’s trinity of external economies and industrial district model”
(Phelps and Ozawa, 2003);
Point 2.20.
“Recent geographical explorations of the division of labour have
reinvigorated discussion of the role of external economies and agglomeration in
the specialization and differentiation
of cities and regions from one another” (Phelps and Ozawa, 2003);
Point 2.21.
“Spatial
concentrations of related firms may ….be explained by the
presence of endogenous localization
or specialization economies. Marshall
…. enumerates four sources of agglomeration
externalities for geographic concentrations of related firms: (1) greater
access to specialized inputs; (2) greater access to specialized labour; (3)
knowledge/ technology spillovers; and (4) access to greater demand” (McCann
and Folta, 2009);
Point 2.22.
“Spatial
concentrations of unrelated
firms
may benefit from urbanization
economies. These externalities flow from the
geographic concentration of aggregate economic
activity, such as cities. Firms benefit from urbanization (or diversification)
externalities because industrial
diversity fosters fertilization of ideas across industries” (McCann
and Folta, 2009);
Point 2.23.
“Specialization and division of labour are important
organizing principles which mediate between technical advance and spatial form”
(Phelps and Ozawa, 2003);
Point 2.24.
“The
classification of agglomeration
mechanisms which is most often used in the (empirical) literature is due to
Marshall…., who described three mechanisms:
labor market pooling, input sharing and knowledge spillovers. A densely-populated local labor
market (labor market pooling) facilitates the flows of workers across firms in
the presence of firm-specific shocks …. and enhances employer–employee matches
….. The concentration of firms in a geographical area also enables firms to
share input suppliers (input sharing)
and facilitates the transmission of knowledge (knowledge spillovers)” (Jofre-Monseny,
Marín-Lópex and Viladecans-Marsal, 2011);
Point 2.25.
“The great bulk of population...must work and must consume most of what
they earn where they earn it. With them consumption
and production is practically a
simultaneous process and must be carried on for the most part in the same
place” (Ottaviano
and Thisse, 2004);
Point 2.26.
“The survival
mechanism maintains that firms collocating with one another obtain economic
gains by sharing common resources such as natural advantage …, skilled labor,
specialized suppliers, and knowledge spillovers” (Wang,
Madhok and Li, 2014);
Point
2.27.
“There
are two basic ideas that underpin Krugman’s
analysis of regional agglomerations: first, the idea that regional
specialisation evolves for essentially accidental reasons; and second, the idea
that, once established, these regions are sustained by external economies of
scale” (May, Mason and Pinch, 2001);
Point 2.28.
“In the 1950s, another distinction emerged in a partial
reconciliation of the concept of external economies with mainstream
neoclassical economics: namely, a
distinction between pecuniary external economies as the quantifiable
byproduct of market interactions on the one hand and the intangible non-quantifiable technological externalities
produced from non-market interactions on the other …. Here, pecuniary
externalities roughly equate to urbanization economies and technological
externalities to Marshallian or localization economies” (Phelps and Ozawa, 2003);
Theme 3: Typologies related to urban agglomeration
Point 3.1.
“…in
the 1930s and up to the 1960s (perhaps reflecting the increasing scale of
urbanization by that time), a distinction was being drawn in the geographic
literature between such industry-specific
localization economies and urbanization
economies that are a product of industrial diversity” (Phelps and Ozawa, 2003);
Point 3.2.
“A network city evolves when two or more
previously independent cities, potentially complementary in function, strive to
cooperate and achieve significant scope economies aided by fast and reliable
corridors of transport and communication infrastructure” (Batten, 1995);
Point 3.3.
“Creative
network cities place a higher priority on knowledge-based activities like
research, education and creative arts. The cooperative mechanisms may resemble
those of inter-firm networks in the sense that each urban player stands to
benefit from the synergies of interactive growth via reciprocity, knowledge
exchange and unexpected creativity” (Batten, 1995);
Point 3.4.
“Social scientists have long noticed that firms
engaged in the same business tend to be persistently collocated with one
another in a small number of places, a phenomenon labelled as ‘economies of agglomeration’ by Alfred
Marshall ….More recently, the term ‘industry cluster’ was coined to refer to
places where firms and related institutions in an industry are collocated…” (Wang,
Madhok and Li, 2014);
Point 3.5.
“…. the now standard classification of agglomeration economies: (a) localization
economies, which are external to firms but internal to an industry and (b) urbanization economies, which are
external to industries and depend on the overall scale and scope of the
economic activity in one location” (Ottaviano and Thisse, 2004);
Point 3.6.
“…there are many instances where demand and supply-side agglomerations appear to overlap
geographically” (McCann and Folta, 2009);
Point 3.7.
“Since the early 1990s, several interesting studies have emerged
suggesting that there are many types of
successful local agglomeration that co-exist and overlap in complex ways in
the contemporary world economy” (Coe, 2001);
Point 3.8.
“When discussing the polycentricity
of global city-regions, it becomes clear that economists and geographers
are in agreement on at least one thing. Although relevant in part, traditional
(Marshallian) theories of agglomeration are insufficient to explain the
increasingly spatially diffuse forms of service-centred agglomeration” (Phelps and Ozawa, 2003);
Point 3.9.
“…agglomerations
of related firms that draw benefits from the supply-related externalities of
increased access to specialized labour, specialized inputs, and knowledge
spillovers are fundamentally different from those that draw benefits from
heightened demand realized through reduction in consumer search costs” (McCann
and Folta, 2009);
Theme 4: Issues and concerns related to urban
agglomeration
Point 4.1.
“..there are significant weaknesses inherent in the use of the
concept of external economies to account for agglomeration. A degree of
agglomeration can, for example, be produced from internal economies in the absence of external effects” (Phelps and Ozawa, 2003);
Point 4.2.
“The agglomeration of economic
activities is a phenomenon as old as cities themselves … and as such it is tempting to envision a set
of common processes underlying this enduring phenomenon. Indeed, in differing
ways and for differing reasons, economists and geographers have at times lost
sight of some important contrasts in the form
and functioning of agglomerations apparent over time” (Phelps and Ozawa, 2003);
Point 4.3.
“Many
papers have tested and quantified the importance of these economies
[agglomeration economies] Some analyze their influence on the geographical concentration of economic
activities, whereas others test their effect on wages. Despite the
accumulation of a substantial body of literature, further empirical work is
needed to understand more precisely the mechanisms through which agglomeration
economies work” (Jofre-Monseny, Marín-Lópex and Viladecans-Marsal,
2011);
Theme 5:
Impacts of urban agglomeration
Point 5.1.
“….the
benefits of agglomeration economies arising in large urban settlements tend to
be manifested in firms’ technical
efficiency, which is higher than that of firms located in medium sized and
small towns” (Mtra, and Sato, 2007);
Point 5.2.
“A growing empirical
literature has established that the spatial concentration of manufacturing
activity enhances productivity and
growth” (Rosenthal and Strange, 2001);
Point 5.3.
“..if
a region had a high concentration in a particular industry, then a sudden exogenous shock would lead to
higher unemployment than in a more diversified region with many industries” (Mtra,
and Sato, 2007);
Point 5.4.
“… in recent years urban development has often been accompanied by
higher costs of sprawl and spoil of territorial resources. Increasing
returns of scale, agglomeration and urbanization economies can, in fact,
generate high land consumption and waste of territorial resources. In addition,
urbanized land has grown independently from economic and population growth” (Agnoletti
et al., 2015);
Point 5.5.
“…agglomeration can be thought of as the territorial counterpart of economic growth” (Crawley
and Hill, 2011);
Point 5.6.
“…agglomeration
economies lead to higher growth because with the movement of the economy from
dispersion to agglomeration, innovation
follows at a much faster pace” (Mtra, and Sato, 2007);
Point
5.7.
“…large cities have agglomeration economies that raise the productivity
and wages of most, if not all, workers. High
urban wages may also reflect disamenities
such as pollution and congestion” (Adamson, Clark and
Patridge, 2004):
Point 5.8.
“…manufacturing agglomeration has increased in Wales at a time when manufacturing employment is decreasing”
(Crawley
and Hill, 2011);
Point 5.9.
“China
has witnessed rapid urban growth over the past two decades, which has resulted in
vast ecological and environmental issues,
both in urban and peri-urban areas” (Tan et al., 2014);
Each of them has a set of
associated points (i.e., idea, viewpoints, concepts and findings). Together
they provide an organized way to comprehend the knowledge structure of the
urban agglomeration topic. The bolded key words in the quotation reveal, based on
the writer’s intellectual judgement, the key concepts examined in the urban agglomeration
literature. The referencing indicated on the points identified informs the
readers where to find the academic articles to learn more about the details on
these points. The process of conducting the thematic analysis is an exploratory
as well as synthetic learning endeavour on the topic’s literature. Once the
structure of the themes, sub-themes[2]
and their associated points are finalized, the reviewer is in a position to
move forward to step 2 of the MMBLR approach. The MMBLR approach step 2
finding, i.e., a companion mind map on urban agglomeration, is presented in the
next section.
Mind mapping-based literature review on urban agglomeration:
step 2 (mind mapping) output
By adopting the findings from
the MMBLR approach step 1 on urban agglomeration, the writer constructs a
companion mind map shown as Figure 1.
Referring to the mind map on urban
agglomeration, the topic label is shown right at the centre of the map as a
large blob. Five main branches are attached to it, corresponding to the five
themes identified in the thematic analysis. The links and ending nodes with key
phrases represent the points from the thematic analysis. The key phrases have
also been bolded in the quotations provided in the thematic analysis. As a
whole, the mind map renders an image of the knowledge structure on urban
agglomeration based on the thematic analysis findings. Constructing the mind
map is part of the learning process on literature review. The mind mapping
process is speedy and entertaining. The resultant mind map also serves as a
useful presentation and teaching material. This mind mapping experience
confirms the writer’s previous experience using on the MMBLR approach (Ho,
2016). Readers are also referred to the Literature
on literature review Facebook page and the Literature on mind mapping Facebook page for additional information
on these two topics.
Concluding remarks
The MMBLR approach to study urban
agglomeration provided here is mainly for its practice illustration as its
procedures have been refined via a number of its employment on an array of
topics (Ho, 2016). No major additional MMBLR steps nor notions have been
introduced in this article. In this respect, the exercise reported here
primarily offers some pedagogical value as well as some systematic and
stimulated learning on urban agglomeration. Nevertheless, the thematic findings
and the image of the knowledge structure on urban agglomeration in the form of
a mind map should also be of academic value to those who research on this
topic.
Bibliography
1.
Adamson, D.W., D.E.
Clark and M.D. Patridge. 2004. “Do urban agglomeration effects and household
amenities have a skills bias?” Journal of
Regional Science 44(2): 201-223.
2.
Agnoletti, C., C. Bocci, S.
Iommi, P. Lattarulo and D. Marinari. 2015. “First- and Second-Tier Cities in
Regional Agglomeration Models” European
Planning Studies 23(6), Routledge: 1146-1168.
3.
Batten, D.F. 1995.
“Network Cities: Creative Urban Agglomerations for the 21st Century”
Urban Studies 32(2): 313-327.
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Coe, N.M. 2001. “A Hybrid
Agglomeration? The Development of a Satellite-Marshallian Industrial District
in Vancouver’s Film Industry” Urban
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Crawley, A.J. and S. Hill.
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and K. Prettner. 2013. “Agglomeration and demographic change” Journal of Urban Economics 74, Elsevier:
1-11.
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Ho,
J.K.K. 2016. Mind mapping for literature
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