The Rise and Fall of Urban Economies: Lessons from San Francisco and Los Angeles

Aoyama, Yuko; Powell, Walter W.; Saxenian, AnnaLee; Scott, Allen J.; Storper, Michael; Kemeny, Thomas; Makarem, Naji Philip; Osman, Taner

doi:10.1080/2325548x.2017.1292591

Cited by 6 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…Between the 1970s and 2010 the household income in Los Angeles developed significantly worse than e.g. in San Francisco [27]. Conventional explanations include the decline of aerospace industry and large population of low-skilled immigrants [27].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Characterizing the sectoral development of cities

et al. 2021

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Previous research has identified a predictive model of how a nation’s distribution of gross domestic product (GDP) among agriculture (a), industry (i), and services (s) changes as a country develops. Here we use this national model to analyze the composition of GDP for US Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSA) over time. To characterize the transfer of GDP shares between the sectors in the course of economic development we explore a simple system of differential equations proposed in the country-level model. Fitting the model to more than 120 MSAs we find that according to the obtained parameters MSAs can be classified into 6 groups (consecutive, high industry, re-industrializing; each of them also with reversed development direction). The consecutive transfer (a → i → s) is common but does not represent all MSAs examined. At the 95% confidence level, 40% of MSAs belong to types exhibiting an increasing share of GDP from agriculture. In California, such MSAs, which we classify as part of an agriculture renaissance, are found in the Central Valley.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…in San Francisco [27]. Conventional explanations include the decline of aerospace industry and large population of low-skilled immigrants [27]. A large fraction of employees in the cultural-product industries is found in Los Angeles (together with New York) [28].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Characterizing the sectoral development of cities

et al. 2021

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“…As the reader moves toward the latter chapters of the book, the argument crystallises around the idea that the differing activities of business groups and elites are central to the divergent performance of the two cities; San Francisco had favourable business ecologies to support the new economy in simple terms. The structure of this rich book, which is set out in a ‘whodunit’ style (Storper et al, 2015: 26), allow the authors to ‘eliminate’ or show ‘to be inadequate’ alternative explanations for this divergence (in Aoyama et al 2017: 155). The question may be posed, nevertheless, that even if it can be argued that the Bay Area Council supported a ‘zeitgeist’ without comparison in southern California (Storper et al, 2015), does this offer the definitive or dominant account of the diverging growth paths?…”

Section: The Nature Of Urban Economies and The Growth Systemmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Indeed, the ‘whodunit’ approach deployed in the Rise and Fall is ultimately revealing as a logic for explanation; by eliminating explanations one-by-one, identifying the prized causal factor appears to be the aim. Touching on the challenges of achieving this, Scott (Aoyama et al, 2017: 152) points to the continuing legacies of aerospace decline (in Los Angeles), and questions the ‘weight’ of emphasis placed on ‘progressive, forward-looking business culture[s]’ presented in the book. Additionally, Essletzbichler (2016: 1069) posits that the role of offshore manufacturing coupled with favourable tax approaches may be ‘equally or more important in accounting for rapidly rising median wages in the Bay Area’.…”

Section: The Nature Of Urban Economies and The Growth Systemmentioning

confidence: 99%

Critical realist perspectives on the urban growth system

Waite

2022

Environ Plan A

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Why some cities have been able to sustain economic growth more than others, and how particular technological or sectoral break points shift a city's economic performance favourably (or unfavourably), present ongoing conundrums. Whilst single factor accounts – such as the skilled city and the creative city – have the appeal of analytical parsimony, economic geographers suggest that a multiplicity of structures, processes and events typically sit behind how growth originates and is subsequently shaped. Given such complexity, how can we develop appropriate approaches to theorising causality within urban economic systems? This paper presents the case that critical realism may perform a useful ground-clearing role. With a layered ontology at its core, coupled with recent literature providing greater guidance for empirical application, it is argued that critical realism may present a complementary explanatory perspective.

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“…Saxenian's (1994) seminal comparison of Route 128 and Silicon Valley can be interpreted as showing that the types of entrepreneurship, production organization, and system coordination that existing firms and actors know in a region will shape what it becomes and what kinds of new activities it can generate and capture. Allen Scott, echoing Markusen et al (1991) has recently argued that the failure of Los Angeles to move into the new economy occurred because the aerospace model of organization-the genetic codes of aerospaceweighed it down too much (Aoyama, Powell, Saxenian, & Scott, 2017). But the Bay Area's principal high-tech firms, such as Hewlett-Packard, had an organization almost identical to the aerospace firms in Los Angeles in the 1950s and 1960s; they were systems houses using Pentagon guidelines for concurrent engineering.…”

Section: Technological Relatedness and Subsequent Specializationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Regional Innovation Transitions

Storper

2018

Knowledge and Space

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Since the Industrial Revolution, the world economy has enjoyed ongoing productivity increases that have steadily raised global living standards in the context of a growing world population. This represents a change from the reality prior to roughly 1820, which was marked by long-term stagnation in both living standards and population levels, a condition referred to as the Malthusian Trap (Maddison, 1982). The vast historical literature on the Industrial Revolution, complemented by recent advances in growth theory, demonstrates that capitalism has been able to break this historical trap for more than two centuries through a powerful systemic capacity to generate productivity-increasing innovations.Within this two-century period, however, innovation has not occurred evenly over time nor over geographical territory. The time dynamic is that major innovations occur in waves, and are centered on sets of technologies and their principal industries, such as the textile technology revolution of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, with its harnessing of water power sources and its mechanical innovations for weaving. In the nineteenth century, technologies around steel, coal, and railroads generated another major wave of productivity increases. In the very late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, the internal combustion engine, electricity, and more mechanical engineering technologies generated another astonishing wave of productivity gains (Gordon, 2016).

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The Rise and Fall of Urban Economies: Lessons from San Francisco and Los Angeles

Cited by 6 publications

References 6 publications

Characterizing the sectoral development of cities

Characterizing the sectoral development of cities

Critical realist perspectives on the urban growth system

Regional Innovation Transitions

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