The intra-metropolitan location of information activities: a spatial anyalisis for Metropolitan Barcelona 1991-2001

Abstract

In this paper we analyze the location and dynamics of information activities at a metropolitan level. Using employment information from Metropolitan Region of Barcelona for years 1991 and 2001 a novelty approach is proposed. Such an approach is based on the analysis of how services and products are performed instead of a classic standard industrial classification analysis. Spatial analysis suggests that information activities have the most compact and central pattern, in addition, there is a clear relationship between the proportion of information activities in a given sector and its locative pattern: the bigger is the information activities proportion, the higher is its compact and central locative pattern. Dynamic analyses suggest that information activities do not decentralize as the rest of economic activities. For this reason central locations gain territorial specialization in knowledge intensive services (KIS), and at the same time, these activities gain relative concentration. In this self-organizing process metropolitan centre emerges as the core of the knowledge based city, which is supported by some subcentres dominated by tertiary activities, in sum those polarities structure the rest of the metropolitan municipalities progressively specialized in high-technology manufacture.