{"id":1795,"date":"2010-12-09T22:57:54","date_gmt":"2010-12-10T03:57:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/?p=1795"},"modified":"2011-02-20T16:19:07","modified_gmt":"2011-02-20T21:19:07","slug":"agglomeration-continued","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/2010\/12\/09\/agglomeration-continued\/","title":{"rendered":"Agglomeration, continued"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/pdxeconomicdevelopment.com\/docs\/activewear\/Athletic-and-Outdoor-Industry-Poster.pdf\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-1796\" title=\"Nike Agglomeration crop\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/Nike-Agglomeration-crop.png?resize=620%2C303\" alt=\"Nike Agglomeration crop\" width=\"620\" height=\"303\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/Nike-Agglomeration-crop.png?resize=1024%2C501&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/Nike-Agglomeration-crop.png?resize=300%2C146&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/Nike-Agglomeration-crop.png?w=1280&amp;ssl=1 1280w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>More items of note on agglomeration:<\/p>\n<p>From <strong>City Journal<\/strong>, the &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.city-journal.org\/2010\/20_4_big-cities.html\" target=\"_blank\">Seven Pillars of Agglomeration<\/a>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Economies of scale in production<\/li>\n<li>Economies of scale in trade and transportation<\/li>\n<li>Falling transportation and communication costs<\/li>\n<li>Proximity with other firms in the same industry<\/li>\n<li>Advantages of diversity<\/li>\n<li>The quest for the center (of the industry)<\/li>\n<li>Buzz and bright lights<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>And, from <strong>The New Republic<\/strong>&#8216;s <em>Avenue<\/em> blog, a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tnr.com\/blog\/the-avenue\/79478\/what-cluster-looks\" target=\"_blank\">visualization of those principles in action<\/a>, looking at the athletic and outerwear industry in Portland, OR &#8211; from <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Pendleton_Woolen_Mills\" target=\"_blank\">Pendleton<\/a> (1889) to <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Nike,_Inc.\" target=\"_blank\">Nike<\/a> (1978).<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>But the A&amp;O cluster is also an interesting case study in cluster morphology and dynamics.\u00a0Check out this <a href=\"http:\/\/pdxeconomicdevelopment.com\/docs\/activewear\/Athletic-and-Outdoor-Industry-Poster.pdf\">cool genealogy map<\/a> developed by sometime Metro Program <a href=\"http:\/\/www.brookings.edu\/%7E\/media\/Files\/rc\/reports\/2009\/06_metro_hightech_mayer\/06_metro_hightech_mayer.pdf\">author<\/a> Heike Mayer of the University of Bern, for example.\u00a0Meyer\u2019s  info-graphic shows well how the A&amp;O cluster has grown over time and  now epitomizes the frequent structure of highly dynamic clusters, which  often find a small number of large foundation firms (in this case Nike,  Adidas, and Columbia Sportswear) surrounded by a cloud of scores of  smaller, more entrepreneurial firms.\u00a0In Portland, hundreds of these  small and sometimes tiny firms are now proliferating&#8211;driving growth,  developing their own niches, and providing services to the bigs and  larger new firms.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The accompanying infographic (<a href=\"http:\/\/pdxeconomicdevelopment.com\/docs\/activewear\/Athletic-and-Outdoor-Industry-Poster.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">full size image &#8211; PDF file<\/a>) shows this phenomenon in action, and through time.\u00a0 As noted, building on these existing clusters, taking advantage of these agglomerations is the smart approach to economic development:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>All together, it\u2019s a great example of how the best sort of economic  development eschews chasing after firm relocations and other silver  bullets and instead concentrates on \u201corganic\u201d growth that arises from  local distinctiveness.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Agglomeration is about letting cities be cities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>More items of note on agglomeration: From City Journal, the &#8220;Seven Pillars of Agglomeration.&#8221; Economies of scale in production Economies of scale in trade and transportation Falling transportation and communication costs Proximity with other firms in the same industry Advantages of diversity The quest for the center (of the industry) Buzz and bright lights And, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[187,451,269,268,457,147,119],"class_list":["post-1795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-agglomeration","tag-density","tag-economic-development","tag-infographics","tag-links","tag-organic","tag-portland"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pHcGQ-sX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1795"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1795\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1803,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1795\/revisions\/1803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}