Formation and Typology of Workplace Agglomerations in the Suburbs During Population Decline

The Case of the Kyoto-Osaka-Kobe Conurbation

抄録

This paper explores the formation and typology of suburban workplace agglomerations in a depopulating conurbation. This analysis comprised three sequential steps to examine 114 suburban municipalities around the central urban areas of the Keihanshin Conurbation, Japan’s second-largest conurbation, which expanded significantly between the 1960s and 1990s and is now facing a population decline. First, we observed the time flow change in the workplace concentration tendency in the central urban area using the National Census in 2000 and 2015 to estimate employment rate changes in central urban areas. Second, we clarified suburban workplace agglomeration occurrence and location using Local Moran’s I statistic method and Person Trip Census data from 2010. Third, we analyzed and typified the relationships between suburban workplace agglomerations and residential areas using the residential spatial distribution map obtained in Step 2. Based on the maps’ similarity, estimated by image analysis, we classified the suburban workplace agglomeration and determined those characteristics. The findings revealed that workplace agglomeration occurs in multiple suburban locations, and in central urban areas, employment centralization is decreasing. In contrast to conurbations with a population stagnation or increase, this is happening even in the inner suburbs and inter-city areas. The findings clarify several scales in suburban workplace agglomeration size and spatial residential distribution bands. Using a person trip census and spatial autocorrelation analysis enabled the analysis of aggregate numerical trends by postal district, while a map-based image analysis indicates the possibility of objectively estimating spatial distribution similarity.