Annals of the Association of Economic Geographers
Online ISSN : 2424-1636
Print ISSN : 0004-5683
ISSN-L : 0004-5683
Volume 62, Issue 1
Displaying 1-8 of 8 articles from this issue
Articles
  • Yukitomo TABATA
    2016 Volume 62 Issue 1 Pages 1-18
    Published: March 30, 2016
    Released on J-STAGE: September 07, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
        Walter Christaller’s Central Place Theory is a social economic―an integrative space theory that proposes various spatial structures as defined by the relationships between the economic domain and the non―economic domain. It is where his three distribution principles, the marktprinzip (market principle), the verkehrs―prinzip (transportation principle) and the verwaltungsprinzip (administrative principle), intersect.
        However, in the Central Place Theory, its legitimate and historical restrictions have not been made clear under all kinds of influences. These include the logical approach that is an eclectic joining of the marginal utility school and the historical school on the time, the social orientation of the then German working class, and historic transience of the Weimar Republic. As a result, the logic, which explains the diversity of the spatial structure in a capitalist economy, is unable to play a role.
        On the other hand, by eliminating the logical and historic transience that is intrinsic to the Central Place Theory, we could find that seemingly mixed relationships (or correlations) of the three principles in Christaller’s theory actually went through changes in perspective. These could be marshaled in line with history: through the establishment of a capitalist economy, first, having partitioned the functions of politics, economy, and society with in the whole social economy, then the relation biased the marktprinzip’s superiority and deviation, and then finally turned to a mutually dependent and complementary relationship with a renewed interposition of the verwaltungsprinzip and agency the sphere of livelihood based on the socialization of the nation state in the evolutionary phase of the capitalist economy.
        The correlation of the three principles is an ever changing extreme historical concept with in the historical process. It should not be a single dimensional economic space, but a beginning logic that can be lead to the diverse spatial structure.
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  • Ryo FUKUDA, Ryo SATO, Fumihiko SETA
    2016 Volume 62 Issue 1 Pages 19-38
    Published: March 30, 2016
    Released on J-STAGE: September 07, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
        Even while the Japanese population is decreasing, immigration to larger cities has not stopped. Therefore, smaller cities are confronting an even heavier decline. Up until today, efforts have been made to promote the industries of smaller cities, but the outcomes are inadequate to satisfy the need to relocate population. Based on spatial economics that originated with Krugman (1991), it is natural that people will concentrated in larger cities with decreasing transportation costs.
        Based on the above, this paper demonstrates changes in the location of firms by introducing distance resistances and increasing returns as fundamental principles. The model constructed here supposes a balance of trade networks and an imbalance from the location of firms and expresses slow change in firm location. This means that the potential condition of the easing of location at any time slowly influences the real location. As a result, this shows clearly that a concentration of some kinds of industries to smaller cities is possible.
        This firm location change comes from data held by TEIKOKU DATABANK, LTD., examining about 140 thousand firms. Potential conditions for location were rated by adopting 80 categories of industries and 231 metropolitan areas. Therefore, it was possible to consider the potential to locate to smaller cities.
        As a result, a slow change in firm location is observed and the possibility of firms moving to smaller cities is brought to light. Additionally, it is shown that there are a variety of industries based on distribution of location potential. Firms of some industries make decisions to locate to the central parts of the nation, while others make the decision to move to less central or marginal areas. This fact suggest an idea of what industries are suitable to promote to local municipalities.
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Note
  • Takashi NAKAZAWA
    2016 Volume 62 Issue 1 Pages 39-56
    Published: March 30, 2016
    Released on J-STAGE: September 07, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
        Since the late 1990’s, the patterns caused by residential differentiation have been changing within Japan’s metropolitan areas. Preceding studies have revealed that the sectorial structure which is said to reflect the segregation by means of differences in socio-economic status of the residents has been fading. The population group with high socio-economic status has come to occupy central parts of metropolitan areas and this trend highlights the concentric structure in the social atlas of the Japan’s metropolitan areas.
        The author recognizes internal migrations as the factor of the changing patterns of segregation and analyzes age-and-occupation specific net migration (only male) within the Tokyo metropolitan area.
        As the first step, the changes of distributions of three occupational groups (white, grey (sales and service related occupations) and blue-collar workers) from 1990 to 2010 are analyzed. Correlations between distances from Tokyo station (the center of the Tokyo metropolitan area) and percentages of white-collar workers are positive and getting stronger. The result is opposite in the case of blue-collar workers: negative correlations are getting stronger. In the case of grey-collar worker, the situation is not that simple. The correlation indexes are positive and highest of the three occupational groups in 1990 and 2000. This means that maps of the percentage of grey-collar workers by municipality show clear concentric structures in 1990 and 2000. However, the correlation index in 2010 is quite low and the map has changed as to show a sectorial pattern.
        The configurations of migration of the prefectures are differentiated. The special wards of Tokyo (Central part of the Tokyo metropolitan area) as a whole is characterized by the net gain of age group of 20’s and net loss of 30’s. The latter is mainly occupied by grey and blue-collar migrants. It is assumed that they relocate to the outskirt of the metropolitan area where the land price is lower in order to obtain their owner-occupied houses.
        Saitama (northern suburb) and Chiba prefecture (eastern suburb) show similarity in the conditions of net migration: Net gains of the two prefectures are relatively small in early 20’s, whereas they receive substantive inflows of populations aged 30’s and 40’s in which proportions of grey and blue-collar workers are relatively large. On the contrary, there are little inflows of grey and blue-collar workers into Kanagawa prefecture (southern suburb). Kanagawa prefecture, where a lot of R&D facilities are located, is also characterized by large net gain of specialists in the age group of late 20’s.
        The data of 90 municipalities which are located within the Tokyo metropolitan area and individually populated over 200 thousand is available. After the application of factor analysis to the geographical matrix (Row: municipalities, Column: age-and-occupational specific net migration divided by residential population), K-means clustering analysis is applied. According to some indicator including AIC, the clustering which creates 9 groups seems to be reasonable.
        The distribution of the groups is summarized as follows. The central part and its fringe, where many projects concerning urban restructuring have done, gain large population inflow of white-collar workers. The uptown and the inner suburb record significant net loss, especially grey and blue-collar populations. The outer-suburban zone located 30 to 40 kilometer from the center gains net migration of every occupational group and the inflows of grey and blue-collar workers are remarkable.
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