The Nature and Structure of Cities
The Nature of Cities
Scott and Storper
Luděk Sýkora
The Nature and Structure of Cities 2
Cities: External Trade and Local Interaction
Scott and Storper (2014) Nature of Cities
● the economic functions of cities are deeply molded by external trade
● trade enables cities to specialize and sell their outputs in exchange for the
specialized outputs of other places
● the economic viability of cities and the growth of long-distance trade are
therefore complementary and mutually reinforcing phenomena
● all cities, from ancient times onward, have functioned as systems of dense
local interactions imbricated in complex long-distance movements of
people, goods and information
● intra-urban transactions are usually quite different from long-distance
transactions in that they tend to be marked by high costs per unit of distance
and dense tacit information content (hence the frequent need for face-toface
contact), and these kinds of interpersonal transactions are one of the
mainstays of urban agglomeration
● local face-to-face interaction and long-distance business travel grow as
complements to one another
The Nature and Structure of Cities 3
Agglomeration
Scott and Storper (2014) Nature of Cities
● agglomeration can be generally understood as a mechanism of
sharing, matching and learning
● sharing refers to dense local interlinkages within production systems as
well as to indivisibilities that make it necessary to supply some kinds of
urban services as public goods
● matching refers to the process of pairing people and jobs, a process
that is greatly facilitated where large local pools of firms and workers
exist
● learning refers to the dense formal and informal information flows (which
tend to stimulate innovation) that are made possible by agglomeration
and that in turn reinforce agglomeration
● these properties of agglomeration give rise to powerful synergies
The Nature and Structure of Cities 4
The Urban Land Nexus
Scott and Storper (2014) Nature of Cities
● an interacting set of land uses: the essential fabric of intra-urban
space
● behavior of firms seeking locations for production and households
seeking living space
● forms of behavior are typically structured by market mechanisms
generating land prices that arbitrate uses and that sustain distinctive
patterns of spatial allocation
● owners and users of land (firms and households) demand selected
kinds of proximity to one another while simultaneously seeking to
avoid locations where they might experience negative spillovers
and other damaging effects on their activities
The Nature and Structure of Cities 5
The Urban Land Nexus
Scott and Storper (2014) Nature of Cities
● firms and households represent the foundational elements of two
broad divisions of the urban land nexus
● the production space of the city where work and employment are concentrated
● the social space of the city as manifest in residential neighborhoods, typically
differentiated by variables such as income, race and class
● a third space can be detected, namely, the circulation space of the city, which
is represented by the infrastructures and arterial connections that facilitate intraurban
flows of people, goods and information
The Nature and Structure of Cities 6
Urban Governance
Scott and Storper (2014) Nature of Cities
● the essential nature of urban land is that it is simultaneously private
and public, individual and collective
● shape and form express the intertwined dynamics of the individual
actions of firms and households and collective action on the part of
diverse institutions of control and governance
● non-market agencies of collective action typically emerge to keep the
urban land nexus in some sort of functioning workable order
The Nature and Structure of Cities 7
Generative power of cities
● Cities are centres of production,
consumption and trade: their role in
regional, national and international
division of labour
● Development is conditioned by interactions
within urban aglomeration: synergies are
derived from sharing, matching and
learning
● Interaction and spatial organisation
● firms and households: production, social and
circulation space
● private / individual and public / colective
interest
● land use: property market and territorial
planning
strategic planning
territorial planning
competitiveness
quality of life
Allen Scott a Michael Storper, The Nature of Cities
UCLA University of California in Los Angeles, London School of Economics