- School of Earth and Environmental Sciences
The University of Queensland
St Lucia Qld 4072 - +61 7 3365 3804
The geography of firm location is a longstanding focus in urban studies. This paper examines the distribution of Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) listed headquarters in Australian cities. It focusses on change in the distribution of... more
The geography of firm location is a longstanding focus in urban studies. This paper examines the distribution of Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) listed headquarters in Australian cities. It focusses on change in the distribution of firm locations between 2013 and 2016 by sector, with a lens on the differences within and between Australia's five largest cities. Findings indicate that the number of listed firm headquarters diminished overall, and that declining activity in the resources sector was primarily responsible. Cities in which mining and energy play a key role, particularly Perth, experienced the greatest headquarters losses, while Melbourne was the only city to gain firm headquarters over the three-year interval. On a more local scale, central business districts (CBDs) lost firm activity across all cities, while suburbs gained firm headquarters, particularly inner-ring suburbs adjacent to CBDs. This change was led in particular by the healthcare and information technology sectors, which exhibited the greatest gains. These broad changes indicate a shift to the knowledge economy across cities in which central and CBD-fringe locations are desirable from a firm perspective due to proximity to related firms and institutions, and also to high-skill labour forces, as a more detailed look at the intra-metropolitan geographies reveals. We would like to acknowledge the following people:
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Defining the role of cities within economic networks has been a key theoretical challenge, particularly as nuanced understandings of positionality are increasingly championed over hierarchical notions of influence or power in the World... more
Defining the role of cities within economic networks has been a key theoretical challenge, particularly as nuanced understandings of positionality are increasingly championed over hierarchical notions of influence or power in the World City Network (WCN). This paper applies social network analysis (SNA) to identify the critical role that a wide range of cities plays in the Australian economic system. Drawing upon the set of Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) listed firms, four distinct sub-networks are compared against the overall urban network. Each of the materials, energy, industrials, and financials sector sub-networks are found to have unique configurations of inter-urban relations, which are articulated through institutional and industry-specific factors, grounded in diverse histories and path-dependent trajectories. This analysis applies five different centrality measures to understand how positionality within the overall network and respective sub-networks might better inform policymakers formulating ‘globalizing’ urban policy. This addresses the long-standing theoretical debate regarding territorially articulated hierarchies of urban/corporate power, extricating WCN research from the core-periphery assumptions tied to its world-systems theory lineage. Understanding how, rather than if, cities are global provides contextual knowledge about how cities are situated within broader circuits of production, and the exogenous relations that shape urban economies around the world, providing a framework for research in other global contexts.
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This paper examines the dominant policy discourse of urban revitalization in the United States as it increasingly intersects with global processes and power structures. Though scholars have long attributed urban growth to larger, global... more
This paper examines the dominant policy discourse of
urban revitalization in the United States as it increasingly
intersects with global processes and power structures.
Though scholars have long attributed urban growth
to larger, global processes, I argue that the impact of
internationally mediated social, economic, and cultural
flows is on the rise in the urban U.S. As a case study,
I draw a critical lens to Las Vegas’ City Center, an $8.6
billion mixed-use megaproject that continues to be built
in the wake of a global economic crisis. City Center
is currently the largest privately funded development in
the U.S. and implicates a variety of contemporary processes.
I conclude that the project follows the orthodoxy
of past revitalization initiatives, but with dramatically
up-scaled capital outlays and global influence.
urban revitalization in the United States as it increasingly
intersects with global processes and power structures.
Though scholars have long attributed urban growth
to larger, global processes, I argue that the impact of
internationally mediated social, economic, and cultural
flows is on the rise in the urban U.S. As a case study,
I draw a critical lens to Las Vegas’ City Center, an $8.6
billion mixed-use megaproject that continues to be built
in the wake of a global economic crisis. City Center
is currently the largest privately funded development in
the U.S. and implicates a variety of contemporary processes.
I conclude that the project follows the orthodoxy
of past revitalization initiatives, but with dramatically
up-scaled capital outlays and global influence.
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Thomas Sigler, Glen Searle, Kirsten Martinus & Matthew Tonts. This paper develops a comparative means by which to understand metropolitan spatial structure through the dynamics of economic activities. Clustering and suburbanization have... more
Thomas Sigler, Glen Searle, Kirsten Martinus & Matthew Tonts. This paper develops a comparative means by which to understand metropolitan spatial structure through the dynamics of economic activities. Clustering and suburbanization have been key processes within the contemporary urban landscape, but few scholarly accounts have systematically merged the two to explain the geographies of economic activity. Using firm location as a variable to discern sector- and industry-based locational requirements, we explore land-use and economic activity in Australia’s five largest metropolitan areas. Drawing upon the respective headquarters and branch office locations of a set of publically traded firms, we seek to establish general spatial patterns across Australian cities using two proxy measures for clustering and suburbanization, being well-established drivers of firm locational choice. Despite the complexity that post-industrial and suburbanizing processes add to metropolitan land-use patterns, we contend that certain patterns exist that can be generalized from one context to another across urban space, and that certain emerging trends such as the development of CBD-fringe precincts merit greater attention.
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ABSTRACT In order to tackle persistent labour and skill shortages, a number of developed countries have implemented visa programmes and development plans to enhance the attraction and retention of domestically educated overseas graduates.... more
ABSTRACT In order to tackle persistent labour and skill shortages, a number of developed countries have implemented visa programmes and development plans to enhance the attraction and retention of domestically educated overseas graduates. While prior work has principally focused on exploring their migratory flows between countries, few studies have empirically examined the career and migration trajectories of overseas graduates within the country of study. This paper redresses this gap by investigating the spatial choices of overseas graduates from Australian Higher Education Institutions for employment after graduation. Drawing on a nationally representative survey of graduates, our analysis focuses on examining the individual characteristics that lead to the settlement of overseas graduates in non-metropolitan locations across Australia given the pronounced labour and skill shortages experienced outside the country's urban centres. Results highlight the importance of possessing education or health qualifications and having previously studied and lived in nonmetropolitan areas as the key factors underlying the selection of such locales as post-graduation employment destinations. Age, gender, salary, and an English-speaking background were not found to be significant factors in the decision to locate outside of metropolitan areas. These findings are of significant value for future policy development aimed at attracting and retaining overseas graduates to locales with the greatest labour needs.
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ABSTRACT The built environment of Panama City, Panama, has undergone a transformative change over the past decade. Hundreds of high-rise residential towers have sprung up in and around its central business district, eliciting comparisons... more
ABSTRACT The built environment of Panama City, Panama, has undergone a transformative change over the past decade. Hundreds of high-rise residential towers have sprung up in and around its central business district, eliciting comparisons with Singapore, New York and Dubai insofar as journalists, real estate boosters and politicians have associated the increase in tall buildings with a commensurate increase in global status. Concurrently, on the urban periphery, scores of uniform housing estates have been erected to house an upwardly mobile middle class. Triggered by the handover of the Panama Canal and the surrounding Canal Zone in 1999, the city's pronounced building boom has corresponded with the highest rates of economic growth in Latin America. This paper examines the complex factors behind the recent transformation of Panama City from a historical-morphological perspective. While the drivers of demand for real property were primarily global, the determinants of supply have been highly localized, suggesting that the interface between the global and the local is a fundamental catalyst of changes in the urban landscape.
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ABSTRACT This article evaluates the learning outcomes of a month-long cities in film course offered during an intensive, four-week semester at a liberal arts college in the United States. The course was divided into four shorter units... more
ABSTRACT This article evaluates the learning outcomes of a month-long cities in film course offered during an intensive, four-week semester at a liberal arts college in the United States. The course was divided into four shorter units that explored specific cities and subregions in detail through multiple, and often conflicting, perspectives. It begins with an overview of the scholarly perspectives on the use of film within geography. Based on evidence from 142 student reaction papers, the course's actual learning outcomes against its purported learning outcomes was evaluated. This analysis offers critical and empirical best practices for future geographic instruction through film.
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ABSTRACT The interface between economic globalization and territorial formation has been a fundamental concern to scholars from a wide range of disciplines as both supra- and subnational configurations increasingly supplant the role of... more
ABSTRACT The interface between economic globalization and territorial formation has been a fundamental concern to scholars from a wide range of disciplines as both supra- and subnational configurations increasingly supplant the role of the nation-state so as to achieve purported political or economic objectives. Though extensive literatures document this process, considerable lacunae exist with regard to the understanding thereof within a socio-historical framework. This article invokes the concept of ‘palimpsest’ as a metaphor through which one reads the re-inscription of multiple layers of the built environment or territory vis-à-vis the widespread changes within Panama's ‘transit corridor’ — a densely settled territorial strip extending from the northern city of Colón to Panama City in the south. Though much of this transformation has been attributed to the newfound economic stability of the Panamanian state, I argue that these structural changes are best understood in the context of prior developments on the Isthmus of Panama dating back centuries. To this end, both structural and poststructural arguments are invoked so as to transgress a narrow focus on Panama as a fixed territorial entity.
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Democracy as Problem Solving: Civic Capacity in Communities Across the Globe, by Xavier de Souza Briggs. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008. 374pp. $28.00 paper. ISBN: 9780262524858. THOMAS JANOSKI University of Kentucky tjanos@uky.edu
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The growth of Special Economic Zones (SEZs) in the Global South has been widespread and well documented. This article provides a comparative analysis of two SEZs in Panama that defy conventional export-processing strategies by focussing... more
The growth of Special Economic Zones (SEZs) in the Global South has been widespread and well documented. This article provides a comparative analysis of two SEZs in Panama that defy conventional export-processing strategies by focussing on re-exports and regional headquartering operations, which are relatively capital-intensive rather than labour-intensive. I argue that while this may be a sound economic growth strategy at the national scale, it must be complemented with directed, local strategies to address the country's chronic social development issues, which are underscored by centuries of institutional exclusion.
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Significant scholarship in both media studies and the spatial sciences has averred that the creation and consumption of “place” is intimately tied to the political economy of cultural production. Places, as socially constructed spaces,... more
Significant scholarship in both media studies and the spatial sciences has averred that the creation and consumption of “place” is intimately tied to the political economy of cultural production. Places, as socially constructed spaces, are subject to constant formulation and interpretation, and this is often consciously created by those with vested interests in selling “place” as a commodity. In this article, we hypothesize that the construction of place at the regional scale is reinforced and articulated in part by the hip-hop industry and the political economy thereof. By conducting a detailed multidimensional content analysis of a subset of regionally representative hip-hop music videos, we reinforce the sociotemporally contextual understanding of a cultural region as a scalar understanding of place.