Embodied within metropolitan economies is what Saskia Sassen describes as the global city but branches out to include the central business district and its satellites.
[2] The accelerated advancement of transportation and communications, particularly with capital flight, outsourcing, and supply chain logistics, has virtually removed factor endowments and comparative advantage concepts.
In its wake, metropolitan economies are competing globally in specialized sectors and fields tailored to their regional clusters, a term coined by Harvard Professor Michael Porter (i.e., information technology in greater San Francisco; leather shoe and apparel textiles industry in Florence, Italy; digital media and electronics in Seoul, South Korea).
[3] With global competition in innovation of processes and products, the clustering of knowledge (such as the research community), consulting firms, skilled laborers, financial institutions, legal services, government entities, and specialized technology industries have become vitally important.
reformulate their understanding of place, moving away from disparate states, provinces, and regions and embracing a network of integrated metropolitan economies.
[1] These organizational reforms would influence a host of policies including among others transportation infrastructure, housing systems, employment hubs, energy standards, green spaces, and environmental protection.
[1] Other concrete examples include building the Metrorail system, which required coordinated agreement between the Washington, D.C., Virginia, and Maryland environs;[4] likewise, high-speed rail in Spain which connects virtually every large metro in the country.