Graduation Semester and Year

2019

Language

English

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in Urban Planning and Public Policy

Department

Urban and Public Affairs

First Advisor

Shima Hamidi

Abstract

The economy in the 21st century has expanded the depth of creativity, speed, and flexibility in production, high-tech industry, and innovation. Hence, the new economic norm and high dependency on innovation and creativity require educated, talented, and specialized human capital, as well as proximity to research centers and universities. Furthermore, this new knowledge economy has also favored urban spaces that support spontaneous face-to-face encounters and knowledge exchange while appealing to the talented human capital. Besides these specific urban spaces, the transportation infrastructures could have a principle role in the new economy whether through fostering local, regional, or global accessibility to the talent, labor and customer markets, or for logistics purposes. While these economic impacts of transportation infrastructures and urban space are principal in the policy developments, they are less explored via quantitative analyses. Historically, the economic outcomes of transportation systems gained attention in location theories, which provide the foundational framework for thinking about locational behavior of businesses with respect to their accessibility demands. While ample empirical studies addressed classical location theories and the traditional economy, there is a lack of empirical studies, with respect to the knowledge economy. Particularly, with respect to transit and walking amenities, the existing empirical literature lacks enough attempts that look beyond real estate premiums and focus on other economic outcomes, such as employment, innovation productivity, or business performance, particularly in a knowledge and creative economy. Despite this gap in the empirical literature, theoretical attempts confer the dynamics through which such impacts can be unleashed. For instance, knowledge-based, creative, or high-tech businesses are theorized to concentrate at the top of the urban hierarchy being the most accessible neighborhoods and cities. Therefore, location decisions of such businesses would depend on proximity to major transportation hubs, such as regional airports, railways, or transit stations. While roadway networks could provide regional accessibility to employment sub-centers and long-distance freight mobility for high-volume manufacturing productions, transit and walking amenities could better benefit knowledge-based and creative industries. Additionally, Transit-Oriented Developments (TODs) "as compact neighborhoods centered on transit stations with an efficient level of land use diversity, density, street connectivity, and walkability” likely play a key role in agglomeration dynamics and, hence, can lead to an increase in economic productivity. These built attributes can spur many agglomeration externalities-such as knowledge exchange, access to thick and specialized labor pools, and suppliers-there exists uncertainty between policy makers, business owners, investors, and developers about the positive impact of transit and walking amenities. Despite existing theoretical studies, there still exist multiple gaps in the literature. First, it is still unclear whether the above-mentioned dynamics have the same impact for knowledge-based firms, particularly with respect to tech sectoral differences. Second, there remains less than conclusive evidence tying place-based characteristics of TODs with creative and knowledge-based firm productivity. The investors, business owners, and policy makers are cautious to invest in TODs due to extensive existing literature that shows that increased property values in tandem with institutional and financial barriers impede TOD developments. Hence, a major contribution to the literature, decisions and policies about infrastructures is to provide further empirical insights about the location behaviors of knowledge and creative economy businesses; however, these categories include a broader list of industrial sectors with potential differences. Therefore, another gap in the literature has to do with the role of high-tech sectoral differences on transportation infrastructure needs. Studies on the accessibility needs of high-tech firms tends to draw on assumptions emerging out of agglomeration and placemaking frameworks and emphasize the expansion of transit services and enhancing walkability. However, industries impacted by the new logistic revolution, land values, easy access to the global e-economy, and the rise of online workers could prefer stronger highway systems. To address this gap, there is a need for more in-depth analyses of firm location behavior in different industrial sub-categories of knowledge economy. In this dissertation, I address these gaps in three essays. In the first essay, the analysis uncovers the mechanism and the extent to which transit and walkability play role in a knowledge economy. The results from the second essay demonstrate whether the knowledge-based and creative firms in TODs have higher productivity. Lastly, the third essay identifies the location of specialized high-tech zones in the U.S., their sectoral typologies and examining the location behavior of different high-tech specializations with respect to transit and walkability in these zones. By including more than five different analyses and the indicators for four modes of transportation, this dissertation aims to cover a diverse range of critical questions about the knowledge-based economic implications of transportation infrastructures. Additionally, using the address-level datasets on the location of knowledge-based and creative businesses, as well as innovations in the U.S., contributes to the validity of my results by increasing the sample size. Drawing upon disaggregated national datasets, this dissertation stands among the first attempts to provide empirical insights at the national level. The results of this dissertation will benefit a diverse audience, including members of academia and the policy development arena, as well as developers, business owners, and stakeholders. My results uncover diverse impacts of transit and walking amenities in the new economy. First, I found that transit service quality and walkability contribute to a robust local knowledge economy through knowledge-based firms and the creative class, but they have an adverse relationship to the innovation production of STEM small firms. Additionally, I found that the knowledge and creative economy firms located in dense, mixed use, and walkable TODs with higher levels of activity experience 2.5 times increased sales on average. Lastly, when it comes to break down of high-tech industries to its subcategories, my results partially support the dominant narrative regarding the preference of knowledge-based industries for dense, walkable, mixed use, transit accessible areas. For instance, I found large numbers of high-tech firms in the IT and aerospace industries still attracted to peripheral, auto-centric spaces, which are at odds with sustainable transportation policies. While in general I found that transit and walking amenities have a critical role in the new economy, policy developments they need to take consideration of the findings from this dissertation. For instance, I found that walkability and transit access could increase property values, and these features might make locations unaffordable for small innovative firms. Hence, findings on the impacts of walkability and transit access on innovation productivity in vulnerable small firms call for attention to equity aspects of innovation-supportive urban developments. Nevertheless, considering the findings on the increased productivity of the knowledge and creative economy firms in TODs, in the knowledge-based urban development policies TOD and knowledge-based economic development strategies should be planned in tandem in order to maximize outcomes. While seeking growth through attracting high-tech firms has emerged as a common trend among local policy leaders, they may want to revisit their growth strategies with respect to my finding about the different accessibility needs of high-tech industries to not only succeed in growing their knowledge economy, but also to secure sustainability goals.

Keywords

Knowledge economy, High-tech zone, Transit, Walkability, Creative economy

Disciplines

Architecture | Urban, Community and Regional Planning

Comments

Degree granted by The University of Texas at Arlington

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