Agglomeration may have two general meanings to geographers. To urban geographers, it is a term that designates a large urban concentration. To economic geographers, the word refers to the tendency of producers in a given industry to cluster together in a given space.
In urban geography, agglomeration is a broad term that is used to identify a
large, extended area of urban development. It is often used as a synonym for similar
terms, such as conurbation, metropolitan area, or metropole. There is no established definition for how large an urban concentration must be to be classified as
an agglomeration, and scholars of urban geography tend to use the term in a general
sense, frequently employing it in a case where two or more significant urban clusters have fused to form a larger urban space. Agglomeration may even occur across
political boundaries, as in the cases of Detroit (United States) and Hamilton,
Ontario (Canada); Brownsville, Texas and Nuevo Laredo (Mexico); and Spokane
(United States) and Vancouver (Canada). While these units actually occupy different sovereign spaces, they nevertheless function as a single urban unit in many
respects, especially in the case of economic linkages between U.S.–Canadian
agglomerations.
For economic geographers, agglomeration signifies the tendency of units of
economic production to group together in the same location. This clustering provides many potential economic advantages, including achieving economies of
scale, utilization of a common transport structure, lower shipping and transport
costs between firms making specialized products, concentration and transfer of
capital and labor, and increased communication among various units. Typically
agglomeration occurs near or in large metropolitan areas, facilitated by the large
pools of capital, labor, and consumers located there. Agglomeration increases the
advantages brought on by so-called network effects, which often result in lower
operating costs from increased competition among suppliers, a larger and more
diverse pool of potential employees, and attracting a larger number of consumers
to a central location. The latter may be simply illustrated by the grouping of gasoline service stations around a central intersection in a town. Although each station
is in direct competition with the others at this location, the station's cluster is due to
the large number of potential customers who frequent the location.
Agglomeration is a phenomenon that is frequently associated with the production of sophisticated, high-value goods that require a technically skilled labor supply and the input of multiple components in the assembly of the final product. The
manufacture of automobiles is a process typically marked by agglomeration.
Because the production of automobiles requires a large amount of high-quality
steel, automobile plants, at least in the early days of the industry, were often
located near iron and steel manufacturing facilities, or at least close to railroads
or water transport that could be used to bring steel to the plant at relatively low
cost. The automotive industry also requires the production of a large number of
specialized products, such as tires, automotive glass, etc., and firms supplying
these commodities naturally congregate in the same geographic space as their
major clients, which in turn frequently attract yet additional businesses who
service these manufacturers, leading to yet additional agglomeration.
Tags:
Geography
