Evolution of the Size and Industrial Structure of Cities in Japan between 1980 and 2010: Constant Churning and Persistent Regularity

Tomoya Mori

Asian Development Review, 2017, vol. 34, issue 2, 86-113

Abstract: This paper investigates the evolution of the Japanese economy between 1980 and 2010 with regard to the population and industrial structure of cities. With the rural-to-urban transformation settling by the 1970s, Japan experienced the second stage of urbanization through the integration of nearby cities. This led, on average, to a disproportionately high population growth rate of 24% for a set of core cities during the review period. At the same time, cities experienced substantial changes to their industrial composition: on average, 35% of the manufacturing industries (at the 3-digit level) present in a city in 1980 had left by 2010, while 30% of manufacturing industries located in a city in 2010 had not been present in the same city in 1980. Remarkably, this substantial relocation of populations and industries among cities took place while a simple yet rigid relationship between the size and industrial composition of cities was preserved, characterized by the roughly constant elasticity between the number and average size of cities in which an industry was present. This paper discusses the policy implications of this persistent regularity and the possible underlying mechanisms.

Keywords: agglomeration; central place theory; city systems; power laws; transport costs (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C33 R12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/ADEV_a_00096 link to full text PDF (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tpr:adbadr:v:34:y:2017:i:2:p:86-113

Access Statistics for this article

Asian Development Review is currently edited by Yasuyuki Sawada and Naoyuki Yoshino

More articles in Asian Development Review from MIT Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by The MIT Press ().