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Industrial agglomeration and transport accessibility in metropolitan Seoul

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Abstract

This study aims to reveal the relationship between industrial agglomeration and transport accessibility in the Seoul metropolitan area. Our study suggests that in spite of the rapid expansion of the Seoul metropolitan area, central business districts still function as centers of the industry and transportation system; the agglomeration of most industrial subsectors are occurring in central areas and only primary and manufacturing sectors’ clusters are located out of these areas; both of subway and road networks show higher level of accessibility in central Seoul and big cities. This implies a strong relationship between the industrial agglomeration and the transport accessibility, and such hypothetical relationship is tested for every industrial subsector using logit analysis. Our findings indicate that although there are industrial variations in the magnitude of impacts and the significance level, transport networks are, in general, positively associated with industrial agglomeration and this is especially true for service sectors.

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Notes

  1. The hot spot means an area where high value unit regions are located together. In other words, it is a cluster of high value regions. The cold spot is the opposite concept of the hot spot indicating an area where relatively low values are located together.

  2. It is not possible to assess statistical significance without preexisting reference distribution. So, to determine the significance, in fact pseudo-significance, actual value of each unit is randomly scattered in the study area for given number of times. In our study, 999 permutations were applied in all industries.

  3. Before looking for the locations of geographical concentration on the map, we first investigate whether spatial concentration is really present. For that purpose, global Moran’s I value, which is basically the sum of local spatial association values, is used. Moran’s values indicate that all subsectors are geographically agglomerated at a significant level. In other words, high employment areas tend to collocate with the high ones and the low areas with the low.

  4. Three Seoul CBDs are defined as following: the old CBD area in north of Han River that has long history of being the national center of economic activities; the new CBD area in south of Han River that has been heavily developed since the 1970s; and finally, the third CBD area in the middle of two CBDs. For the locations of three CBDs refer Appendix 1.

  5. The average time distance between stations i and j is calculated from actual passenger travel time data obtained through the smart card system.

  6. In this calculation, Queen’s contiguity weight is applied.

  7. Village bus is a special public transport system that runs short distance connecting residential area to subway stations. Its fare is cheaper than normal bus fare providing access to subway stations to people living beyond walking distance to the stations.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Transportation Research Group, University of Southampton, Highfield, Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK

    Yena Song

  2. Department of Geography, Sungshin Women’s University, Dongseon-dong 3-ga, Seoungbuk-gu, Seoul, Korea

    Keumsook Lee

  3. Cross-Border Transportation Centre, University of Windsor, Windsor, ON, N9B 3PA, Canada

    William P. Anderson

  4. Department of Geography and Environment, Boston University, 675 Commonwealth Ave., Boston, MA, 02215, USA

    T. R. Lakshmanan

Authors
  1. Yena Song
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  2. Keumsook Lee
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  3. William P. Anderson
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  4. T. R. Lakshmanan
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yena Song.

Appendices

Appendix 1: Seoul CBD areas

figure a

Appendix 2: Subway time accessibility in Seoul

figure b

Appendix 3: Multicollinearity diagnostics

 

Variable

VIF

Squared VIF

Tolerance

Road density

1.48

1.21

0.6776

ln (distance to highway)

1.19

1.09

0.8422

Subway accessibility

1.16

1.08

0.8643

Lagged subway accessibility

1.63

1.28

0.6146

Population density

1.60

1.27

0.6239

ln (average rent)

2.37

1.54

0.4222

Appendix 4: National highway and road networks

figure c

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Song, Y., Lee, K., Anderson, W.P. et al. Industrial agglomeration and transport accessibility in metropolitan Seoul. J Geogr Syst 14, 299–318 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10109-011-0150-z

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