Ubiquitous digital technologies and spatial structure; an update.

Area of Science:

• Urban Studies
• Economic Geography
• Information Science

Background:

• The impact of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) on urban spatial structures remains debated, with conflicting findings on whether it promotes dispersion or concentration.
• Previous studies may not reflect the current capabilities of mature digital technologies, necessitating a re-examination of ICT's influence on urban development.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the effect of widespread ICT adoption on global urban structures.
• To determine if ICT strengthens or offsets agglomeration benefits, leading to more concentrated or dispersed cities.

Main Methods:

• Utilized instrumental variable methods with multiple datasets, including UN data on urban settlements (>300,000 inhabitants).
• Analyzed disaggregated data for US Metropolitan/Micropolitan Areas and UK Built-up Areas to study impacts on smaller cities.
• Employed Pareto (Zipf) coefficient to proxy population concentration in national city size distributions.

Main Results:

• Increased ICT adoption correlates with less uniform national city size distributions and higher population concentration in larger cities.
• In the US, increased internet usage improved cities' rankings within the urban system.
• In the UK, enhanced download speeds positively impacted the ranking of built-up areas.

Conclusions:

• ICT adoption has contributed to a more concentrated urban structure, favoring larger cities.
• The findings suggest that advanced digital technologies reinforce, rather than diminish, urban externalities and agglomeration benefits.