I have always been fascinated by the phenomenon of "clustering" whereby stores or companies that offer similar services are located in close proximity (is that redundant?) to one another.
I had often thought it would be a interesting subject for a book or story, try ing to understand the economics of the whole thing.
NPR just did a story on this topic. But I think that there is much more to be said. How deep can you get in 4 minutes?
But they have a lovely phrase - the Economics of Agglomeration.
An interesting study indeed.
ReplyDeleteThe old industrial model had clustered businesses as bad - e.g. one bowling alley in a town would thrive, when a second moved in, both would go bankrupt.
Silicon Valley changed that. There had to be a critical mass of the resource in question to make the whole thing thrive.