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Culture, Language, and the Location of High-Order Service Functions: The Case of Montreal and Toronto

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  • Mario Polèse
  • Richard Shearmur

Abstract

Today, there is plenty of evidence of metropolization—the concentration of economic activity, particularly of high-order services—in the world’s largest cities. Furthermore, within most national systems, the urban hierarchy is stable, especially toward the top: cities that were the largest 100 years ago continue to dominate their respective systems today. In Canada, however, this is not the case. Over the past 40 years, there has been a reversal at the top of the urban hierarchy, with Montreal losing its dominance in favor of Toronto. In this article, we document the reversal and elaborate a model that accounts for the spatial shifts in high-order services. Our analysis reveals the continued relevance of culture and language and suggests that there are limits to the concentration of high-order service activity. This finding is corroborated by a more detailed look at occupational shifts within a variety of key economic sectors in Montreal and Toronto. We conclude by suggesting that these results and the model we put forward to explain them have implications that go beyond Canada: even in a globalizing world in which the constraints of distance are lessened, cultural and linguistic factors will continue to play an important role in determining the spatial distribution of high-order economic activity.

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  • Mario Polèse & Richard Shearmur, 2004. "Culture, Language, and the Location of High-Order Service Functions: The Case of Montreal and Toronto," Economic Geography, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 80(4), pages 329-350, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:recgxx:v:80:y:2004:i:4:p:329-350
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1944-8287.2004.tb00241.x
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    Cited by:

    1. Ted Rutland & Sean O'Hagan, 2007. "The Growing Localness of the Canadian City, or, On the Continued (Ir)relevance of Economic Base Theory," Local Economy, London South Bank University, vol. 22(2), pages 163-185, May.
    2. Mario Polese, 2006. "On the Non-city Foundations of Economic Growth and the Unverifiability of the 'Jacobs Hypothesis': A Reply to Peter Taylor's Comment," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 43(9), pages 1631-1637, August.
    3. Aurélie LALANNE & Guillaume POUYANNE, 2012. "Ten years of metropolization in economics: a bibliometric approach (In French)," Cahiers du GREThA (2007-2019) 2012-11, Groupe de Recherche en Economie Théorique et Appliquée (GREThA).
    4. Gordon Mulligan & Mark Partridge & John Carruthers, 2012. "Central place theory and its reemergence in regional science," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 48(2), pages 405-431, April.
    5. Dobis, Elizabeth A. & Delgado, Michael S. & Florax, Raymond J.G.M & Mulder, Peter, 2015. "The Significance of Urban Hierarchy in Explaining Population Dynamics in the United States," 2015 AAEA & WAEA Joint Annual Meeting, July 26-28, San Francisco, California 205869, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    6. Mario Polèse & Jonathan Denis-Jacob, 2010. "Changes at the Top: A Cross-country Examination over the 20th Century of the Rise (and Fall) in Rank of the Top Cities in National Urban Hierarchies," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 47(9), pages 1843-1860, August.

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