Jia Honghai, Yuan Lina, Tian Chunfang
The modern service industry was a major industrial sector that drove the economic growth of ancient cities, perfected urban functions, and enhanced urban competitiveness. The spatial structure of the modern service industry directly affects the scale and quality of this industry's development and is also related to the level of development of ancient cities. Therefore, achieving a reasonable spatial distribution of the modern service industry is of great significance. In Beijing, the modern service industry has formed clusters such as high-tech R&D service zones, specialized industrial bases, cultural and creative industrial parks, Financial Street, CBD, environmental protection industrial parks, logistics industrial parks, etc. The formation of this spatial structure is the result of both market mechanisms and government regulation. Specifically, the spatial distribution of Beijing's modern service industry stems from the following mechanisms:
First, Positive Externality Mechanism
The external positive effects relied upon by clusters in the modern service industry mainly include the ease of obtaining talent, the availability of knowledge, technology, and information, the concentration and radiation of markets, and relatively lower transaction costs.
1. Ease of Obtaining Talent
As knowledge-intensive enterprises, companies in the modern service industry first appear in areas where specialized talent is relatively concentrated. The clustering regions of this industry also attract relevant talent, forming a specialized labor market. This not only reduces the talent search costs for enterprises but also facilitates highly skilled talents in finding suitable companies, allowing both supply and demand sides to benefit economically from such clustering.
2. Availability of Knowledge, Information, and Technology
Knowledge, information, and technological resources are crucial factors for the growth of modern service enterprises. When enterprises in the modern service industry cluster in the same area, they provide an informal knowledge exchange platform for many professionals with similar expertise. Through these exchanges, knowledge spreads between enterprises, forming a relatively decentralized and informal learning process, thus creating a knowledge spillover effect. This not only helps enterprises acquire knowledge, information, and technology but can also generate more new knowledge and technologies, converting them into organizational assets.
3. Market Aggregation and Radiation
The modern service industry emphasizes high interaction between enterprises and their partners, as well as between enterprises and customers. On one hand, the growth of the modern service industry relies on forming tight ecological chains and complementary chains with other industries, requiring a large number of modern service enterprises providing similar and different services to form healthy competitive and cooperative relationships. On the other hand, the complementary services provided through cooperation among enterprises become a scaled operation, easily attracting customer attention. Clusters of the modern service industry tend to form in regions with high market aggregation and broad radiation.
4. Relatively Lower Transaction Costs
Transaction costs refer to the costs incurred beyond production costs when people voluntarily interact and cooperate to complete transactions. These typically include search costs, information costs, negotiation costs, decision-making costs, monitoring costs, and breach costs. Modern service enterprises tend to cluster in regions with relatively lower transaction costs. Within industrial clusters, enterprises have easier access to high-quality, low-cost professional components such as human capital, marketing channels, and management concepts, significantly reducing information exchange costs and search costs. Additionally, geographical proximity within clusters facilitates the establishment of credit mechanisms and mutually beneficial cooperative relationships, reducing opportunistic behavior, lowering negotiation costs of contracts, and improving execution efficiency.
The formation of the spatial structure of the modern service industry also clearly reflects an externality mechanism. For example, take Zhongguancun Science Park. The prototype of Zhongguancun Science Park was Zhongguancun Electronics Street. This area became a preferred location for private technology enterprises due to its concentration of universities, research institutions, tech talent, scientific instruments, libraries, intelligence, and research results. At all levels, governments encouraged and supported private technology enterprises and provided policy guarantees, which reduced the transaction costs of enterprise creation and technological innovation. These advantages attracted more and more technology enterprises, expanding market aggregation and radiation. Under the combined influence of factors such as talent, technology, information, market, and policy, Zhongguancun developed into a science park with scaled operations and standardized operations.
Second, Economies of Scale in the Modern Service Industry
In terms of spatial distribution, economies of scale refer to the economic benefits obtained by enterprises due to their operating regions being close to each other, thus achieving business synergies. Since most modern service enterprises are relatively small in scale and have relatively single service functions, service enterprises with different functionalities often operate closely intertwined, and there is mutual dependence between different types of service enterprises. Through...
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