A Point of View on Spatial Economics

If we think about the spatial organisation of places such as housing estates, shopping centres, offices, parks, schools, higher learning institutions, then we may wonder how all these are formed. Who made it and why it happens in such a pattern? A city area will never exist without reasons and most importantly, what bring people to a location. Part of it can be explained by the economic activity of a place. This then brings us to the economy of location or spatial economy. 

Keywords search for “spatial economy” in the google scholar produce 20,800 results. Assuming this is all research outputs, policy reviews and academic discussions, the number shown is not that impressive. While keywords search for “spatial economics” produce 28,800 results, indicating there is more research that is currently being carried out in quantifying the location effect on the economy. To put it into a broader perspective, compare to other subfields in the economic discipline, the proportion of research papers in the spatial economy considerably low. For example, keywords search on google scholar search for “real estate economy”, “labour economy”, “financial economy” and “digital economy” show 2,540,000, 2,980,000, 3,800,000 and 2,620,000 results, respectively. Looking at the number, then we may say that this economy sub-discipline is new or rather it is part of the evaluation process of the discipline itself, or it is just another terminology that tries to confuse those who are not familiar. 

“The economy of the spatial organisation” might be an appropriate description of the spatial economy, but then how this sub-discipline was evolved? One crucial point is that the location factor has never been explicitly discussed in mainstream economics, at least at the fundamental level. There was never a topic discussing the economic impact of a location either in the microeconomics or macroeconomics. It is reasonable to assume that location is implicit in some of the issues considering it is part of the economic input, and commercial activities are expected to be conducted in a market. Assuming that it is part of the broad economics discipline does the concept or issues discusses in the spatial economy need to be revolved around economics studies only? Is it possible to incorporate other disciplines such as humanities or social sciences in the study of the spatial organisation? I believe that incorporating theories in other disciplines it gives opportunities to expand the discussion beyond the economic structure of a place or region. This will make the spatial economy as a truly multidiscipline.