ABSTRACT
Evidently, despite their various limitations, the three attempts to quantify the ‘space of flows’ so far reported – the examination of commuting patterns in Chapter 2, the analysis of advanced producer service (APS) firms’ organization in Chapter 3, and the direct attempt to measure information flows in Chapter 5 – all help mutually to reinforce a key conclusion: that the eight mega-city regions (MCRs) demonstrate considerable differences in internal structure. These differences reflect their unique histories, development paths and national contexts. A key challenge in these quantitative studies has been to find a common basis for comparison between the regions, trying first one approach and then another in order to bring out both their common features and their individual points of difference.
