Knowledge economy and metropolitan growth: Barcelona and Helsinki metropolitan areas as case studies

The knowledge-based industries (KBI) involve the transformation of workers' skills, which requires a constant spatial interaction. This means frequent face-to-face contacts. Agglomeration economies and innovation dynamics found in large cities are determining factors for knowledge economy growth. This paper analyses how close proximity to metropolitan cores encourage location patterns of KBI employment. This phenomenon is studied in the Barcelona and Helsinki metropolitan areas by analysing KBI employment pattern distributions and modelling the effects of the distance to the metropolitan cores in KBI employment density. The results show that the employment growth of knowledge industries in both metropolitan areas retains concentration patterns instead of suburbanisation patterns. Hence, physical proximity to the metropolitan cores becomes a determining factor in KBI employment growth.