The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the efficiency and the development process of Teagu Metropolitan City with three approaches: the apporach of optimal city size theory based on aggloneration economies; the minimum costs approach; and the qualit...
The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the efficiency and the development process of Teagu Metropolitan City with three approaches: the apporach of optimal city size theory based on aggloneration economies; the minimum costs approach; and the quality of life (QOL) approach. The results of the study are an follows:
(1) As for the productivity of the city, the effciency of the manufacturing sector has been xontinually dropping since the 1980s, especially in the 1990s.
(2) The costs of city management have been increasing very fast due to the expansion of the city boundary and the increase of population.
(3) As for QOL, the efficiency of the city has steadily improved since 1960. But when the city status was changed from an ordinary city to a District City in 1981 and from a District City to a Metropolitan City in 1995, the index of QOL suddenly fell. It also decreased when the growth ratio of the population was over 4%.
The three approaches resulted in different optimal sizes of Taegu City. However the aggloneration economies have been diminished continually with the growth of the City. The policy implications are as follows :
(1) The simple expansion of the territory and the population of Taegu city does not contribute to the efficiency of the city and even decreases it.
(2) The priority of regional economic policies should be placed on the tertiary sector of industries, for example a knowledge-based service sector, and not on the manufacturing sector.
(3) The city government should cooperate with the goverments of neighbor counties and cities to induce new factories and to make new industrial complexes.