Peter Njekwa Ryberg (p)

Jan Cornelius Peters

Previous research has shown that routine-based tasks are particularly susceptible to automation-induced structural change. But recent technological advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) give rise to the question whether non-routine tasks, requiring creative and social skills, may also be automated. In particular, white-collar jobs in the service sector. Cities have traditionally been engines of economic growth and employment, but their specialized division of labor may paradoxically increase job vulnerability to automation. Because as work, be it non-routine or not, is broken down piecemeal into smaller subtasks, the room for automation widens. Do cities exacerbate this development? This study examines the relationship between urban labor division and the susceptibility of occupations to automation. The hypothesis is that urban specialization leads to an increased routinization of tasks, making these jobs more prone to displacement by automation. The study applies a task-based framework to analyze changes in job task composition. Data from the Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC) and Swedish administrative data are used to track changes in work tasks and link them to the spatial division of labor. Preliminary findings indicate that urban workers have a more specialized task profile than their rural counterparts. Further analysis will examine how this specialization correlates with automation susceptibility and how workplace organization within urban labor markets influences this relationship.

Sara Johansson, LIna Bjerke (p)

Liesbeth De Schutter

This paper explores the impact of spatial sorting of jobs and job upgrading within industries on the competitiveness of firms in rural areas, particularly in the context of a knowledge-intensive economy. The increasing role of automation and digitalization is central to this transformation, as automation replaces low-skilled tasks while creating high-skilled, complex jobs. These technological advancements often lead to a spatial sorting of high-skilled jobs into knowledge-dense urban regions, altering regional labor markets. Job polarization—the growth of high-wage, high-skill jobs alongside low-wage, low-skill jobs, with a diminishing middle-skill category—has become a defining characteristic of labor markets in advanced economies. This shift significantly impacts both urban and rural areas, but the consequences are more pronounced in rural regions, where firms struggle to adapt to a knowledge-based economy. The paper examines how job polarization contributes to spatial sorting and how this sorting influences the ability of rural firms to remain competitive in a global economy. It highlights the bifurcation of the labor market, with urban centers attracting highly skilled workers while rural areas face a hollowing out of middle-skill jobs, limiting their capacity to engage in knowledge-intensive industries. The paper challenges the conventional view that rural regions are left behind in terms of job upgrading, suggesting that job sorting may, in fact, accelerate job upgrading in rural areas through spillovers from urban knowledge hubs. The study uses panel data on firms and individuals over a twenty-year period to test the hypothesis that increased access to knowledge in rural areas may result from the relocation of key industry activities to urban centers. Preliminary results indicate that spatial sorting is associated with aggregate job upgrading at the industry level, although causal relationships remain inconclusive. This research contributes to understanding the economic dynamics of rural regions within a polarized labor market and offers insights into rural regions' transition to a knowledge-intensive economy.

Liesbeth De Schutter (p), Eveline van Leeuwen, Stefan Giljum

Peter Njekwa Ryberg

In order to support a better understanding of the relation between urban consumption and global impacts in urban food trade networks, we develop a theoretical framework for the conceptualization of food geographies and their spatial constellation from an urban perspective.
Starting from an empirical analysis of the spatial structure of urban food footprints in high income countries, both in terms of resource use, socio-economic spillovers and environmental impacts, the paper develops a theoretical framework that can explain patterns of spatial dependence and unequal exchange in the global resource system.
The theoretical framework is based upon three spatial theories: (i) the theory of unequal development from the field of spatial economics, (ii) productivity theory from the field of ecological economics and (iii) the theory of Ecologically Unequal Exchange from the field of political ecology and environmental inequality. We integrate these theories into a coherent framework that conceptualizes “food geographies” as spatial conjunctions of place-based communities and functional economic agents in urban food trade networks. The spatial lens highlights an emergent core-periphery structure in the global resource system and identifies (arable) agriculture as either a key agent in, or as metaphor of, the periphery in an urbanizing context. In the discussion, we elaborate on the potential role of cities and peri-urban regions in steering urban food networks towards (more) sustainability and equity.

Annekatrin Niebuhr, Jan Cornelius Peters (p), Duncan Roth

Lina Bjerke

Using administrative data on individual employment histories of workers in Germany covering almost the past 50 years, i.e. the period 1975-2023, this study investigates changes in dynamic agglomeration effects over time. First results suggest that the extent of dynamic agglomeration effects varies over the decades considered and that these changes are partly related to the jobs in which workers of different cohorts accumulate their work experience in differently dense locations.
Some structural changes are likely to have contributed to an increase in dynamic agglomeration advantages, such as the growing importance of knowledge-intensive services and jobs with non-routine tasks in high-density regions over time. Other changes, such as a relative decline in knowledge-intensive production and a declining share of very large establishments in high-density regions, may have counteracted an increase in dynamic agglomeration effects, however.