On the location and lock-in of cities: Geography vs transportation technology

We investigate the roles of natural transportation hubs and transportation technology in determining where a city is located and why it tends to stay put where it is. Building on the continuous spatial model by Fujita and Krugman [Fujita, M. and Krugman, P., 1995, When is the economy monocentric: Von Thünen and Chamberlin unified, Regional Science and Urban Economics 25, 505–528.], we show, on the one hand, that only some transportation technologies allow for asymmetric city locations to be sustained as equilibria in the absence of transportation hubs. On the other hand, asymmetric locations can be sustained as equilibria over a large range of parameter values for a wide range of transportation technologies in the presence of such hubs.