The effects of COVID-19 on the agglomeration of high-tech knowledge-intensive business services: Ankara, İstanbul, İzmir

This study investigates the effect of COVID-19 on the concentration and agglomeration of jobs related to high-tech knowledge-intensive services (HKIS). The main objective of the study is to determine how COVID-19 measures have changed the HKIS agglomeration in three major metropolitan cities of Turkey—Ankara, Istanbul, and Izmir. Data from 2019 were used as the pre-COVID-19 period, from 2020 as the COVID-19 period, and from 2021 as the post-COVID-19 period, and the agglomeration was calculated using the location quotient. Of the number of HKIS employees in Turkey, 71.65% worked in Ankara, Istanbul, and Izmir in 2019, but during the COVID-19 period (2020) when the pandemic measures were implemented, the proportion increased to 79%. During the post-COVID-19 period (2021), the percentage of HKIS workers in Turkey was 78.68%. The observations suggest that the agglomeration of HKIS activities in these three cities continued to increase after the COVID-19 pandemic measures were implemented and removed.