Industrial Urbanism: Typologies, Concepts and Prospects (original) (raw)
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British Journal of Industrial Relations, 2011
The edited book by Béla Galgóczi, Maarten Keune and Andrew Watt provides to those who are academics and practitioners, and to those who want to know more about the principles on which relocations work, useful insights into and a broad overview about recent developments in international trade and cross-border capital flows. By matching changes in trade structure with changes in patterns of foreign direct investment (FDI), the collection gives us a rich and exhaustive account of relocation in Europe. It offers not only a clear and broad portrait of the major characteristics of international capital mobility and relocation, but it also underlines the pressures exerted on production locations that have induced restructuring waves and often resulted in employers pushing for concessions from employees. The book consists of nine chapters, including an introduction and a conclusion, each of which has been written by different scholars in industrial and employment relations, the sociology of labour and labour economics. Both inter-sectoral differences and the regional or territorial dimension, with regard to the patterns and the special dynamics of restructuring, are highlighted. Concerning the former, the intention is to capture sector-specific features and their crucial role in value chain management in the automobile, ICT manufacturing and services, and the household appliances industries. The chapter on the automobile sector illustrates how the initial intention of Western carmakers to invest in Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC) countries to gain access to new markets has changed over time: the establishment of new capacities and export platforms has had an effect on industrial manufacturing in high-wage countries. Likewise, in the ICT sector, the vertical specialization of the original equipment manufacturers has resulted in the disintegration of the production chain, as contract manufacturers have taken over different stages of manufacturing. More specifically, the author of the chapter on ICT services argues that, in contrast to the political debate on offshoring, the relocation of software development or IT services shows that the content of work often changes at the source company. Conversely, in household appliances, the most traditional examples of relocation seem to apply, characterized by the closure of production sites in high-income countries and the opening of new establishments in low-income ones. This is explained by looking at the specificities and distinguishing features of this industry, in comparison with the automobile and ICT sectors. The household appliances industry represents a contracting sector in which a net
Neo-Industrialization by Digitization
The Palgrave Handbook of Global Social Problems, 2024
This conceptual chapter [re]examines what policy options are available to small economies like the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) post-COVID-19. It argues that the borderless world of digital trade presents innovative opportunities for regions willing to master technology for upgrading their export diversification competitiveness using a neo-industrial strategy. The core feature of a neo-industrial strategy is that it allows countries to earn foreign exchange through the development and attraction of specialized high-tech traded information/ knowledge-based services such as research and design, business analytics, data centers, and other administrative outsourcing processes to achieve industrialization. To achieve this objective, the chapter introduces the development of a CARICOM digital free trade zone (CDFTZ) as an innovative policy initiative in the ecosystem of digital commerce that harnesses these services to serve as an engine of regional economic development. The CDFTZ offers a more sophisticated rationalization of economic organization unlike the traditional low-tech
Regional and Global Linkages in the Development of New Industries
Regional and Global Linkages in the Development of New Industries I. Introduction In recent years, the emergence of an information society on a global scale has been heralded as one of the most promising developments for spurring technology, economic growth, job creation, and socio-political change in virtually all advanced industrialized countries (see Castells 1996). Being "wired" is seen as the means to enter the global economy. Countries, regions, and locales are eager to transform themselves into digital societies. Many authors have argued that such developments represent a change that will totally transform society, a metamorphosis that will be as great as that which resulted from industrialization. Authors like Negroponte, Toffler and others, argue that the information age will herald in a new epoch in which education, work, social structures, and political institutions will be totally transformed. These changes will result from the nature of the commodity produced in the information age: information. Information as a commodity does not expire with its usage and can be transferred to any place on the globe almost instantaneously. Such activity is only limited by the interconnectivity of people around the globe. The means for this linkage is the Internet. The Internet has two characteristics that give it the potential for creating social change. It has the potential to connect anyone, at any place, to the network. The Internet also integrates software that allows for the display of different types of data and media, such as audio, video, graphics, and text. These properties provide for communicative opportunities that never existed before in the history of mankind. Not surprisingly, advocates of the information society are enthusiastically drawing a picture of a paradise-like digital future which for the first time would allow for the disappearance of inequalities, imbalances in social life, and of the unequal access to economic, political and social participation. 2 Literature in this tradition contains an impressive collection of ideas, concepts, dreams, visions, and utopias along with some useful information. In most cases the
Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 2001
In view of the current socio-economic context, in which innovation is a key driving force for the sustainable development, which challenges are facing education and research to enhance and nurture innovation and better contribute to help developing and exploiting engineering, science and technology? This broad question has motivated the work behind the present work, which reviews the strongest themes of the 3rd International Conference on Technology Policy and Innovation (ICTPI), which was held in Austin, Texas, in August of 1999.
Economic Geography, 2009
As the contributions to this volume show, theorizing about CoPs is still very much a project under construction. The discussions in this collection are rather open-ended, but this is not necessarily a liability. It is, however, an invitation to conclude the volume with a chapter that summarizes the findings and details directions for further research that derive from these findings. This, I believe, is sorely needed in an area of research as exciting and thought provoking as that on knowledge communities and economic creativity.
Industrial districts in a globalizing world: A model to change or a model of change?
Department of Economics, 2009
Industrial districts -and especially industrial districts in Italy -have been put forth as a model of economic development premised on the deep rooting of firms in a local socio-economic system that is both rich in skills and tied into international flows of goods and knowledge. But there is also a sense today that those districts are in transformation, that globalization has put them "on the move." This has led some to question whether a model that is becoming many models can still in fact be a model. In this paper, we use a study of the Modenese mechanical district -an archetypical industrial district -to examine this "movement." We argue that when properly understood the Italian districts do still offer lessons that are generalizable to other regional economies. We show that the district in question is changing, and show in particular that there has been a rise to prominence in the district of relatively small multinational firms. These are changes that are not atypical of industrial districts in Italy. We argue that a deeper look at just how the districts are changing makes clear that this rise to prominence has not severed these firms' ties to smaller firms in the district. Rather, they have drawn upon those relations for essential support both on production and innovation. We also show also that there is a cognizance of this fact in the district, evidenced in efforts to recreate private regional institutions consistent with a district structure "on the move."
International Encyclopedia of Human Geography
Simandan D (2009) Industrialization, In R Kitchin & N Thrift, (Eds.), International Encyclopedia of Human Geography , Oxford: Elsevier, volume 5, pp. 419-425. ABSTRACT: This article (1) defines industrialisation and indicates ways in which it can be measured, (2) highlights the importance of the timing of industrialisation and the inherent limits to the proper scientific explanation of this phenomenon, (3) disentangles the often confused conceptual relation between industrialisation and capitalism, (4) explicates the causal links between industrialisation and modernisation, (5) undertakes a brief assessment of the relative costs and benefits of industrialisation, and (6) discloses the defining contours of scholarship on industrialisation in Anglo-American human geography and illustrates it with a recent attempt to integrate the field with the help of a master metaphor called ‘recursive cartographies’. Its portrayal of economic reality as interplay of legacies, rhythms, and events conveys the usefulness of spatial thinking in industrialisation research.