Silicon landscapes

Silicon Landscapes

Science & Math

Markusen, Ann

HALL, Peter

Earth Sciences

Unwin Hyman

High Tech America: The What, How, Where and Why of the Sunrise Industries

Grasmeier, Amy

Since World War II, America's economic landscape has undergone a profound transformation. The effects of this change can be seen in the decline of the traditional industrial heartland and the emergence of new high tech industrial complexes in California, Texas, Boston, and Florida. The Rise of the Gunbelt demonstrates that this economic restructuring is a direct result of the rise of the military industrial complex (MIC) and a wholly new industry based on defense spending and Pentagon contacts. Chronicling the dramatic growth of this vast complex, the authors analyze the roles played by the shift from land and sea warfare to aerial combat in World War II, the Cold War, the birth of aerospace and the consequent radical transformation of the airplane industry, and labor and major defense corporations such as Boeing, Lockheed, and McDonnell Douglas. Exploring the reasons for the shifts in defense spending--including the role of lobbyists and the Department of Defense in awarding contracts--and the effects on regional and national economic development, this comprehensive study reveals the complexities of the MIC.

The Rise of the Gunbelt: The Military Remapping of Industrial America

Business & Money

Campbell, Scott

Deitrick, Sabina

Economics

Oxford University Press

Profit Cycles, Oligopoly, and Regional Development

The dramatic shifts in heartland regional economies in the U.S. and other advanced industrial countries have thrown into question the ability of capitalist development to produce permanent growth, economic well being, and balanced regional development. This book develops a theory that radically reconceptualizes the economic forces producing regional change and tests it empirically for a set of fifteen sectors in the U.S. It offers a pioneering approach which should enable planners and managers to better cope with baffling changes in the current economic viability of regions.Traditional theories of regional development have failed to account for innovation and longrun structural change. They have ignored the role of corporate strategy and the existence of market power. Markusen's "profit-cycle theory" provides a key to understanding how, why, and when a region's leading industries undergo major changes. The theory is synthetic, building upon Schumpeterian and Marxist work on innovation and capitalist dynamics, upon the product cycle theories of business economists, and upon theories of oligopolistic behavior. Markusen argues that changing sources of profitability along an industry's evolutionary path will first concentrate and later disperse production geographically, setting in motion a methodically destabilizing process for regional economies.The profit-cycle theory is tested in depth against the steel sector's experience over a century, and against the experiences of sectors in different stages of development, ranging from innovative ones like semiconductors and computers, to mature and troubled sectors like automobiles, textiles, and lumber. The temporal and crosssectional data drawn from the census of manufactures support the theory and its spatial hypotheses. In a final chapter Markusen explores the implications of the research for regional development.Ann Markusen is Assistant Professor, Department of City and Regional Planning, University of California, Berkeley.

MIT Press]

Second Tier Cities: Rapid Growth beyond the Metropolis

Over the past thirty years, transnational investment, trade, and government policies have encouraged the decentralization of national economies, disrupting traditional patterns of urban and regional growth. Many smaller cities -- such as Seattle, Washington; Campinas, Brazil; Oita, Japan; and Kumi, Korea -- have grown markedly faster than the largest metropolises. Dubbed here "second tier cities, " they are home to specialized industrial complexes that have taken root, provided significant job growth, and attracted mobile capital and labor.The culmination of an ambitious five-year, fourteen-city research project conducted by an international team of economics and geographers, Second Tier Cities examines the potential of these new regions to balance uneven regional development, create good, stable jobs, and moderate hyper-urbanization. Comparing across national borders, the contributors describe four types of second tier cities: Marshallian industrial districts, hub-and-spoke cities, satellite platforms, and government-anchored complexes. They find that both industrial and regional policies have been important contributors to the rise of second tier cities, though the former often trump the latter. Lessons for local, national, and international policymakers are drawn. The authors are critical of devolution and argue that it must be accompanied by strong labor and environmental standards and mechanisms to overcome differential regional resource endowments.

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Univ. of Minnesota Press

Ann Markusen, one of the foremost theoreticians of regional development, has produced a book destined to become a classic in its field. Regions is a penetrating and innovative study of the political and economic aspects of American regionalism. Using historical materialism as a methodological foundation, the author analyzes the historical developments and contemporary issues of American regionalism. She contends that territorial differentiation and conflicts have emerged as major determinants in the spatial transformation of American regions. The book is rich in historical facts and case studies that are used to illuminate the theoretical dimensions of the contemporary public policy debates on regionalism.

Regions

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

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