Locational Patterns and Dynamics of Industrial Activity in the Modern Metropolis

Abstract

This paper attempts to review and re-structure a mass of published ideas on the geography of industrial activity in the modern metropolis. The argument proceeds in a series of stages. First, some basic locational factors in the city are examined. Second, a critical discussion of the literature on economies of agglomeration and scale in cities is undertaken. Third, a brief description of manufacturing activity in nineteenth-century cities is provided by way of motivating and orientating the succeeding discussion. Fourth, the phenomenon of industrial decentralisation in twentieth-century cities is described. Fifth, an attempt is made to construct a composite theory of intra-metropolitan industrial location on the basis of the historical process of the substitution of capital for labour in capitalist commodity production. Sixth, a schematic re-statement of the theory is presented, and its implications for the spatial-cum-organisational evolution of modern industry are elucidated. Seventh, some of the main policy issues raised by the continued loss of industry from the cores of large metropolitan areas are briefly treated.