Geography and Economy

This book focuses on the theme of the mutually constitutive relations between geographic space and the economic order. Three principle lines of investigation are identified and explored. First, Allen J. Scott sketches out the general theory of the division of labour and the ways in which it isreflected in geographic patterns of specialization and interaction. He examines, in particular, the role of the division of labour in the formation of large-scale agglomerations of economic activity and the ways in which their internal and external relationships are played out. Second, he considersthe structure of geographic space as a fountainhead of creativity, learning, and innovation. A theory of the creative field is presented, and its application to the investigation of entrepreneurship, technological change, and the dynamics of the cultural economy is considered. Third, he offers anaccount of the regional question in less developed parts of the world. Here, he recovers some of the arguments of high development theory and shows how they can be revitalized in the light of a specifically geographic approach. These three lines of investigation are, of course, tightly intertwinedwith one another. The argument in general demonstrates that geographic space is not just an inert dimension in which the economy unfolds, but plays an active role in the eventuation of economic outcomes. This state of affairs raises many difficult policy questions about growth and development inboth more and less economically advanced countries. Some of the more important of these questions are also broached in the book.

Allen J. Scott is Distinguished Professor of Public Policy and Geography at the University of California at Los Angeles. He has been a professeur associe at the University of Paris VIII (1974-75), a Croucher Fellow at the University of Hong Kong (1984), a Guggenheim Fellow (1986-87), a Visiting Exchange Scholar under the auspices of the NAS Committee on Scholarly Communication with the People's Republic of China (1986), and a Borchard Foundation Scholar (1997). He has occupied the Andre Siegfried Chair at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques, Paris (1999), the First Trust Bank Chair of Innovation at Queen's University, Belfast (2004), and the Chaire d'Excellence Pierre de Fermat at the University of Toulouse-Le Mirail (2005). He was granted honours by the Association of American Geographers in 1987, and was elected fellow of the British Academy in 1999. In 2003 he won the Vautrin Lud Prize.