Place and industrial development: Paths to understanding?

Abstract

The speed and extent of change in the geographical distribution of industry in recent history, both within and between nations, has been unprecedented. The growth of globalization has reordered the global distribution of manufacturing and the continuing development of digitalization, and artificial intelligence (AI) may well change the spatial and global distribution of both manufacturing and service industries in a similarly profound way . Among these radical spatial shifts, however, place continues to matter for industrial development. The development and evolution of firms and places are deeply entangled, so that location continues to shape the capabilities and resources available to industries, sometimes positively, in other cases negatively. Indeed, in an effort to capture and stabilize this shifting industrial landscape, modern official industrial strategy in many countries increasingly seeks to use ‘place’ as a platform on which to base policy measures that respond to industries’ place-specific needs. The continuing significance of place in industrial development is not easy to explain, however, as it involves the locally varying and locally specific interaction of a series of complex processes that together produce the emergence and development of the assets and capabilities of firms and institutional actors (Scott, 1998). Recent years have seen the growth of an evolutionary path-based approach to understanding these effects and the significance of place for industrial development, and this chapter provides a critical review of the ‘path approach’ and its progress so far.

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ORCID for Peter Sunley: orcid.org/0000-0003-4803-5299

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