Allen Scott

The objective of the paper is to trace out the effects of decommissioning of the Sellafield nuclear complex on the economy of West Cumbria. I seek to show how decommissioning expenditures are stimulating the formation of an agglomeration of advanced nuclear processing and engineering firms in the region and how this process is reinforced by a diverse array of emerging private and public institutions. With the aid of patent data, I indicate some possible pathways of industrial development in the region. I then proceed to examine how policy makers might enhance the developmental impacts of decommissioning especially in regard to measures focused on inter-firm network activities, training, and institutional infrastructures.

A theoretical account of the genesis and internal spatial structure of cities is given. The essence
of the urbanisation process is described in terms of the following main developmental phases: (a)
the emergence of relationships based on specialisation and interdependence in society; (b) the
pre-eminent role of the division of labour within these relationships and its recomposition in
dense spatial nodes of human activity; and (c) the concomitant formation of the networked intraurban
spaces of the city. These phases are then contextualised within three intertwined dimensions
of urban materiality, namely, an internal dimension (the internal organisation and spatial
dynamics of the city), a socially ambient dimension (the relational structure of society at large)
and an exogenous dimension (the geographic outside of the city). In light of this account, an evaluative
review of what I designate ‘the new critical urban theory’ is carried out, with special reference
to planetary urbanisation, postcolonial urban theory and comparativist methodologies. I
argue that while every individual city represents a uniquely complex combination of social conjunctures,
there are nonetheless definite senses in which urban phenomena are susceptible to
investigation at the highest levels of theoretical generality.

L’article vise à réfléchir aux logiques articulant, d’une part, la division du travail
sous diverses formes et, d’autre part, la mondialisation et ses dynamiques spatiales.
Il commence en retraçant la généalogie du concept de division du travail
dans l’histoire de l’économie politique classique. Les différentes déclinaisons
fonctionnelles de la division du travail sont ensuite analysées, afin de construire
une théorie générale de l’organisation de la production économique. Sur cette
base, l’attention porte alors sur la dimension géographique de la question.
L’articulation entre la division du travail et les forces centripètes de l’agglomération
industrielle, puis la manière dont la division du travail se traduit à différents
échelons géographiques (y compris mondial) sont ainsi analysées.

This book presents an exploratory account of the origins and dynamics of cities. The author recounts how the essential foundations of the urbanization process reside in two interrelated forces. These are the tendency for many different kinds of human activity to gather together to form functional complexes on the landscape, and the multifaceted intra-urban space-sorting crosscurrents set in motion by this primary urge. From these basic points of departure, the city in all its fullness emerges as a reflexive moment in social and economic development. The argument of the book is pursued both in theoretical and in empirical terms, devoting attention to the changing character of urbanization in the capitalist era. A point of particular emphasis concerns the peculiar patterns of resurgent urbanization that are making their historical and geographical appearance in the currently emerging phase of cognitive-cultural capitalism and that are now rapidly diffusing across the globe.

This short book is about cities. Specifically, we are concerned with the overall process of making cities (in other words urbanizing) and within this broad theme we focus on the practices of people working in cities and their experiences of housing in cities. Of course, cities are about much more than jobs and shelter but these two topics provide the basis for understanding how and why people come to cities and live there. Making a living and finding or creating shelter are prerequisites
for surviving in the city and they can provide the basis for a fruitful, engaged and satisfying life as a citizen.

"The world of the early 21st century already looks dramatically different from the world of the late 20th century. Globalization is bringing many different and far-flung areas into greatly intensified relations of competition and cooperation with one another. The First, Second, and Third Worlds have gone. New kinds of interpenetrating political institutions are multiplying at many different scales. Economic relations of production and consumption are being revolutionized by new digital technologies. Cities and their surrounding regions, contrary to many earlier predictions, continue to grow and spread.

In my new book, A World in Emergence, my goal is to work out how these different elements are constituted and how they shape the formation of the contemporary geographic landscape. The chief focus of the book is on the enormous resurgence of cities all over the globe in the last few decades, in significant degree as a function of the recent worldwide intensification and spread of revivified forms of capitalism. This resurgence and the new regionalism that accompanies it will almost certainly come to be one of the defining features of the geography of the 21st century.

I suggest in the book that a distinctive new form of capitalism has been coming into existence since about the 1980s on the basis of microelectronic technologies and the ways in which they drive out standardized forms of work and encourage a vast expansion in types of human capital based on the cognitive and cultural assets of the labor force. Accordingly, I refer to this new order of things as “cognitive-cultural capitalism”, i.e. a system that revolves in major degree around production sectors like software and technology-intensive industry, business and financial services, fashion-oriented sectors, and cultural products such as music, film, and electronic games.

The cognitive-cultural economy is bringing into existence a distinctive new historical wave of urbanization and spatial development, focused especially on large metropolitan areas or global city-regions. Most of these city-regions are located in North America, Western Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region, but other parts of the world are also subject to its influence in various ways. With the rise of this global network or mosaic of city-regions a reorganization of older national urban hierarchies into a more integrated global system is steadily coming about.

As this new developmental wave deepens and widens, so the emerging global network of city-regions has started to override the old core-periphery system that has hitherto characterized much of the historical geography of the modern world. Global city-regions on every continent are now emerging as major economic motors and political actors on the world stage. Indeed, according to the United Nations, more than half of the world’s population today lives in cities, and up to three-quarters of all economic activity occurs in the same centers. To be sure, not all cities participate equally in the new capitalism, and there remain numerous parts of the world where urban life is still resolutely focused on more traditional forms of social and economic existence. That said, these other cities are also sites through which developmental impulses are strongly channeled, and more and more of them are now acceding to the global mosaic, just as cities like Seoul, Taipei, Bangkok, and Mexico City have done before them.

At the same time, the internal social and physical characteristics of the cities that participate most insistently in this new trend are undergoing dramatic transformation. For one thing, the long-established economic base of these cities in manufacturing is steadily diminishing, and in many cases has effectively disappeared, at least in its older fordist forms. This means, too, that the traditional white-collar/blue-collar mode of socio-spatial stratification in these cities is waning rapidly. Instead, as the cognitive-cultural economy continues its rise, an alternative kind of urban social stratification is coming into being. This consists, on the one side, of an upper stratum of highly qualified elite workers, and, on the other side, of a lower stratum comprising a growing fraction of low-wage service-oriented workers. The latter fraction increasingly provides supporting services for the elite, either directly (e.g. via domestic labor of many different kinds, including child care) or indirectly (e.g. via the maintenance of urban functions such as janitorial work, taxi driving, and restaurant services). For this reason, we might say that a sort of new servile class has also come into being in cities where the cognitive-cultural economy now dominates.

An important corollary of the rise and geographical concentration of the cognitive-cultural economy is a greatly intensified process of gentrification and aestheticization in major world cities. One manifestation of this trend is the continued and extensive colonization of formerly blue-collar inner-city neighborhoods by members of the cognitive-cultural elite. This is all the more evident given that so many of the jobs performed by the elite are concentrated in central business districts, thereby increasing the demand for appropriate housing nearby. Another manifestation is in the increasing intensification and aestheticization of land uses that is occurring in response to the build-up of high-level cognitive-cultural production activities and associated cultural infrastructures in these same central city areas. Notable examples of this phenomenon are London’s Docklands, the Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, and the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur.

The overall result of these intersecting processes is an emerging cosmopolitan system of gigantic urban centers, and, as such, this system is steadily taking its place as one of the more potent and visible elements of the new world order. Each of the city-regions that make up the system represents an important concentration of economic and political activity, but each of them is also riven by social conflicts, rooted above all in the deepening inequalities that they harbor. Unfortunately, political capacities for dealing with the multiple problems generated by this state of affairs remain woefully underdeveloped. Equally, strategic institutional arrangements for more efficient supply of public goods and for building competitive advantage across individual city-regions also largely remain in a primitive stage of development.

My prediction is that in the end, major global city-regions will be forced, by reason of their mounting internal and external predicaments, to deal in a forthright manner with these issues. This will also greatly boost their role as major centers of economic and political power in the global order of the 21st century.

Allen J. Scott is distinguished professor emeritus at the University of California – Los Angeles. He is the author of numerous books and papers on questions of economic and urban geography and associated policy issues. He was awarded the Prix Vautrin Lud in 2003, the Anders Retzius Gold Medal in 2009, and a doctorate honoris causa from the University of Jena in 2011. He currently lives in Paris.

A World In Emergence: Cities and Regions in the 21st Century"

Solway Country: Land, Life and Livelihood in the Western Border Region of England and Scotland

Allen J. Scott

Published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing (2015)


Book Description

The Solway Country – the lands surrounding the inner Solway Firth – constitutes one of the many small regional worlds of the British Isles that are remarkable for the ways in which their landscapes evoke a powerful sense of territorial identity rooted not only in their physical appeal, but also in the richness and distinctiveness of their human history and geography. The Solway Country is an archetypical but hitherto littleknown exemplar of places like these.

This book captures the spirit and substance of the Solway Country’s allure by means of a series of layered narratives dealing with its natural milieu, its past social and political turmoil, its changing forms of rural and agrarian life, and its responses to the industrial and urban forces that were unleashed in Britain after the eighteenth century. The Solway Country has the added charm of being partly in England and partly in Scotland, so that its personality partakes of elements of both. At the same time, the region exhibits a composite geographic unity derived from the central physical feature of the Solway Firth itself and from the many common aspects of local life and livelihood that have left deep imprints on the landscape. This unity is expressed symbolically in the peculiar hybrid culture of ballads and songs that emerged alongside the theft, murder, and mayhem that raged in the Anglo-Scottish marchlands in the days of the border reivers.

In the United States, industrial pollution and hazards are analyzed only after specific plans for new facilities are proposed. The environmental impacts of new projects are rarely evaluated and compared with existing facilities. In this paper I argue that industrial development and environmental decisions must be closely linked. A framework for characterizing and assessing the environmental impacts of various stages in the life cycle of consumer products is proposed. I use this framework to examine the environmental costs of electric vehicle production in Southern California. Special attention is given to spatial variations of hazards within individual regions and the need to incorporate clean technologies in the design of manufacturing processes.

The O*NET database provides a wealth of information on the qualitative aspects of different occupations. On the basis of these data, we carry out an investigation of the forms of human capital and work that can be found at different levels in the urban hierarchy of the United States. The study proceeds, first, by means of factor analysis of the original O*NET data, second, by constructing a derivative set of indexes of human capital and work activities for metropolitan areas, and third, by subjecting these indexes to multiple regression analysis. The results indicate that human capital and work activities in US metropolitan areas vary systematically across the urban hierarchy, as revealed by the relative concentration of occupations that rely heavily on cognitive and behavioral resources at the top end of the hierarchy and a relative concentration of occupations that rely on physical work at the bottom. However, there are some important exceptions to this general pattern.

The general location-allocation problem is identified and discussed. The hierarchical extension of this problem is then shown to be of especial interest. A computational algorithm for heuristic solution of the hierarchical problem is described. This algorithm appears to yield solutions of high quality. Finally a numerical problem is examined.

... 1986 volume 4(3) pages 249 – 254. doi:10.1068/d040249. Cite as: Soja EW, Scott AJ, 1986, "Los Angeles: capital of the late twentieth century" Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 4(3) 249 – 254 Download citation data in RIS format. ... E W Soja, A J Scott. ...

Urban studies today is marked by many active debates. In an earlier paper, we addressed some of these debates by proposing a foundational concept of urbanisation and urban form as a way of identifying a common language for urban research. In the present paper we provide a brief recapitulation of that framework. We then use this preliminary material as background to a critique of three currently influential versions of urban analysis, namely, postcolonial urban theory, assemblage theoretic approaches and planetary urbanism. We evaluate each of these versions in turn and find them seriously wanting as statements about urban realities. We criticise (a) postcolonial urban theory for its particularism and its insistence on the provincialisation of knowledge, (b) assemblage theoretic approaches for their indeterminacy and eclecticism and (c) planetary urbanism for its radical devaluation of the forces of agglomeration and nodality in urban-economic geography.

What is the role played by cognitive-cultural production? What are the meanings and the stakes of the "feminization" of labor? What is the meaning of "Digital Taylorism"? Is the metropolis today a functional substitute for the factory in the context of industrial capitalism? What is the role of universities in cultural-cognitive capitalism? Is there a contradictory relationship between knowledge-based economy and cognitive capitalism? Stefano Lucarelli, Michael A. Peters and Carlo Vercellone interview Allen J. Scott

In this paper we discuss the history and the geography of the aircraft and parts industry in Southern California from its origins in the 1920s and 1930s to the present day. We begin by tracing out the early growth of the industry in Los Angeles and San Diego in the inter-war years. We then show how, with the advent of the Second World War and concomitant increases in federal military expenditures, the role of Southern California as the dominant center of aircraft and parts manufacturing in the United States was effectively consolidated ...

Urban studies today is marked by many active debates. In an earlier paper, we addressed some of these debates by proposing a foundational concept of urbanisation and urban form as a way of identifying a common language for urban research. In the present paper we provide a brief recapitulation of that framework. We then use this preliminary material as background to a critique of three currently influential versions of urban analysis, namely, postcolonial urban theory, assemblage theoretic approaches and planetary urbanism. We evaluate each of these versions in turn and find them seriously wanting as statements about urban realities. We criticise (a) postcolonial urban theory for its particularism and its insistence on the provincialisation of knowledge, (b) assemblage theoretic approaches for their indeterminacy and eclecticism and (c) planetary urbanism for its radical devaluation of the forces of agglomeration and nodality in urban-economic geography.

We begin with a brief allusion to the failures and lacunae of regional development theory as formulated in the recent past. We then attempt to construct a simple vocabulary of regional development by defining basic terms and combining them into elementary analytical building blocks. The problem of the rise and fall of industrial localities is considered by means of three illustrative studies of nineteenth and twentieth century forms of regional development. The importance of institutions and cultures as means of ...

I examine the development and current situation of the woollen knitwear and woven fabric industry in the Scottish Borders. The paper opens with a brief theoretical exposition of the logic and dynamics of industrial clusters. An overview of the consolidation of the industry as a multifaceted spatial cluster or agglomeration in the 19th century is presented. I then describe changes in the locational structure and productive capacities of the industry over the last several decades. I provide a diagnosis of the industry's decline in recent years together with an assessment of relevant stocks of region-based resources and capabilities. I argue that the Scottish Borders region lacks many of the pooled competitive advantages typically found in successful clusters but that carefully modulated policy could do much to improve local economic performance in the future. A number of specific policy guidelines focussed on inter-industrial relations, labour markets and institutional infrastructures are examined.

The role of regions as engines of economic development and growth has been widely recognized in recent years, and abundant documentation now exists on many of the most successful examples of this phenomenon in different parts of North America and Western Europe. The present discussion is focused on the more problematic case of regional development in low-and middle-income countries. We aim to demonstrate the relevance of a region-based approach to practical policymaking in these countries and its potential for ...

Scott AJ and Kwok EC (1989) Inter-firm subcontracting and locational agglomeration: a case study of the printed circuits industry in Southern California, Reg. Studies 23, 000–00. In this paper we deal with the interrelationships between organization and location in the printed circuits industry of Southern California. We begin with a brief conceptual sketch of the problem of vertical integration and disintegration, paying particular attention to economies and diseconomies of scale and scope, and to the repercussions of external transactions ...

The role of regions as engines of economic development and growth has been widely recognized in recent years, and abundant documentation now exists on many of the most successful examples of this phenomenon in different parts of North America and Western Europe. The present discussion is focused on the more problematic case of regional development in low-and middle-income countries. We aim to demonstrate the relevance of a region-based approach to practical policymaking in these countries and its potential for ...

Scott AJ and Kwok EC (1989) Inter-firm subcontracting and locational agglomeration: a case study of the printed circuits industry in Southern California, Reg. Studies 23, 000–00. In this paper we deal with the interrelationships between organization and location in the printed circuits industry of Southern California. We begin with a brief conceptual sketch of the problem of vertical integration and disintegration, paying particular attention to economies and diseconomies of scale and scope, and to the repercussions of external transactions ...

Economic growth will be unbalanced, but development can still be inclusive-that is the message of this year's World development report, the thirty-first in the series. As economies grow from low to high income, production becomes more concentrated spatially. Some places, cities, coastal areas, and connected countries-are favored by producers. As countries develop, the most successful ones also institute policies that make living standards of people more uniform across space. The principle for a successful spatial transformation, getting the immediate benefits of concentration of production, and the long term benefits of a convergence in living standards, is economic integration. The report first describes the spatial transformations needed for development. It analyzes these changes using the insights from economic history and recent research. Then it revisits the policy debates on urbanization, regional development, and international integration.

Economic growth will be unbalanced, but development can still be inclusive-that is the message of this year's World development report, the thirty-first in the series. As economies grow from low to high income, production becomes more concentrated spatially. Some places, cities, coastal areas, and connected countries-are favored by producers. As countries develop, the most successful ones also institute policies that make living standards of people more uniform across space. The principle for a successful spatial transformation, getting the immediate benefits of concentration of production, and the long term benefits of a convergence in living standards, is economic integration. The report first describes the spatial transformations needed for development. It analyzes these changes using the insights from economic history and recent research. Then it revisits the policy debates on urbanization, regional development, and international integration.

... Fair Housing Coalition 108 The 1993 Legislative Session: The Metropolitan Community Stability Act ... 8-2 Chicago Municipalities Divided into Regions 8-3 Philadelphia Municipalities Divided into Regions ... The concept of "metropolitics" is built on uniting the political weight of the ...

Abstract: I broach the question of economic geography and industrial performance by noting that the modern world economy is in part made up of a mosaic of interdependent regional production systems. I describe the formation of these systems in terms of a transactions-based logic of increasing returns and agglomeration economies. This logic represents a fountainhead of competitive advantages and productivity effects. I then show how regional development over time converges on a path-dependent trajectory, and I describe some of ...

I seek to synthesize several different approaches to issues of urban land redevelopment and the built environment. The essay focuses on developments in the third and current historical wave of capitalist development. I describe the economic logic of land-use change with reference to both commercial and residential property. This logic has become intimately intertwined with global finance and this state of affairs has introduced new elements of fluidity and risk into the built environment. Issues of urban policy and the role of municipal authorities in shaping urban land markets are then considered. I describe how local government agencies increasingly pursue development projects in complex partnerships with representatives of the real-estate industry. In the second half of the paper, the overall argument is recast by reference to three important trends in regard to landredevelopment and the built environment in third-wave cities, namely, the economic and architectural renaissance of...

In this paper, I offer a reinterpretation of the economic geography of the so-called new Hollywood. The argument proceeds in six main stages. First, I briefly examine the debate on industrial organization in Hollywood that has gone on in the literature since the mid-1980s, and I conclude that the debate has become unnecessarily polarized. Second, I attempt to show how an approach that invokes both flexible specialization and systems-house forms of production is necessary to any reasonably complete analysis of the organization of production in the new Hollywood. Third, and on this basis, I argue that the Hollywood production system is deeply bifurcated into two segments comprising (a) the majors and their cohorts of allied firms on the one hand, and (b) the mass of independent production companies on the other. Fourth, I reaffirm the continuing tremendous agglomerative attraction of Hollywood as a locale for motion-picture production, but I also describe in analytical and empirical t...

A theoretical account of the genesis and internal spatial structure of cities is given. The essence of the urbanisation process is described in terms of the following main developmental phases: (a) the emergence of relationships based on specialisation and interdependence in society; (b) the pre-eminent role of the division of labour within these relationships and its recomposition in dense spatial nodes of human activity; and (c) the concomitant formation of the networked intra-urban spaces of the city. These phases are then contextualised within three intertwined dimensions of urban materiality, namely, an internal dimension (the internal organisation and spatial dynamics of the city), a socially ambient dimension (the relational structure of society at large) and an exogenous dimension (the geographic outside of the city). In light of this account, an evaluative review of what I designate ‘the new critical urban theory’ is carried out, with special reference to planetary urbanisa...

ABSTRACT Knowledge-intensive economic resurgence and social restratification are evidently reshaping the intra-urban space of Los Angeles .In particular, the expansion of white-collar employment is inducing marked readjustments in the geography of housing for these workers, and is promoting significant gentrification of inner-city neighborhoods. Existing accounts of gentrification in the United States are briefly adjudged in relation to (a) the recent historical record of urban change and (b) the theory of land redevelopment. A cartographic and statistical analysis of white-collar residential change in Los Angeles County is then undertaken. The analysis points to the evolving spatial structure of pertinent job opportunities together with related land redevelopment dynamics as the dominant factors underlying recent shifts in white-collar residential activity in the County. Further investigation suggests that gentrification trends in Los Angeles represent a special and problematical case of this broad process of white-collar residential change. .

I seek to provide an overview of the historical and geographical emergence of city-regions and to reflect on some of the debates that have arisen in regard to the theoretical status of these phenomena. I briefly describe the growth and spread of city-regions in the world since the mid-1950s and I consider how contemporary capitalism and globalization have fostered the development of this distinctive urban form. The internal organization of city-regions is then examined, with special reference to four generic outcomes: (1) aestheticized land-use intensification; (2) gentrification; (3) social polarization and informality; and (4) postsuburban landscapes. Issues of governance and policy are scrutinized and basic dilemmas of political coordination in city-regions are described. The argument ends with an evaluative review of certain critiques of the city-region idea in the current academic literature.

This article examines the changing structure of human capital in U.S. metropolitan regions from 1980 to 2000. Data are drawn from the Dictionary of Occupational Titles and from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series. Intensive empirical investigation leads to three main conclusions. First, forms of human capital in the United States are becoming more oriented to labor tasks that call for cognitive-cultural skills. Second, cognitive-cultural skills are accumulating most intensively in large metropolitan areas. Third, physical or practical forms of human capital are increasingly being relegated to smaller metropolitan areas. That said, important residues of human capital, focused on physical or practical tasks, remain a durable element of the economies of large metropolitan areas. I offer a brief theoretical explanation of these results.

Abstract This paper deals with the growth and development of the aerospace-electronics industrial complex of Southern California over its formative period from 1940 to 1960. The origins of the complex in the aircraft industry of Los Angeles and San Diego in the 1920s and 1930s are briefly described. The consolidation of the complex during World War II is analyzed. The earliest beginnings of the missile and military electronics industries are shown to coincide with the period of World War II. It is demonstrated how Southern ...

Abstract: IN ATTEMPTS TO SIMULATE THE SPATIAL DEVELOPMENT OF REAL TRANSPORTATION NETWORKS, THE DEVELOPMENT OF A SIMPLE NETWORK-GENERATING PRINCIPLE THAT APPROXIMATES SOME OF THE MAJOR PROCESSES OCCURING IN REALITY IS IMPORTANT BOTH AS AN ANALYTICAL TOOL AND AS A PLANNING MECHANISM. THE PROBLEM CONSIDERED IN THIS PAPER IS TO ESTABLISH A SET OF ARCS LINKING TOGETHER A GIVEN SET OF VERTICES SUCH ...

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The notion of creative cities has moved sharply onto the research agenda of urban theorists of late [Landry and Bianchini, 1995], and there has been much debate in both scholarly and policy circles about its various meanings and practical applications. The recent widespread mediatization of prescriptions for successful urban regeneration and growth based on “the creative class”, as proposed by Florida [2002], has brought a new and intensified urgency to the need for clarification of this debate. In this contribution, I seek to accomplish four main ...