Citation:
Abstract:
One of the most salient features of technological development and progress is its tendency to agglomeration in space. Popular accounts glorify the emergence of these new global high tech ‘hot-spots’ (Business Week, 1998; Newsweek, 1998) and academic studies debate their uniqueness (Bania, Eberts and Fogarty, 1993; Castells and Hall, 1994, Pouder and St. John, 1996). However, one feature that seems to have been over-looked relates to the extent to which these agglomerations are concretely linked into their regional and national economies. If they act as integral components in their regional contexts, then we would expect some form of unique linkages to exist between them and their environs, linkages which could not exist if the concentration was located elsewhere. On the other hand, if they function purely as nodes in global networks, then the local context within which they perform will act purely as a back-drop. In this kind of abstract environment, little uniqueness is related to a specific location. The external economies of the agglomeration could have developed in similar fashion somewhere else. As Krugman notes with respect to the Los Angeles economy:
(the people of L.A.) are there because of each other: if one could uproot the whole city and move it 500 miles, the economic base would hardly be affected (Krugman 1996, p. 209).