ABSTRACT
Many accounts of contemporary economic change focus upon the world economy as a mosaic of interconnected regional economies (e.g., Scott 1998). To put it another way, cities and/or city-regions act as key nodes and grounding points in global economic networks (Amin and Thrift 1992). These nodes of expertise and interaction, it is argued, are perhaps becoming more important as dense transnational connections are formed as part of broader globalization processes. The success of these "regional motors of the world economy" (Scott 1996) is seen to lie in local networks of interaction, whether they be formal input-output linkages (e.g., Scott 1998), or more diffuse socio-cultural practices associated with conventions, norms, and processes of collective learning and innovation (e.g., Maillat 1995; Malmberg and Maskell 1997). The study of spatial agglomerations of economic activity is, of course, nothing new, dating back to the pioneering work of Marshall (1916) and Weber (1929). Since the late 1980s, however, there has been an increasing re-discovery of interest in detailed analysis of industrial organisation in particular localities, largely based upon the economic analysis of agglomerations of production (see Storper 1995 for an account of this resurgence). Much of the debate has focused around the emergence of new, flexible industrial districts or spaces, reflecting a transitional phase in, or perhaps a total breakdown of, the traditional Fordist mode of mass production (Piore and Sabel 1984; Hirst and Zeitlin 1989). However, as Malmberg (1996) notes, this new literature on industrial agglomeration is by no means homogeneous, with vastly different interpretations, for example, of the sectoral bases, operational scale and key mechanisms behind such clustering.
