ABSTRACT
Places have been for centuries the loci par excellence for economic production and exchange. Their growth and decline depended on the dominant economic activity of the times and on their particular physical and human resources. The importance of place in economic geography and planning was rediscovered during the industrial crisis of the 1970s and 1980s and the gradual shift towards neoliberalism, moving beyond the negative history of the term as a unique and bounded area. The chapter looks upon how places were used, ignored and rediscovered in economic geography and planning and in different national and linguistic milieux, unpacking some misreading and fallacies and looking at how theories of and policies for place followed the current general depoliticisation of academia and politics.
