ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to explain the pattern of economic disparities at the turn of the millennium by examining the processes of regional economic development in Scotland in the half century after 1945. At the beginning of the twentieth century, its shipbuilding and engineering complex made Clydeside the dominant region of Scotland in economic terms. Dependent or local services are, almost by definition, found everywhere in Scotland and to that extent the increased importance of the service sector has been a force for the greater uniformity of the regional economies of Scotland. The role of housing in the postwar economic development of Scotland and its constituent regions received much attention. Unemployment in Scotland was higher than the UK as a whole for most of the twentieth century, distinctly higher than the southern regions of England and comparable with the northern regions.
