ABSTRACT
Regional economies are seldom static. Few regions, whether fast-growing, stable or in decline, maintain a single structural form indefinitely. A decade of research on industrial districts has focused on structural features facilitating or impeding innovation, but rarely on the conditions under which one structural type of region can transform itself into a more diverse or robust form. State-centred districts possess an amalgam of assets and liabilities, often distinctive, which may be the grist for transformation. A state-centred region may share features with hub-and-spoke districts or satellite platforms, but since its livelihood is expressly bound up with the political arena, an analysis of its dynamics requires the incorporation of institutions of the state. For the most part, however, the larger firms remain dominant and the smaller firms stay dedicated to a single customer, resembling hub-and-spoke rather than Marshallian structures. The question of meta-culture is not a simple one for regional scholars.
