ABSTRACT
During the 1960s, well before the term ‘globalization’ began to be used in debates about the economic future of individual societies, a largely self-taught observer of cities, Jane Jacobs, began to publish her ideas on the role that cities play in economic life. In The Economy of Cities (1969) and Cities and the Wealth of Nations (1984), Jacobs dismissed the assumption that the study of economic life could be circumscribed within ‘national’ boundaries and argued that the source of all economic progress lay in the growth of regions that had been stimulated by bursts of technological change taking place in dynamic cities. For Jacobs, cities have the potential to be able to produce for themselves with their markets, blend of skills and large number of diverse firms, what they formerly imported, and when this happens a chain reaction takes place that creates jobs, markets and capital for the surrounding region. These regions might cover only part of a ‘nation’, or might extend over several nations, through international trade.
