ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we describe the major dimensions of the contemporary economiclandscape. Space does not permit anything like a full coverage of patterns of eco-nomic activity or of the quilt of economic development, let alone a systematic review, resource by resource, industry by industry, flow by flow of commodities, services and capital. Such a catalogue, in any case, is not our purpose. Rather, our objective is to identify dominant and recurring patterns and to note the major exceptions to these patterns. We are, in other words, concerned primarily with characterizing the general context referred to by Johnston in the opening quotation. To the extent that we identify exceptions and contradictions, we are also concerned to some degree with local variability. In subsequent chapters our objective will be to uncover the processes that have contributed to these patterns – both the general and the locally distinctive or unique. As we shall see, it is the interaction of the unique with the general that produces distinctive economic regions.
