ABSTRACT
Since the 1960s metropolitan Vancouver has experienced a sequence of industrial restructuring processes and events that have underpinned the transformation of its economy, labour force, society, and spatial structure. This compressed period of forty years or so has seen far-reaching shifts, from regional central place at mid-century, to an exemplary twenty-first-century transnational metropolis. As in other city-regions, exogenous factors have been influential, including major investments and policy decisions by senior levels of government, as well as a complex mélange of market and social forces. But as external factors (such as Foreign Direct Investment [FDI], new immigrants, or technology) are absorbed into the structures and systems of the regional economy, the distinction between exogenous and endogenous factors becomes blurred, and the nature of global-local interaction assumes greater importance.
