ABSTRACT
Globalization has often been identified as a strong and growing force reshaping production and commercial activities in cities today. Global economic restructuring has generated a new regime of capital accumulation, leading to significant policy implications for various localities. At the international level, there has been a global shift of industrial capital from developed countries to the less developed world (Dicken 2003). At the national and regional levels, traditional economic cores have been outshone by emerging new space economies, such as ‘edge cities’ (Garreau 1991) and ‘new industrial districts’ (Scott 1988). At the city level, the local order is subject to fundamental restructuring in a period when footloose capital is no longer tied to traditional urban economies (Short et al. 1993). Further down the hierarchy, economic fortunes contrast markedly with the attraction of new capital investment varying across space and across the city (Short et al. 1993: 207).
