ABSTRACT
Cities all over the world are characterised by a set of activities which actually account for the concentrations of people in them. This chapter focuses on urban economic activity, especially as this relates to the hinterland, as well as the ways of summarising it using such techniques as the economic base concept and the input-output technique. The input-output method is a sort of inter-industrial accounting whereby the flow of goods measured either in physical or monetary terms is traced from one productive sector to another. The urban economic base is defined to consist of all activities that export goods and services to points outside a community. The chapter examines techniques for studying the spatial and sectoral changes that take place between urban industrial areas and within groups of industries. The chapter discusses the shift and share or the allocation of growth components technique which is the most widely used method for studying these changes.
