ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces an explicit political dimension to the economic analysis of traditional relationships in the study of spatial organization and change. Economic location theory has traditionally addressed the question of how the location decisions of individual firms are affected by spatial variations in the costs of production and distribution. Capital resources and surplus agricultural labor are withdrawn from the areas at an accelerating pace, adding to the reservoir of economic power in the center. In the light of the earlier period, the author objective was an innovative one: to suggest how relations of governmental and economic power in a national society may contribute to an understanding of the evolution of national urban systems. Entrepreneurial innovations will, therefore, tend to diffuse over progressively shorter hierarchical distances, assisting the growing polarization of development and leaving lowerorder centers in a steadily worsening position, as both population and capital flow up the urban hierarchy in search of greater opportunity.
