Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
in economic and spatial structures. However not all regions and cities have benei ted
equally and in the same period of time from this development. There are also dif er-
ences in opinion about the mechanisms of development. Rosenberg and Trajtenberg
(2004) believe that the change from the old source of energy for manufacturing (water
power and mills) to a new GPT (steam power and the steam engine) was essential for the
urbanisation processes and economic growth. Kim (2005) argues that the intermediate
factor was not the shift from water power to steam, but the changing
organisation
of
factories, with an intense use of labour, which made it necessary to be located in urban
regions. Nevertheless, the steam engine was essential for the rise in the productivity level
and enabled the rise of new locations for manufacturing industries. When various kinds
of technology converge (like electricity and steel construction technology for high-rise
buildings), the economic, organisational and spatial ef ects can be important for the entire
society. With regard to the ef ects on spatial structure, a principal ef ect is the decline in
distance costs and distance barriers, which can lead to more productive spatial economic
coni gurations, but also to the ease of communication in networks, with clustering and
agglomeration advantages (Boschma and Kloosterman, 2005). As Jane Jacobs (1969,
1984) had already observed, the dif usion of technological knowledge is easier in dif eren-
tiated agglomerations than in regions where the entire economy depends on a restricted
number of economic activities. This is one of the reasons why large urban regions with a
varied economic structure can be considered as strong 'adaptive systems' and as 'source
regions' for new ideas (Lambooy, 2006). According to modern theory, these agglomera-
tions have growth ef ects on the entire society (Krugman, 1995; van Oort, 2003). New
knowledge, like technology, and the mechanisms and channels of its dif usion (externali-
ties, spill-overs, networks), are key issues for the understanding of innovations and the
development of the economy and of spatial patterns (Castellacci, 2007).
In the following sections the relation between technology and economic growth over
longer time-periods is considered. The approaches focus primarily on the Industrial
Revolution in the nineteenth century, but more recently much interest has been raised by
the possible important spatial impacts of the ICT revolution.
4. Economic development over long time-horizons
In macroeconomic approaches, economic growth is investigated by looking at the devel-
opment of GDP and per-capita GDP, often without a perspective of longer periods of
time. Well known is the statement of Keynes, 'In the long run we are all dead', but he
forget to mention that economic and spatial structures often af ect behaviour over long
periods of time. The analysis of technological changes and the structural changes of the
economy, like that of the sectoral composition and the altering signii cance of natural
and human resources over longer time-horizons, is very important to understand the
drivers of economic growth. It is also necessary to look at the behaviour of the micro
and meso levels of the economy. The roles of entrepreneurs, institutions and agglomera-
tion forces are also missing in many macroeconomic studies, with a concomitant lack
of understanding of the dynamic forces behind development. However, in more recent
approaches on economic growth, technology and entrepreneurs are increasingly consid-
ered as a main cause for economic growth, whereas institutions (like taxes, social secu-
rity, labour market policy, etc.) can hamper or enable growth (Helpman, 2004; Nelson,
2005; Solow, 2003).
