Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
approach can be regarded as being complementary. Aghion and Howitt (1998,
p. 244) contended that it is possible to combine the endogenous growth theory with the
Schumpeterian approach: 'Cyclical downturns may be the price that society needs to pay
in order to complement the GPTs that deliver the long-run growth.'
The result of the process of unpredictable innovation dynamics can sometimes com-
pletely alter economic structures and locations. During the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries, the principal structural change in the production structure and the spatial
structures of the nineteenth century has been the almost tragic decrease in agricul-
tural employment, combined with a strong migration to urban regions. This stream
of migrants was within the home countries and outward to the New World. Today's
modern world still has a strong and productive agricultural sector, be it with only about
2 to 4 per cent of employment. At the same time, the manufacturing sector increased
until the early 1960s, after which employment and the share of GDP have declined to
percentages of between 10 and 20. The various service sectors are now as important as
the agricultural sectors used to be in 1800. Their contribution to employment and GDP
has risen to between 65 per cent and 80 per cent. This structural change came about very
gradually, but the main cause was undeniably the changing productivity and the dif-
ferences between sectors (Nelson and Winter, 1977; Pasinetti, 1981; Peneder, 2002). At
the global level many of these processes continue, related to the 'global shift' to Asian
countries.
Technological development came in stages, economic development showed breaking
points, but the long-term tendency of rising productivity and changes in sectoral com-
position has been the same from 1800 on. Van Duijn (1983) has raised the idea that the
nature and the location of economic growth will be inl uenced by the rise of new global
economic centres, as the USA and Japan showed in the twentieth century, and - as
we now can add - China and India in the twenty-i rst century. In the present time we
observe the results of this structural change, in the altered structures of demographics,
space and global connections. The impacts of structural changes on the urbanisation
structures have been enormous. The Industrial Revolution caused a strong concentra-
tion of employment and population in urban areas. Both processes (industrialisation and
urbanisation) needed huge complementary investments in infrastructure. The impact on
space and on the location of economic activities had dramatic ef ects on the lives of mil-
lions of people.
To sum up: both approaches, the cyclic or long-wave theory and the theory of phases
support the idea that technological developments, economic growth patterns and spatial
changes show strong interrelations, when observed over long periods. More in particu-
lar the physical space has undergone major changes by the huge urban developments.
Organisations and the nature of social and economic networks did also change. In more
recent times the spatial patterns have been changed by the introduction of the 'compu-
ter and network technology'; however, the change of physical space seems unlikely to
develop at the scale seen in the nineteenth century. In the next section some of the recent
developments are investigated.
5. The impact on space of ICT as a GPT
During the last three decades, the inl uence of ICT on society has become an important
issue (Giaoutzi, 1989; Lambooy, 1987). The ef ects that received most attention were the
