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ogy, urban development and sectoral patterns can be observed in present-day East Asia
(Gill and Kharas, 2009).
6. Someconclusions
In this chapter the development of the interrelations between technology, economic
development and spatial structures over a long horizon have been explored. Three con-
cepts were used to investigate the development of this 'triangle'. First,
GPT
, the perva-
sive technology that revolutionised many production systems, increasing productivity
and altered the impact of distance on human contacts. The second concept was the idea
of
long waves of economic development
, with the possibility that these could either have a
cyclical and endogenous character, or that 'phases' dominated with exogenous inl uences
in critical periods, but inside the phases could develop endogenously. The third concept,
originating from evolutionary theory, the
complex adaptive
system
, can be used to
explain the continuous rise of unexpected novelties, in combination with the capacity of
the human actors and i rms to adjust to the new environment of altered markets, institu-
tions and spatial patterns. New kinds of organisation, network and location are the result
of this continuous process of adaptation. The technological development caused a shift
of the composition of sectors, resulting in the strong rise of productivity, i rst in agricul-
ture, then in manufacturing. This resulted in a dramatic decline of agricultural labour in
combination and a strong rise in manufacturing labour and the rise of industrial cities.
Later, this shift went further with the increasing productivity in manufacturing i rms,
and a growing dominance of the service sectors in employment and in GDP. The urban
regions saw an increased attraction and increased in population and jobs. During the
Industrial Revolution a major process of changes in the triangle occurred. Urbanisation
was the clear spatial result of that revolution. In the more recent period a new major
GPT is developing, ICT, but the spatial ef ects are not entirely clear. However, as during
the Industrial Revolution, the ef ects of rising productivity, declining distance costs and
a new impetus to agglomerations can be observed. The 'steam-oriented' technology and
the ef ects of electricity had an immense impact on physical and economic space, whereas
the inl uence of ICT on economic space (or networks) and physical space is more subtle.
The relations are often not direct but 'intermediated' by other variables. For instance,
technology leads to new products and to new methods of transportation. The lower
distance costs enable concentration in space and agglomeration economies, which in
turn can increase productivity and spin-of s. The concentration can also lead to the rise
of unexpected forms of creativity and new forms of organisation. The new networks of
economic relations can develop without direct spatial contacts. New global structures
emerge and agglomerations seem to receive new and stronger impulses, not weaker as
was predicted by various authors in the 1980s. The cities develop into networked com-
munities in polycentric spatial patterns.
The relations between technological, economic and spatial processes were often not
direct but indirect. The dif erent periods of development of technology, economy and
space show dif erent patterns of ordering. Technology and economy evolve more clearly
in step with each other, in contrast to spatial patterns that show continuous urbanisa-
tion processes, although in periods of considerable changes in technology the growth
could stall, more in particular in cities depending on 'old' technologies. More recently,
the global spatial structure has undergone very important new shifts in the locations of
