Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
23 The information economy and its spatial evolution
in English cities
James Simmie
1. Introduction
This chapter discusses and analyses some of the results of the major paradigm shift to
post-industrial capitalism and the service-based knowledge and information economy
in English cities. In order to conduct this analysis a case is made for the adoption of
an evolutionary economics approach as compared with that of neoclassical economics.
This rests on the arguments that a central concern of evolutionary economics is the role
of knowledge and information in modern economies and the signii cance of sources
in addition to those provided by markets. It highlights the signii cance of the uses of
knowledge in innovation and consequential movement of i rms and industries away from
rather than towards some pre-dei ned equilibrium. It also accepts the reality of bounded
rationality.
Technological paradigms and trajectories are among the important paths of change
analysed in evolutionary theory. It is argued here that every 50 years or so key innova-
tions lead to major paradigm shifts (Hall and Preston, 1988; Marshall, 1987). During
the intervening periods i rms and industries proceed along the technological trajectories
that are established within the context of those paradigms. The latest of these, dating
from around the 1960s, is the major change associated with the development of the
knowledge- and information-based economy, the growing importance of services and
the relative decline of manufacturing. Despite these major structural changes in modern
economies, most of the previous evolutionary analyses of long-term change have tended
to focus on manufacturing industries. In contrast the analysis presented here is devoted
to explaining the evolution of the English service-based urban system.
These paradigm shifts drive major changes in the division of labour and its distribu-
tion within and between spatial economies. Whole new regional economies rise in the
course of these changes. Previously one such change was exemplii ed in the rise of the
cotton industry in factories located in the north west of England. Later, another wave
of innovations drove the change from fruit farming to computer manufacture in Silicon
Valley. More recently, in England, the rise of the information economy and its associated
knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) has been highly concentrated in London
and the greater south east of the country. Following these types of change, it is argued
here that a critical task for evolutionary economic geography is to describe, typify and
explain the spatial evolution of the knowledge and information service-based city econo-
mies.
There is a considerable consensus on the importance of knowledge and services in the
new post-industrial economy (e.g. Bell, 1973; Daniels, 1993; Drucker, 1969; Metcalfe and
Miles, 1999; Romer, 1986; and see Anderson et al., 2000). Much of this work is brought
up to date in Rooney et al. (2005). It has also made its way into oi cial government
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