Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Part of the new wave is concerned with information technology, including
telephones and computers, and the almost total replacement of all land transport
systems by the road-based automobile and lorry. This is linked with the rise of
services in general, which has overtaken all forms of manufacturing so that the
whole country's economy is becoming based on services rather than
manufacturing. Again, in regional terms, this favours London and the southeast
of England, adjacent to the continent and to Europe's central regions. For some,
this latter phase of development associated with electronics, computers, and
computer applications, constitutes yet another (fifth) Kondratiev wave.
It is certainly true that over the last two decades there has been a new
geography beginning to appear, which is no longer exactly London-based, but in
a “fertile crescent” around the capital, from East Anglia round to Dorset. Its
centres are the main motorway axes, including the M4 from London to Bristol
and extending into South Wales; and the M3 from London to Southampton and
Portsmouth. These are the rapid-access routes important to industries that are
knowledge-based and linked to the international economy. The region of
concentration is highly dispersed, because of the information technology used,
and because this allows factors such as the quality of life to be invoked by the
workers in the new industries. They choose to live, not in the city, but in pleasant
small-town surroundings, within reasonable commuting distance from the city.
The international economy argument may be extended. In the last 20 years,
more than previously, if not as a totally new phenomenon, there has been the
emergence of London as a global city. This term implies a function beyond that
of acting as an administrative centre for the UK, or as a manufacturing centre,
and instead constituting a base for activities run by MNCS: in many cases a
home base, in others a base for European operations (Friedmann 1986, King
1990). Globalization does not mean simply the extension of trade and other
economic links to all parts of the world. Rather, it refers to the reorganization of
activities by the large MNCS, on a global basis, without any real home base or
special concern for a home country. Such firms have a hierarchical organization
with bases at different levels in many countries. They are also often vertically
structured, with suppliers of materials and power sources, manufacturers, and
assemblers for final markets, all as part of the main enterprise. Because of this,
they occupy major urban centres around the world and bring large revenues to
these centres through their high-paid executives and through the growth of
business services such as accountants, financial services and lawyers to handle
their regional problems. Globalization adds to the regional imbalances already
present, in the British case, by putting more pressure on the southeast of England.
At times the regional differentiation resulting from this whole historical
development process is portrayed in terms of its results, as north versus south
(Smith 1989, Townsend 1993). What we emphasize from the brief survey above
is that the present problem is of long emergence, and subject to a number of
changes
en route
to its present status. In the nineteenth century, the north almost
closed the income gap between it and the south. In the present century, the gap
