Geographers and development - Geography and Development - page 170

partly the story of a sudden acquisition of accumulated skills and methods from
other parts of the world.
In the spatial dimension there is also great irregularity, and this is observable
both in terms of change from reliance on one spatially located resource to
another, and in terms of concentrations at particular centres where the benefits of
urban agglomeration are found. Taking the British example, the spatial pattern of
development in the early Industrial Revolution focused on northern Britain,
where the Lancashire and Yorkshire industrial towns, and those of the central
Scotland belt between Glasgow and Edinburgh, were centres of innovation and
the sites for some of the raw materials. In the twentieth century, the resources
have mostly been human rather than material, and the new focus has been in
London and the southeast of England. The movement from heavy engineering
and textiles, to consumer durables such as cars and electrical goods, and from
these on to services of all kinds, meant a massive move from northern regions to
the south.
The other kind of spatial irregularity is the concentration of development in
certain urban centres. Some advanced countries, it is true, do not depend heavily
on urban centres and their industries, and have, for example, an advanced
agriculture which provides them with wealth. Countries such as New Zealand
come into this category, but there are few such countries, and the standard case is
that of a country whose industries are heavily concentrated in urban centres,
often in just one or two cities. This is true both for advanced countries and for
the LDCS, where rapid migration out of the countryside and into the towns is in
progress.
It is sometimes argued that the new information technologies allow society to
avoid the old concentrations, and that part of counter-urbanization is to do with a
new technology whereby very diffuse patterns are possible—teleworking,
deconcentration of manufacturing processes to distant regions, all linked in
through modern communications to a remote centre. Evidence from recent
industrial history, however (Malecki 1991, Storper 1991), and from the data
gathered in Chapter 3 , is that concentrations are just as important as ever,
although they may be new ones and in new locations.
Because of this continued tendency to concentrate, there are also tendencies to
inequality, in wealth and income levels, because the workers in the new
concentrated industries are commonly paid more for their special skills and for
their scarce products than workers in other regions. What has been debated over
the years is the value of intervention in order to overcome the inequalities, to
make income levels approximately even between different industries and regions.
Intervention
A constant concern of students of development is whether state intervention to
promote development, or intervention by any outside body, is justified or
effective. The discussion in Chapter 2 suggested a major division of