Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
firm, which would push development along. His emphasis is thus
microeconomic, at the firm level, rather than macroeconomic, referring to the
actions of governments or planning boards. To transfer from the observation of
individual firms to regional planning was perhaps a major error in the use of the
theory.
At the broader level, few writers have understood Perroux's message that
polarization is simply a process that can be observed but not planned. One
exception is Storper (1991), who reviewed the São Paulo metropolitan area and
its dynamic industrial growth patterns. Decentralization of this massive
conurbation is desirable, but for Storper, difficult to actually plan through setting
up new centres. Instead, he was able to detect new centres coming into being, in
industrial satellite cities at some distance from the city, which would eventually
compete and help to decongest the city.
Perroux's ideas are of his time. In the 1940s and 1950s, France was still
recovering from the war and reconstruction meant that the most dynamic
industries were often those involved in this process: the iron and steel industries,
petroleum refining, petrochemicals, and other heavy industries. Since transport
costs were still high, these industries were located close to their hinterlands and
had an immediate impact on the hinterland region. What Perroux could not
anticipate was that the large firms, often nationalized industries, would come
eventually to act more as giant bureaucracies, and become very inefficient. They
would also, because of their bureaucratic nature, fail in the long term to produce
entrepreneurs and innovators. Transport costs would also reduce so that there
was no longer any direct relationship with the hinterland of these industries.
In the last 15 years, there has been a variant of the neo-classical view, based
on the move from raw-materials producing (poor) countries to industrialized (and
therefore rich) countries. This is the theory and policy of export promotion or
export substitution. Central to this model is the view that countries must move
away from being simple raw-material producers, and this is a natural evolution
of the economy. But it rejects the first attempt in this direction, which was to
close off countries by import substitution, starting manufacturing behind high
tariff barriers that make imports artificially expensive. This works against the
idea of the open market economy and against competition, with its healthy
promotion of efficiency.
Instead, countries and regions must move towards industries that are for the
export field, where they must compete with the exports of all other countries. In
an open economy, a country or region will be able to compete successfully in
industries where it has factor advantages such as a skilled labour force, and these
will become its natural export strengths. This is the message of Paauw & Fei
(1975), who also advocated that, rather than rely on the natural movements of the
economy, a government should intervene somewhat to support the move to
industrial export promotion. Their model is criticized for some opaqueness about
how the transition to the new economy is to be made, and about how many
people would be left behind in what appears to be a very unequal new world
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