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The changing urban and regional system in the U.K

Περιλήψεις συνεδρίου

• Cooke, Philip

The economic geography of the United Kingdom has been changing dramatically over the past decade or so. The benefits and disbenefits of such change have been unevenly distributed and so, as a consequence, have their social and political consequences. It is sometimes remarked that the North - a term loaded with connotations of decline, poverty, being old-fashioned and so-redly does begin at Watford nowadays. Certainly, it is disturbing that results of the Family Expenditure and General Household Surveys point to a contraction of the prosperous part of the UK to an area south of a line drawn between the Severn and the Wash. The recent designation of the formely buoyant West Midlands region as an Assisted Area clearly signifies its change of status from the engine of postwar economic growth to candidate for emergency overhaul, though whether it and other engineering regions can survive intensified world competition in motor vehicles, machine tools and heavy equipment industries is very much an unresolved question. Despite the gloomy picture from the North, it is clear that the South still has areas of economic dynamism. What seems to have occurred is a shift in the axis of leading technologies from the M1 to the M4 corridor. Of course, these are broad-brush statements about what, on the ground, are much more complex processes. But it is clear that a string of towns and cities from Cambridge in the east, through west London, taking in much of Hampshire in the south and Oxford in the north, and culminating in Severnside have a proportionately large share of firms producing goods and services based on microprocessor technology, aerospace, computers, research and business services. (first page of the paper).

• Sociology

• Κοινωνικές επιστήμες

Περιλήψεις των παρουσιάσεων στο συνέδριο της ΛέσβουAbstracts of papers presented at the Lesvos conference