Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space

The research reported here examines the impact of metropolitan location on the activity choices of a sample of black and white male youths living in large metropolitan areas in the United States in 1980. The results of the analysis confirm that similar youths living in different metropolitan areas will make different activity choices. Furthermore, black male youths are found to be substantially more sensitive to metropolitan context than white male youths. The analysis also suggests that black and white disadvantaged youths respond differently to metropolitan context in terms of the trade-offs between activities. Disadvantaged black male youths are highly unlikely to be employed in all metropolitan areas and tend to trade-off staying in school with idleness, whereas disadvantaged white male youths tend to trade-off employment with idleness, depending on the metropolitan area they live in. This research confirms the importance of incorporating geographic context into our theoretical understanding of male youths' behavior. We must also, however, continue to address the implications of race as it shapes the context-dependent labor-market experiences of male youths.

Increasingly, globalization is being used to conceptualize ongoing transformations in agrofood production systems. One focus is to understand how globalization expresses itself at the local level. In this paper I contribute to the examination of this issue by analyzing how Japan's agrarian sector is being altered as a consequence of increased activity on the part of transnational corporations. By doing so, I address the question of whether Japan's national agricultural production system is being globalized, despite its comparatively unique agrarian history and Japan's role in the global agrofood trading system as a major food importing, rather than an exporting, nation. The evidence presented demonstrates that transnational firms are beginning to expand their presence in Japanese agricultural commodity production. As these are transnational firms, and as the result of this process is to force Japanese agriculture to compete against foreign agricultures for its ‘home’ market, it is argued that this process indicates that Japanese agriculture is being globalized, although in a manner that does reflect an adaptation to local conditions.

This paper reports calculations about reasons for the exceptional growth of Japan and for the slowdown in growth in the OECD since the early 1970s. The calculations are based on a multi-region off-equilibrium dynamic model of the two regions. It is argued that the exceptional rate of growth of Japan can be ascribed primarily to the fact that it has invested more of the OECD's capital than would be predicted simply on the basis of the relative capital stocks in the two regions; the fact that Japan's target rate of expansion of supply has far exceeded that of the rest of the OECD (ROECD), and, to a lesser extent, the fact that labour has been replaced in production faster in Japan than in the ROECD. Even if all exogenous variables and parameters had remained constant through the period 1960–90, rates of profitability, accumulation, and growth would have slowed, particularly in Japan. The Japan—ROECD system was on a trajectory far above dynamic equilibrium levels of profit, accumulation, and growth in 1960; to a large degree the post-1973 slowdown is simply the effect of the system returning to a trajectory that is nearer dynamic equilibrium. Superimposed on that internally driven slowdown have been the effects of changes in the proportion of investment that is allocated to the two regions and in the target rates of expansion of supply. This evidence argues strongly against theories of the Golden Age (regulation theory, the theory of industrial divides, theories of the organisation of capitalism) which identify special conditions that were operating in the 1950s and 1960s to raise rates of profit and growth.

The regional literature suggests that local labor markets offer significant operating advantages to firms in knowledge-intensive industries and thus influence the development of contemporary industrial location patterns. Utilizing two data sets containing information on the employment changes of US semiconductor engineers during the critical formative period (1950–75), the author tests the pooling and anchoring hypotheses of urban economic theory while extending the theory to incorporate the effects of labor and firm specialization. Findings include: (1) moderate evidence of locality-centered labor pooling in this occupation during this early time period; (2) no evidence of anchoring by nonmarket actors, such as universities and government laboratories or by early labor markets; and (3) evidence that agglomerations of firms develop as a result of imperfect skill-opportunity matches. The results discount frequently offered explanations for the emergence of industrial agglomerations and suggest that agglomerations are not the outcome of firms' searches for operating efficiencies but may be a product of entrepreneurship induced by particular ‘permanently failing’ firms.

In this paper we suggest that understandings of social and cultural recomposition in areas of rural Wales need to consider issues of interacting and competing identities. We explore notions of cultural identity, change, and conflict in four areas of rural Wales, based on recent research involving interviews with around 1000 households. Attention is focused on the interplay between different scales of identity constructs: national-scale constructs of English and Welsh identities; regional constructs of Welsh identity; and more localised identity constructs. In the context of the first of these identity constructs, we consider Cohen's notions of significant ‘others’ and symbolic boundaries as a means of understanding processes of English in-movement to areas of the Welsh countryside.

The authors explore the processes by which British corporate retailers are maintaining their predominance in food provision in the 1990s. Taking the ‘new retailing geography’ literature as a context, they first outline the key features (spatial, sectoral, and supply related) of retailers' dynamic competitive space. They then examine the regulatory mechanisms used to influence policy development. The authors begin to address the ways in which combinations of regulatory and consumer culture influence the uneven development and maintenance of corporate retailing and food provision in the United Kingdom, focusing specifically on retailers' definitions and strategies associated with the provision of food quality.

A brief overview is given of the different approaches employed to measure the accessibility of cities. In addition, the results of seven studies on the accessibility of cities within Europe are compared. The comparison is focused on two aspects: the rankings of the cities as a result of the different conceptualizations and the type of infrastructure involved; and the equity in accessibility given the conceptualization and the type of infrastructure. When one is interested in a ranking of cities in terms of accessibility the choice of the accessibility concept tends to be less important than the choice of the type(s) of infrastructure to be considered. When one is interested in inequalities in accessibility among cities, operationalization appears to have a much larger impact compared with rankings per se.

The ambiguity of the title is intended. Smith's rent gap theory is difficult to operationalize, and the authors propose tests for three of its aspects: to observe the presence or otherwise of a ‘rent valley’, to observe the coincidence of a rent gap with a period of gentrification, and to observe capital switching to inner-city alterations and additions. However, when the tests are applied to 1967–91 Melbourne data, they are somewhat testing for the theory itself: there are certainly rent gaps, but they are unevenly distributed over space and time, not consistently associated with periods of gentrification but rather with more complex shifts at the level of demand, and to be viewed as just a minor phenomenon of the broader processes of continual spatial restructuring.

In the context of the continuance of mass high unemployment in the United Kingdom and considerable debate concerning the ‘real level’ of unemployment, the authors of this paper go beyond the official unemployment rate by focusing on the development of alternative indicators of labour reserve in the regions of the United Kingdom. They show how, on a step-by-step basis, successively ‘broader’ indicators of labour reserve (more specifically, those on government training schemes, various categories of those conventionally defined as economically inactive who would like a job, and those in part-time work because they could not find full-time employment) may be derived by means of data from the Labour Force Survey. They then go on to outline the key features of regional variations in the scope for additional labour-force participation. As labour supply is a dynamic concept, and the utilisation of the labour reserve implies transitions from unemployment and non-employment to employment, selected information on transitions between labour-market states and on the previous economic circumstances of the unemployed is presented. Some key features of the broad regional geography of those categorised as in employment, but ‘on the margins’ of the labour reserve, are highlighted also. Finally, the implications for policy of substantial labour reserves in many regions in the United Kingdom are explored.