A critique of the potential of industrial districts for local and regional development in the present period is developed. It focuses particularly on the influential arguments being put forward by Piore and Sabel and by Scott and Storper. The authors argue against a simple and totalising theory of localised agglomerations, and suggest that contemporary processes of structural change are in fact more complex and contradictory. The new industrial spaces of economic development are in reality quite heterogeneous and are of limited significance in the face of powerful tendencies towards accelerating economic concentration and integration at a global, rather than local, level.
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