Critical cosmopolitanism: Urban and regional studies into the 1990s

Abstract This paper reappraises and contextualises the more salient contributions to British urban and regional studies in the 1980s. The particular emphasis will be on the contributions made by production geography, although the consumption geographic level will not be neglected. A further emphasis is on the radical wing of this work where the major advances have been made. This paper is structured chronologically. After an introduction pointing to the connections between social change and intellectual change, the first main section focuses on research developed to deal with the latter end of the Fordist era. The next section explores work on the crisis of Fordism and the emergent Post-Fordist era. Finally, a speculative conclusion picks out those elements of Post-Fordism which can be expected to underpin both spatial development and academic analysis into the 1990s.