Regional economies, open networks and the spatial fragmentation of production

In this article, we review recent developments in the extensive literature on territorially embedded production systems in the developed world, with a particular eye towards changes that have (or have not) occurred over the last decade. Improvements in transportation and communication technologies and the advent of global production networks have put newly into play the degree to which industrial communities must be located in specific and discretely bounded territories. What had been a relatively territorially circumscribed, and thus fundamentally organizational, fragmentation of production has acquired a more pronounced spatial dimension in recent years. This has raised new questions for regional economic governance that require new study of links not only within regions and sectors, but also between them. In particular, there is a need to understand whether and how local sources of competitive advantage can be transposed to include global dimensions.

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