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Technopolis: High-Technology Industry and Regional Development in Southern California

by: Allen J. Scott
en | University of California Press

0520081897  9780520081895  9780585333809 

Technopolis: High-Technology Industry and Regional Development in Southern California
By Allen J. Scott




Product Description:

Technopolis is a timely theoretical and empirical investigation of the world's largest high-technology industrial complex--Southern California. Allen Scott provides a new conceptual framework for understanding urban and regional growth processes based on a combination of inter-industrial, labor market, and geographical factors. He presents case studies and original data on three major industries that have become synonymous with Southern California: aircraft and parts, missiles and space equipment, and electronics. The business community will be particularly interested in Scott's diagnosis of post-Cold War economic ills and his suggestions for possible remedies.
In good times or bad, knowledge of how Southern California's high-tech industry and regional development have interacted in the past and might interact in the future will be invaluable for regional and economic planners everywhere.




Summary: An Example of Good Regional Analysis: Why LA takes a dive.
Rating: 4

Technopolis is a master work in regional analysis. Allen Scott clearly reveals why, with the end of the Cold War, greater Los Angeles (and consequently the California) was one of the last regions in the U.S. to recover from the most recent national recession. This is done through the author's review of the economic history of the region since the 1920s and by investigating its three driving industries [the declining aircraft and parts, ordnance and space equipment, and electronics (mostly printed circuit boards and medical devices)sectors] through their labor markets, national industrial organization, relative technological innovativeness, and the interindustry agglomeration economies they enjoy and create. He summarizes the book with a chapter entitled "Questions of Policy and Strategic Choice," which pushes for general regional collective action among firms, labor, and government; infrastructural and institutional support for regional flexible-production agglomerations; and the advancement of the electric-car industry in the L.A. Basin. Few other economic/geographic researchers could have done as fine a job. This is largely by virtue of the author's location within the L.A. Basin, which has facilitated data gathering, the assembly of stylized facts, and the construction of case studies for Scott's research during the past decade and a half. It has also been the subject of study for a number of the author's students, one of whom (Jan-Maarten de Vet) permitted his masters thesis on Southern California's medical devices industry to be rewritten in this book. Moreover, the authors' long-term interest in the division of labor as well as in Marshallian industrial districts adds much to the story that he tells.

One of the main surprises in the book is that, except for a bit of gratuitous but brief definitions and descriptions at the start of the book and policy recommendations toward the end, Scott largely drops his fascination with the effects of flexible production on the spatial distribution and industrial organization of production. In light of this, I find it a stretch that the content of Technopolis is an extension of the main arguments that Scott forwards in Metropolis and New Industrial Spaces, as he suggests in the preface. He does generally focus on issues of industrial organization, local labor markets, and the location of manufacturing activity, however, which are well documented with primary and secondary data. The data are used sparingly but wisely throughout, with maps dispersed well to remind the reader of the spatial aspects of the topic.

The jacket notes suggest that book's subject matter will be "invaluable for regional and economic planners everywhere." Technopolis is a report of some high-quality research, and there has long been a need for a detailed economic geographic compendium on Los Angeles. The translation to other regions of the lessons taught in the book is not at all clear to me, however. The most value will be realized from this book in the classroom, where it can be used as an example of how to perform a detailed regional economic profile. I say this despite Scott's purposeful omission of L.A.'s large low-tech tourism and motion picture industries, and the paucity of research findings that he reports on the region's service-producing sectors.

In summary, I enjoyed Technopolis, and recommend it to economic geographers, local economic development practitioners, and other regional scientists, who are interested in the L.A. Basin or in the aircraft and defense industries. It is a solid piece of regional analysis with a few interesting twists. Disciples and colleague's of Scott, who are looking for extensions of the division-of-labor and flexible-production literature, are likely to be disappointed, however.