The steady globalization of economic activity over the last few decades has intensified the assertion of the region as a critical locus of economic order and as a potent foundation of competitive advantage. This book is a wide-ranging exploration of the economic logic and political meaning of such developments. It presents the economic geography of the modern world as an emerging global mosaic of regional systems of production and exchange.

Focusing on the theme of the mutually constitutive relations between geographic space and the economic order, Allen J. Scott discusses the problems of the location of economic activities, learning and innovation in industrial systems, and economic development. These problems are dealt with in both theoretical and empirical terms.

This book is about the renaissance of cities in the twenty first century and their increasing role as centers of creative economic activity. It attempts to put some conceptual and descriptive order around issues of urbanization in the contemporary world, emphasizing the idea of the social economy of the metropolis, which is to say, a view of the urban organism as an intertwined system of social and economic life played out through the arena of urban space.
The book opens with a review of some essentials of urban theory, the book aims to re-articulate the urban question in a way that is...