Urban and regional economics

I would like to acknowledge the support of my colleagues in the Departments of Economics and Geography at the University of Reading, during the period in which this book took shape. In particular, I extend my thanks to Abi Swinburn for all of her help in the latter stages of compiling the manuscript. Half of the book was also written while I was at the Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Japan. I am very grateful to Masayuki Doi and Noboru Sakashita for giving me the time and space to pursue my own writing. The book has benefited from the many discussions I have had with a wide range of people and I am grateful to each of them for their insights. I would like to thank the staff of Oxford University Press for their commitment to this book and their skilled assistance. Finally, I would like to thank my wife Clare without whose continuing encouragement, love, and support this book would not have been written. (...) All economic phenomena take place within geographical space. Economic issues invariably involve either questions concerning the place specificity of particular activities, or alternatively questions relating to the overcoming of space and geographical distance. For example, all commodities are traded at various market locations. However, in order to reach the appropriate market locations, goods have to be transported and delivered across space. Similarly, service activities take place at particular locations, and the information required to carry out the activity must be transmitted or acquired across geographical space. In each case, the costs incurred in these spatial transactions will themselves partly determine the price and cost conditions at each market location. Yet, the reasons why particular markets are located at particular places are also economic questions, and as we will see in this book, the nature and behaviour of markets depends somewhat on their locations. Market performance therefore partly depends on geography. At the same time, the economic performance of a particular area also depends on the nature and performance of the various markets located within the area. Acknowledging that geography plays a role in determining economic behaviour, many discussions about the performance of particular local, urban, or regional economies are, in fact, fundamentally questions about the relationships between geography and the economy. Geography and economics are usually interrelated issues. For many years, spatial questions have all too often been ignored by economists and economic policy makers. This is partly a problem of education. In most textbook discussions, the whole economic system is assumed to take place on a pinhead (Isard 1956). While for a long time there have been many urban economists, regional scientists, and economic geographers who have been explicitly concerned with spatial economic phenomena, for many years the majority of geographical issues were subsumed by Ricardian theories of comparative advantage and international trade. In the post-war Bretton-Woods world of relatively closed economies and currency convertibility restrictions, such assumptions may have appeared to many economists to be acceptable.