Geographie Economie Societe最新文献

The decrease in information costs induced by the development of ICT would make innovative activities free of spatial constraint. However, based on both the recent theoretical approaches and the first empirical observations, this paper rejects the idea of the end of distance. The economic geography models, as well as the analyses of ICT impact on interpersonal relations, consider opposite forces that may generate either a spatial dispersion of economic activities or conversely a reinforcement of agglomerations. The empirical studies likely to evaluate these forces now essentially highlight the complementarity between ICT and face to face contacts, predicting the somewhat persistence of distance.

If post-development authors succeed in their harsh criticism of the Western way of development (based on economic growth and faith in progress), we can wonder if their proposals are as relevant as their critics. If the proposal of a locally-based economy seems to be a logical alternative to globalisation, why do these authors need to refer to communitarian ideas? Using concepts which clearly refer to a certain nostalgia of an idealised past (tradition, rural life, community), they seem to have taken for granted the present disinterest in politics. Consequently, they do not confront with the roles that will play market and democracy in their locally-based economy and feed the ambiguity about their societal conceptions. Even if social and ecological damages caused by capitalism seem to be unsustainable, it might be naïve to think that disconnected alternative projects will manage to fuse in a global anti-capitalist network if counter proposals are not clarified.

The Canadian urban system underwent a major change after 1960. The city historically at the top of its urban hierarchy, Montreal, was replaced by its old rival, Toronto, historically in second place. Such reversals are extremely rare. Montreal’s fall from first place appears even more exceptional when we compare it with New York, which has remained the primary corporate and financial center of the United States despite a westward (and southward) shift in population and economic activity. We begin by briefly documenting the Montreal–Toronto reversal, and by eliminating certain explanations. We then introduce a model for understanding the location decisions of high-order service establishments and corporate management units (i.e. head office functions). The model stresses the importance of communications costs and recruitment costs for knowledge workers. We end with an analysis of the spatial dynamics of management functions (within given industries) in Canada from 1971 to 1996.

The paper focuses on the impacts of metropolitan area networks (MAN) both on spatial reorganization of economic activities and their local anchoring. Because this network technology differs from other inputs in the production function, we study the location of firms from their external communication structures. From the typology of Markusen (1996), we derive a study of interactions, externalities, organizational forms and anchoring of each kind of firms’ agglomeration. We discuss the relevance of a local policy based on a MAN development according to each form of local development and conclude our analysis by some case studies.

In this paper, we focus on the adoption process of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), trying to specify the influence of determinants related to the organizational and spatial structure of firms. For this purpose, our econometric study makes use of individual data of firms, concerning almost 5000 industrial French firms. This data provide information concerning the firms’ behavior in terms of ICT adoption, but also the different components of the firms’ internal and external modes of organization and their relations to space. We first examine the general conditions of ICT diffusion in the French productive system and then test the existence of sectoral specificities. Beyond the determinants traditionally examined in empirical studies concerning firms’ ability to innovate, results show that the organizational and spatial factors have significant impacts on ICT adoption. In the sectoral approach, they allow us to confirm specificities in particular regarding the influence of firms’ location(s) and spatial organization.

This paper proposes an explanation for the emergence of internet activities cluster: the cyber-district. This cluster is characterized with a very fast evolution cycle whereas spatial dynamics are more often longer. We define the principle of cascade location as the product of individual decision making based on the information externalities and mimetic behaviours and as supporting the cluster temporality. We compare the cluster to a good experience where value is revealed ex-post. However, as the cyber-district is more instable than a district, based on productive complementarities and network externalities we could produce some regional policy recommendations associated with the replication and stability conditions of the cluster. Finally, we illustrate the evolution of a cyber-district with the Silicon Sentier located in Paris.

This introduction focuses on the relation between economics of information and communication technologies (TIC) economics and spatial re-organization of economic activities. In the first time, we show the necessity of decomposition of the ICT sector and the weight of interactions and externalities in a network based economy. In the second time, we show that three questions have to be studied: the role of telecommunication networks and their diffusion in local development, ICT diffusion and re-organization of economic activities, and the peculiar case of the location of ICT firms. This introduction ends up by a short presentation of the contributions of this volume.