Industrial Activity and

Geographic Location

• “Preindustrial World”

– Industries did exist before the Ind. Rev.

(e.g. India – carpenters, textiles, silver,…)

– Ind. Rev. began in Midlands of North-

Central England (Black Country – coal

fields) & diffused eastward

– Affected production, transportation, and

communication (steam-engine, locomotive,

telegraph,…)

• The Location Decision

– Primary industries – located near raw mat.s

– Secondary industries – less dependent on

resource location

– Economic models assume:

• 1) People will try to maximize their advantages over competitors,

• 2) They will want to make as much profit as possible,

• 3) They will take into account variable costs – energy, transportation, labor,…

– Friction of distance – the increase in time and cost that usually comes w/ increasing distance

– Distance decay – the impact of a function or activity will decline as one moves away from its point of origin

• Key Concepts of Trans. & Comm.:

• Require a specially designed and constructed [cultural] landscape (roads, TV stations,…)

• Cumulative causation – e.g. investment is risky; usually occurs in developed states

• Trans. & Comm. systems can be viewed as a surface or a network:

• 1) Surface: Pool table; move freely (high potential for collisions); move at limited speeds

• 2) Network: faster movement, but restricted to certain paths (fewer collisions)

• We modify systems b/w both

• Ullman’s Conceptual Frame:

• Forms a basis for understanding the volume & timing of the flows of goods b/w locations; 3 main concepts:

• 1) Complementarily – refers to the needs of one region matching the products of another (copper from AK to manufacturing cities)

• 2) Intervening opportunity – reduces attractiveness of more distant locations

• 3) Transferability –refers to the ease w/ which products can be moved

Kennicott Copper Mine

• Harold Hotelling Model (Two dimensional)

– Locational interdependence – the location of industries can’t be understood w/o ref. to the location of other industries of like kind

– Two vendors located on pts. A & C, eventually gravitate toward pt. B (moving from this pt. will only hurt profitability)

– A third vendor complicates this (spatially)

• Least Cost Theory (1909)

– Alfred Weber’s model – owners of manufacturing plants seek to minimize three costs: 1) Transportation, 2) labor, and 3) agglomeration (too much can lead to high rents & wages, circulation problems)

– Weight-losing case: final product weighs less than raw mat.s; location = source

– Weight-gaining case: final product weighs more (or takes more space) than raw mat.s (e.g. addition of water); location = market

– Some argue Weber’s model doesn’t adequately account for variations in costs over time (e.g. taxation, consumer demand)

– Substitution principle – decreases in certain costs can offset increases in others

• Christaller’s Central Place

Theory – Revisited

• Distance affects the marketing

strategies of enterprises

• Businesses identify one location,

possess a monopoly

• Hexagons display

a nesting pattern;

Christaller’s theory

is not as accurate

today (diminishing

specialization)

• August Lösch

– Profit-maximization: firms will identify a zone of profitability (not just a point)

– Other businesses can come in and change the configuration of that zone

– Agglomeration can give the entire area a competitive advantage

• Factors of Industrial Location:

• Raw Materials-e.g. Japan has few, but grew into an industrial giant b/c of skilled labor & low wages

• Labor-

– Wages

– Skill level of workers

– Population

Open-air laundry in

Mumbai, India

• Transportation – e.g. “container system” facilitates transfer of goods from one type of carrier to another (rail-to-ship-to-truck).

Rates

Truck - cheapest for short distances

Rail - best for medium distance

Ship - high volume / long distance

Air - extremely expensive and

small volume

Resources and Regions:

The Global Distribution

of Industry

• Four Primary Industrial Regions:

– Eastern North America (largest)

– Western & Central Europe

– Russia & Ukraine

– Eastern Asia (fastest growing)

• Industrialization Through WWI

– Britain - enormous comparative advantage

– Industrialization expanded along coal

deposits: N. France – Belgium – N-C

Germany – NW Czechoslovakia – S. Poland

– Colonialism supplied Europe w/ raw mat.s

– Ind. Rev. diffused (exp.) from core regions

– North America: only serious rival to Eur.

– New York – great relative location, major

break-of-bulk (e.g. ship-to-rail) port

– N. Am. benefited from nat. resources, trans.

networks, capital, and labor

– Most of the rest of the world lagged far

behind (exceptions: Ukraine, Australia,…)

• Mid-Twentieth Century Industrialization

– Oil & natural gas played a key role (U.S. is

very dependent on foreign sources today)

– U.S. emerged as the world’s top power

(escaped destruction of WWI & WWII)

– American Manufacturing Belt - NE

• Other regions – SE & SW districts, 3 in the west

Europe:

- Rühr (W. Germ) –

greatest in Eur.

(good

resources,

accessibility, &

centrality)

- Saxony (E.

Germ) &

Silesia

(Poland)

- WWII damaged Eur’s ind. might, U.S. Marshall

Plan helped to rebuild

Former USSR: Communists sponsored major

industrialization; Moscow, St. Petersburg,

Volga (E. of Moscow), Urals (further E.), even

Siberia were major areas of ind.

East Asia:

- Two countries

avoided direct

Eur. imp’ism

- Japan – major

regions; Kanto

Plain (largest:

Tokyo) &

Kansai Dist.

(2nd: Kyoto-

Kobe-Osaka)

- China – major ind. under communism (1949-);

NE is ind. heartland, Shanghai & Chang (river)

Dist. (2nd largest)

• Late Twentieth

Century and Beyond

– “Four Tigers”:

South Korea

(Seoul), Taiwan

(Taipei), Hong

Kong, Singapore

(industrial powers)

– China – rapidly

growing in

influence

– Japan is losing its

dominance

Pusan, South Korea

- N. Hemisphere Ind. Zone: U.S. – Europe –

Former USSR – E. Asia

- Secondary Regions – Mexico, Brazil, S.

Africa, Egypt, India, Australia,…

India – a secondary industrial region