The changing geography of the Canadian manufacturing sector in metropolitan and rural regions, 1976–1997

This paper documents the changing geography of the Canadian manufacturing sector over a 22‐year period (1976–1997). It does so by looking at the shifts in employment and differences in production worker wages across different levels of the rural/urban hierarchy—central cities, adjacent suburbs, medium and small cities and rural areas. The analysis demonstrates that the most dramatic shifts in manufacturing employment were from the central cities of large metropolitan regions to their suburbs. Paralleling trends in the United States, rural regions of Canada have increased their share of manufacturing employment. Rising rural employment shares were due to declining employment shares of small cities and, to a lesser degree, large urban regions. Increasing rural employment was particularly prominent in Quebec, where employment shifted away from the Montreal region. The changing fortunes of rural and urban areas were not the result of across‐the‐board shifts in manufacturing employment, but were the net outcome of differing locational patterns across industries. In contrast to the situation in the United States, wages in Canada do not consistently decline, moving down the rural/urban hierarchy from the largest cities to the most rural parts of the country. Only after controlling for the types of manufacturing industries found in rural and urban regions is it apparent that wages decline with the size of place .     

Differences in hi‐tech immigrant earnings and wages across Canadian cities

This paper examines the relative earnings and wages of immigrants working in the hi‐tech sector in Canada's cities. Between 1990 and 2000, a sizeable earnings advantage of immigrants over nonimmigrants employed in the hi‐tech sector evaporated, and this change was most noticeable in the largest cities. We use population census microdata to examine the geographical dimensions of this shift. After controlling for individual characteristics, we show that immigrants in the largest and tech‐intensive cities earn significantly less relative to nonimmigrants than those in midsized and smaller cities. We also present results comparing the hi‐tech immigrant wage and earnings gap for the five largest Canadian cities. The findings are consistent with the notion that geographic differences are an important component of the overall earnings gap between immigrants and nonimmigrants.     

THE GREEN ECONOMY,SUSTAINABILITY TRANSITIONS AND TRANSITION REGIONS: A CASE STUDY OF BOSTON

This article is focused upon exploring the development of the green economy in particular locations, with the aim of identifying why some cities and regions have been successful in engendering green growth. To date we have little idea where the green economy is developing, nor much insight, beyond anecdotal evidence, into why certain cities and regions appear to be more successful than others in this regard. We position our analysis within the context of research on socio‐technical transitions that has theorized the potential shift to a more sustainable economy. We review the literature on sustainability transitions and the development of the multi‐level perspective encompassing niches, regimes and landscapes. However, most research into socio‐technical transitions has not given adequate consideration to the influence of places and spatial scale in these transition processes, and we therefore critique the socio‐technical transitions literature from a geographical perspective. In this article we are interested in four key questions. What role does the enabling and facilitative state play in these cities and regions? What new institutional forms and governance structures are being developed? How do actors in particular cities and regions construct their green vision, and how do they encourage other actors to buy‐in to this vision? How are links across levels and spatial scales developed to connect niches with the regime? We address these through a focus upon the Boston city‐region in the USA, drawing upon both primary and secondary research material. We utilize this case study example to re‐examine and re‐theorize work on sustainability transitions from a spatial perspective.     

Geographies of capital formation and rescaling: A historical‐geographical approach to the food desert problem

Although the “food desert” concept has captured the public imagination and spurred public policy efforts in many North American cities, the term has been critiqued by academics for being definitionally and methodologically vague, and for providing an incomplete picture of the complexity of food access. Rather than dismiss the study of urban, inner‐city food deserts, however, scholars can study disparities in retail food access through a historical, critical political economy lens to understand underserved retail landscapes as a product of capital formation and rescaling over time. The purpose of this article is to conduct such an analysis, using the case study of a low‐income community in Kingston, Ontario. Using historical research and qualitative interviews, the major finding of this analysis is that the physical accessibility of retail food appears to have declined over time in relation to the capitalization of the retail food sector. An imperfect relationship can be outlined over three phases of Canadian urban economic history to suggest that the food desert problem emerged largely in the transition from a decentralized, small‐scale, and neighbourhood‐embedded retail food industry to the scaled‐up, disembedded industry that now dominates the landscape. This industry‐level rescaling is contributing to a new urban politics of class and consumption through subtle, everyday activities such as food shopping.     

Metropolis on the margins: talent attraction and retention to the St. John's city‐region

The objective of this research is to examine the factors that influence the attraction and retention of creative and highly educated workers in a small‐sized Canadian city. The study examines two hypotheses: that the social dynamics of city‐regions constitute the foundations of economic success in the global economy; and, that talented, highly educated individuals will be attracted to those city‐regions that offer a richness of employment opportunity, a high quality of life, a critical mass of cultural activity and social diversity. The hypotheses are explored through in‐depth interviews with creative and highly educated workers, employers and intermediary organizations. The evidence from the interviews suggests mixed support for the hypotheses. In view of these findings, we contend that the specificities of place must be more carefully theorized in the creative class literature and be more carefully considered by policy‐makers designing policies directed towards attracting and retaining talented and highly educated workers.     

The importance of location and scale in rural and small town tourism product development: The case of the Canadian Fossil Discovery Centre,Manitoba, Canada

This paper begins with a review of the literature on tourism in rural economies, to establish a framework for analyzing large‐scale tourism products in rural and small town regions. The review is followed by the development of a typology of large‐scale attractions in rural and small town regions, including parks, casinos, events, heritage, and cultural products. The typology leads into the example of the Canadian Fossil Discovery Centre (CFDC) in Manitoba, Canada. Located in an agricultural region of south‐central Manitoba, the community of Morden is located 125 km from the provincial capital city, Winnipeg, which had a population of 811,900 in 2016. Morden is also located 35 km north of the border with North Dakota. Thus, while a small town in a traditionally rural region still dependent upon an agricultural economic base, Morden has been recently successful in diversifying its economy, including through manufacturing, services, hospitality, and tourism. In part, this success is due to a south‐central Manitoba location; however, it is also the result of innovative local leadership, including the prioritization of hospitality and tourism related to the CFDC. This paper describes the case study as an example of successful tourism development within an already economically and socially diversifying region.     

Are new patterns of low‐income distribution emerging in Canadian metropolitan areas?

Recent studies on urban poverty in Canadian cities suggest a growing spatial concentration of poor populations within metropolitan regions. This article assesses trends in the intra‐urban distribution of the poor population from 1986 to 2006 in eight of Canada's largest cities. We consider five well‐known dimensions of segregation, as identified by Massey and Denton (1988) , in order to examine changes in the spatial distribution of poor populations within metropolitan areas: evenness, exposure, concentration, clustering, and centralization. These indices were calculated for low‐income populations at the census tract level using data from five Canadian censuses. Although each metropolitan area has distinctive characteristics, we were able to identify some general trends. The results suggest that, in 2006 compared to 1986, low‐income populations lived in more spatially concentrated areas, which were, at the same time, socioeconomically more homogeneous and more dispersed throughout the metropolitan area. In addition, we observed that over the last twenty years areas of poverty have been located, for the most part, in neighbourhoods adjacent to downtown cores. Nevertheless, we found that poverty has mostly increased in suburban areas located outside inner‐city neighbourhoods. Growing socioeconomic homogeneity and dispersion of low income areas in metropolitan areas reveal new spatial patterns of urban poverty distribution. These findings should be cause for concern as social isolation in the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods could affect the life chances and opportunities for the residents of those areas.     

Building intersectoral partnerships as place‐based strategy for immigrant and refugee (re)settlement: The Ottawa Local Immigration Partnership

This paper examines the role of the Ottawa Local Immigration Partnership in the Syrian refugee resettlement in Canada's national capital following the federal government's 2015–2016 resettlement plan. Based on the findings of qualitative data collection—including semi‐structured interviews with representatives from community organizations, settlement agencies, and the City of Ottawa—two main arguments are advanced. First, while the current literature tends to portray the Canadian settlement sector as a passive victim in the face of neoliberal restructuring and austerity measures, this paper offers a more nuanced perspective by reflecting on the sector's ability to exert agency by developing initiatives and devising strategies that are rooted in the local context. Second, the case of the Ottawa Local Immigration Partnership sheds light on the significance of intersectoral networks and partnerships that extend beyond the settlement sector to build a sound approach for welcoming refugees and newcomers more generally. These findings serve to demonstrate the potential of partnerships as a place‐based settlement model that is responsive to context‐specific needs and enhances local community strengths, thus providing important lessons that can inform future immigrant and refugee (re)settlement and integration in other Canadian cities and regions.     

China's Demographic and Urban Trends for the 21st Century

This paper assesses remarkable and far-reaching changes under way as China enters the 21st century. Among the most significant are the rapid decline in fertility and birth rates, leading to a slowdown in the rate of population growth and a reduction in the growth rate of the labor force. This occurs against the backdrop of continuing structural shift in the economy from a rural-based economy to one increasingly urban-based with growing employment in manufacturing and services. Oshima's conceptual framework for the demographic and industrial transition in Asia is invoked to help explain conditions of change in China. Urbanization proceeds in parallel with these economic changes, and a key feature of transition will be the growth of cities and towns of all sizes. The regional pattern of urbanization will proceed at different rates, with coastal regions advancing most rapidly owing to stronger linkages to the global economy. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: J11, O10, O18. 3 figures, 6 tables, 36 references.     

Hypermobility and the governance of global production networks: The case of the Canadian cycle industry and its links with China and Taiwan

Western firms engaged in mass retailing and in product assembly make frequent changes to their global production networks (GPNs). Indeed, some GPNs show a tendency to hypermobility, which we define as a rapid switching of economic links among manufacturers, importers, and retailers. This theme is explored in the context of the Canadian bicycle industry where domestic production collapsed between 1980 and 2008, following a century of remarkable stability. After a period of flux when Taiwan was the key player, China has emerged as the dominant original equipment manufacturer (OEM) of bicycles sold in Canada, with big‐box stores accounting for the great majority of sales. We connect this increasing fluidity in supply arrangements and in the global organization of the industry with the governance of these GPNs. Several aspects of governance are considered, including the Sloanist practices of the largest Canadian retailers, and the activist role of the Chinese state in directing regional patterns of manufacturing in China.     

Gaming on the edge: Mobile labour and global talent in Atlantic Canada's video game industry

Diminishing returns and advances in telecommunications have prompted large video game firms to seek new locations, outsource production, and develop niche studios, including on Canada's East Coast. In this paper, we examine emerging occupational cultures and trace the origins and evolution of video game production in Canada's Atlantic provinces—a critical yet peripheral space economy in the gaming sector. Our findings are drawn from 30 interviews with gameworkers, studio managers, government officials, and other industry experts. We find this industry to be driven by the confluence of three major factors: (i) provincial governments have supported video game development as a strategic industry via financial incentives; (ii) firms are benefiting from a return migration effect and are repatriating Atlantic Canadian talent from media hubs by selling “home,” work‐life balance, and an alternative to the punishing gamework culture associated with Silicon Valley; and (iii) post‐secondary institutions in the region have improved their talent pipelines through computer science, digital media, and video game development programs.     

Spatial skill concentration agglomeration economies

Using the Brazilian census and administrative panel data, the present paper provides evidence that the spatial concentration of analytical skills generates positive wage externalities for all workers in the local labor market. We rely on shift‐share instrumental variables to overcome the endogeneity of skill concentrations. The observed externality is independent from the classical market size economies. The estimates are robust to geography, institutions and workers' sorting on unobservable abilities.     

Une histoire de résidus : à propos des facteurs généraux et locaux de croissance régionale au Canada,de 1971 à 2001

Starting from an econometric model of local employment growth, applied to Canada (1971–2001), residuals—relative to model predictions—are analyzed over time and over space, in turn allowing us to draw a distinction between general explanatory variables and factors of a more local, cyclical or accidental nature. The model's explanatory power grows over time, founded on variables such as urban size, market access and industrial structure, allowing us to conclude that local employment growth in Canada follows an increasingly geographically predictable pattern. However, an examination of the residuals reveals more localized processes. Growth volatility is most manifest in Alberta and British Columbia, home to the most erratic local economies. Emerging patterns are visible in the last period, most notably the underperformance of Northern Ontario and of non‐metropolitan communities between Windsor and Québec City, lying along the Great Lakes and the Saint Lawrence. The over‐performance—compared to model predictions — of small and mid‐sized towns in south‐eastern Québec can, on the other hand, be interpreted as a sign of truly local social processes, generally associated with a particularly dynamic local entrepreneurial class.     

Political economy,demography and development in Australia's Northern Territory

The Canadian ‘staples thesis’ literature has documented both the risks (in the tradition of Harold Innis) and the opportunities (in the tradition of W. A. Macintosh) inherent in economies that are dependent on the export of minimally processed natural resources. The key risk is that of retarded long‐term growth as a result of a lack of diversification and over‐dependence on foreign capital and markets. This article argues that the demographic consequences of staples approaches to development also make it difficult to achieve diversification. It profiles Australia's Northern Territory as an example of a mining‐dependent (fiscal) economy that demonstrates a particular demographic profile consistent with what might be expected of a resource frontier. The article argues, however, that restrictive demographic characteristics persist (high sex ratios, high population mobility, disadvantaged position of indigenous people and remote dwellers) even though mining has become an insignificant direct employer (less than one percent of the workforce) and the services sector drives the labour market. This persistence can be linked to the Territory and federal government expectations of economic development patterns in the region and the frontier mythology created around the Northern Territory. Addressing the demographic imbalance is a critical step towards realizing ambitions for economic diversification.     

RECESSIONARY SHOCKS AND REGIONAL EMPLOYMENT: EVIDENCE ON THE RESILIENCE OF U.K. REGIONS*

ABSTRACT We analyze the resilience of U.K. regions to employment shocks. Two basic notions of resilience are distinguished. With engineering resilience, there is an underlying stable growth path to which a regional economy rebounds following a shock. With ecological resilience, shocks can permanently affect the growth path of the regional economy. Our data set consists of quarterly employment series for 12 U.K. regions (NUTS I) for the period 1971–2010. Using a seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) model specification, we test for the relevance of (engineering) resilience of U.K. regional employment to the four recessionary shocks in our sample. It turns out that U.K. regions do indeed differ in their resilience, but that these differences mainly concern the initial resistance to these shocks and not so much the recovery stage. The SUR model does not allow shocks to have permanent effects and it also does not take the possibility of time differentiated shock spillovers between the 12 regions into account. To this end, we also estimate a vector error‐correction model (VECM) specification where employment shocks can have permanent effects and where also interregional employment linkages are included. We find that employment shocks typically have permanent effects when it concerns the own‐region effects. Permanent effects can also be found for the impact on other regions but the interregional effects are typically only significant for nearby regions.     

La métropolisation à l’aune de la ‘loi’ taille/rang : Le cas Canadien, 1971–2001

Metropolization and the rank/size ’law‘: the Canadian case, 1971–2001 There is currently considerable interest in the process of metropolization. One of the consequences of this process, observed by numerous researchers, is the slower growth and even decline of small and medium cities. From a theoretical point of view, this process is compatible with endogenous growth theory: metropolitan areas offer economic actors certain key factors (access to information, to global networks, etc.) that smaller cities cannot. Concurrently, however, there is a resurgence of interest in Zipf's law and, more generally, in the stability of urban hierarchies. These two bodies of work appear to be in contradiction. However, using Canadian data from 1971 to 2001, we show that whilst metropolization is indeed occurring, this is not necessarily incompatible with a regular urban hierarchy. Indeed, if it is assumed that Zipf's rank‐size rule applies to urban systems in stable socio‐economic contexts, and that this regularity can be disrupted by fundamental social and economic changes, then the current wave of metropolization can be interpreted as a re‐ordering of cities in the face of the major social and economic changes of the 1980s and 1990s, which may eventually lead to a new equilibrium compatible with Zipf's law.     

中国制造业重心的空间分布变化特征与趋势研究——基于2001年和2009年数据的实证分析

中国东部地区向中国内陆及周边国家的产业转移方兴未艾,很有可能发展成为全球第四次产业转移浪潮,而制造业的区域转移是该过程的主体。本文对中国制造业不同尺度的份额变化及其影响因素进行讨论并对二者关系进行计量分析,得出以下结论:第一,制造业重心基本空间格局未发生变化,但已发生明显的份额变化;第二,制造业份额变化涉及多个空间层面,并遵循随经济发展水平增长而降低的梯度原则;第三,根据2001年和2009年中国地市级尺度制造业份额变化及其影响要素间关系的理论分析和计量研究结果,中国区域制造业份额与经济发展水平呈现倒U型关系,且仍对低成本劳动力具有一定的依赖性,而交通设施改善对于制造业份额的增长具有显著的正向效应。     

Environmental health and vulnerable populations in Canada: mapping an integrated equity‐focused research agenda

The uneven distribution of environmental hazards across space and in vulnerable populations reflects underlying societal inequities. Fragmented research has led to gaps in comprehensive understanding of and action on environmental health inequities in Canada and there is a need to gain a better picture of the research landscape in order to integrate future research. This paper provides an initial assessment of the state of the environmental health research field as specifically focused on vulnerable populations in Canada. We present a meta‐narrative literature review to identify under‐integrated areas of knowledge across disciplinary fields. Through systematic searching and categorization, we assess the abstracts of a total of 308 studies focused on the past 30 years of Canadian environmental health inequity research in order to describe temporal, geographical, contextual and epistemological patterns. The results reveal that there has been significant growth in Canadian research documenting the uneven distributions and impacts of environmental hazards across locations and populations since the 1990s, but its focus has been uneven. Notably, there is a lack of research aimed at integrating evidence‐based and policy‐relevant evaluation of environmental health inequities and how they are created and sustained. Areas for future research are recommended including more interdisciplinary, multimethod and preventive approaches to resolve the environmental burden placed on vulnerable populations and to promote environmental health equity.     

Convergence and Divergence in the Australian Space Economy

Australia's space economy has changed rapidly since the 1970s through processes of globalisation, economic restructuring and demographic change. Trends in population distribution and patterns of employment and investment in economic activity highlight both spatial diffusion and concentration. Migration to ‘sun belt’ regions and suburban growth in the mega metro regions is creating population-led demand for production and services, thus creating investment growth and new employment in some consumer-oriented economic activities. However many internationally linked and national market serving economic functions are increasingly concentrated in the two largest cities at strategically located old and new nodes of agglomeration. No longer can population growth be equated directly with increased economic activity, and there are significant spatial mismatches between the outcomes of demographic and economic processes across the nation's cities and regions.