Do jobs move to people? Rethinking employment growth in small and medium-sized French cities
TERRAL
Type de document
COMMUNICATION ORALE SANS ACTES (COM)
Langue
anglais
Auteur
TERRAL
Résumé / Abstract
During a long time, urban growth and local economic development have been directly related to the geography of production. A long tradition, going back to the export base model, explains that urban development was driven by activities oriented to external demand. In other words, if metropolitan regions became more attractive for workers and firms during industrial and post-industrial period, this was due, for a big part, to classical variables affecting the economic base. One of the "big deal" which recently emerged in regional and urban growth theory concerns the role of non economic factors. A recent body of research gives special attention to new kinds of explanations, those based on what we called "amenities". They not only affect metropolitan growth, but could give the chance to new territories, in particular small and medium sized cities. This is the hypothesis we wish to test for France. Considering the fact that small and medium-sized cities are generally weakly implicated in the new economy, and directly affected by the reduce of employment in manufacturing sectors, we wonder if "natural amenities" (coastal locations, mountainous areas, and the amount of sunshine) are playing a growing role in the maintain of local economic dynamic. In a period of intense changes in terms of intern migration (of retired people and workers) and considering the nature of the French economy and the geography of the country, we argue that a development supported by public services and consumer services coexists besides metropolitan growth.
