Industrial districts

Provided for non-commercial research and educational use only. Not for reproduction, distribution or commercial use. This article was originally published in International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, published by Elsevier, and the attached copy is provided by Elsevier for the author’s benefit and for the benefit of the author’s institution, for non-commercial research and educational use including without limitation use in instruction at your institution, sending it to specific colleagues who you know, and providing a copy to your institution’s administrator.

All other uses, reproduction and distribution, including without limitation commercial reprints, selling or licensing copies or access, or posting on open internet sites, your personal or institution’s website or repository, are prohibited. For exceptions, permission may be sought for such use through Elsevier’s permissions site at: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/permissionusematerial Celata F, Rossi U. 2009. Industrial Districts. In Kitchin R, Thrift N (eds) International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, Volume 5, pp. 389–395. Oxford: Elsevier. ISBN: 978-0-08-044911-1 © Copyright 2009 Elsevier Ltd.

Author's personal copy Industrial Districts F. Celata, University of Rome ‘‘La Sapienza’’, Rome, Italy U. Rossi, University of Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction In an essay that published in 1987, economist Giacomo Becattini recalls the time in which the concept of external economies and industrial atmosphere originally appeared. A 1969 study, published in a revised form in 1975 by IRPET (a Tuscany-based research institute of which Becattini was the director at the time), offered an interpretation of Tuscany’s development path which emphasized the role of the geographic, historic, and societal characteristics of the region. The work touched upon, albeit only in empirical terms, the notion of the industrial district by referring to the flow of external economies directed toward individual firms within a process of productive specialization on a local level. Drawing inspiration from Alfred Marshall’s book on industry and trade, the study placed emphasis on the special atmosphere pervading localized agglomerations of small- and medium-sized firms specializing in leather goods and footwear, textiles, and furniture in Tuscany, such as Santa Croce sull’Arno, Prato, Montecatini-Terme, etc. In the essay, Becattini lamented the delayed consideration of these categories by mainstream economists as well as by politicians and policymakers. In this and in his subsequent work, Becattini – unanimously recognized as the founder of the Italian school on industrial districts – invites the scholarly community to a twofold rehabilitation of geography within the realm of spatial economic theory and applied research. On a disciplinary level, he acknowledges the importance of human geography within the disciplines investigating the dynamics of regional economic development (two contributors to this path-breaking publication are geographers themselves: Fabio Sforzi and Maria Tinacci Mossello), and, perhaps more importantly, on a theoretical level, Becattini underlines the importance of a geographic perspective in applied economic research by pointing to ‘localized sociospatial systems’ and the always unique ‘thickening of productive relations’ as major units of analysis in industrial economics and in regional economic development studies more generally. The reassertion of the importance of geography in economic theory and empirical research resonates with the contemporary rehabilitation of space over time by some leading social scientists in the same period with reference to other social issues and fields of investigation. Broadly speaking, it can be argued that in the 1980s the so-called ‘Tuscan model’ came to represent in the field of regional

science and local economic development studies something comparable to what the city of Los Angeles represented in the context of postmodern urban development: an allegedly paradigmatic example of sociospatial transformations in post-Fordist times. Ironically, the recognition of such a paradigmatic role occurred despite the fact that Tuscany was not a post-Fordist region or a ‘new’ industrial space properly defined, as its industrial development trajectory was much older than those of other notable examples of regional post-Fordism (such as those in the American Sun Belt). Or, to put it in a different way, Tuscany symbolized the ways in which the post-Fordist mode of production was able to bring together the old and the new, the history and the present of industrial organization in capitalist societies. In the eyes of industrial districts scholars, Tuscany was indeed a unique and at the same time successful combination of economic and sociocultural, exogenous and endogenous factors in regional development processes. These factors include: first, the national division of labor that prevailed in the Italian economy after the political unification of the country in the nineteenth century with the localization of large factories in the North–West and the other regions of the Center–North, such as Tuscany itself being excluded from mass industrialization; second, the region’s long-term tradition of craft production in laborand design-intensive sectors, such as clothing and the garment industry; third, the share-cropping system (mezzadria) prevailing in agriculture with its remarkable economic versatility and unchanging social formations (the ‘Mediterranean model’ of household structure and, most notably, the intense allegiances generated within enlarged family lineages); fourth, the professional ethic of local entrepreneurs, resulting in a widespread recognition of wellperformed work (epitomized by the enduring belief in the ‘mastery of the craft’); fifth, the outward-looking character of the regional economy due to the wealth of international economic exchanges (testified by the role played in industrial districts development by brokers acting for foreign firms in channeling international demand toward Tuscany); sixth, the open-mindedness of the region linked to the unique legacy of cultural and artistic resources with their potential for attracting foreigners and enlightened visitors.

The Emilian Model and the Institutionalist Turn Although Becattini referred to the work of Alfred Marshall as the main source of inspiration in the (re)discovery of

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industrial districts and ‘light industrialization’ paths in Tuscany, the emphasis he placed on the role of endogenous and sociocultural factors implicitly called for an expansion of industrial district theory itself beyond Marshallian externalities, agglomeration theory, and the conventional boundaries of neoclassical economics. Critics of this classically Marshallian characterization of industrial districts suggested a more explicit engagement with the concept of ‘embeddedness’ in economic sociology as well as with the emerging strands of neo-institutionalist theorizing in regional development studies. The Marshallian framework of analysis, however, has not been abandoned following these critiques but – as we see below in this article – has been updated and amended with other theoretical approaches such as neo-Schumpeterian economics and the transaction-costs theory, giving rise to a ‘neo’Marshallian perspective. Initially, the ‘Tuscan model’ of the industrial district provided a fundamental contribution to the making of the geographic imaginary and mythology associated with the rise of the Third Italy as a sociospatial paradigm in postFordist capitalism. However, following the revisiting of the Marshallian legacy and the influence acquired by neo-institutionalist and neo-regionalist theorizations, scholars have looked for other regional models of industrial district organization. In this vein, since the mid1990s Emilia-Romagna has gradually taken the role played earlier by Tuscany. Emilia-Romagna is a region that has many examples of prosperous industrial districts: ceramics in Sassuolo, knitwear in Modena, motorcycles and shoes in Bologna, and food industry in Parma. Since the beginning, a distinguishing feature of the ‘Emilian model’ of industrial districts has been related to the specific institutional base of the local economy. Since the early 1980s, economist Sebastiano Brusco had noticed how the artisans and small entrepreneurs of EmiliaRomagna cope with customary difficulties associated with the small size of firms by creating associations of mutual help and assistance (such as the National Confederation of Artisans, CNA) and various entities of public–private partnership. These associations and coalitions specialize in the provision of a host of producer services; for instance, they coordinate purchasing and credit negotiations, they set up technical consultancy offices as well as consortia for marketing and purchase of raw and semifabricated materials, and, most importantly, establish cooperatives providing guarantees for bank loans at the lowest-possible rates of interest. This form of interfirm cooperation and interdependence, strongly supported by the local and regional government and other regional actors such as local banks and the trade unions, has created the institutional thickness on whose basis industrial districts have grown up and flourished in the region, compensating the inefficiencies as well as the increasing hollowing out of the state as a regulator of

economic activity in post-Fordist and post-Keynesian societies. The presence of these institutional intermediaries crossing conventional economy/state/civil–society boundaries has allowed industrial districts and similar sociospatial configurations of small firms to be competitive in a world dominated by big firms, global actors, and transnational networks. The attention that has been devoted to the institutional foundations of the Emilian model has offered a more comprehensive understanding of the role played by sociocultural and endogenous factors in regional economic development, which had been only inductively highlighted in studies on the ‘Tuscan model’. Subsequent literature dealing with what came to be known as the ‘associational economy’, in the mid- and late 1990s, has been particularly inspired by studies investigating the role of these institutional intermediaries in the development and reproduction of industrial districts in Emilia-Romagna. Elaborating on this example, students of regional economic development have reached a point of consensus over the fact that while networks of technologically advanced firms tend to gain their competitiveness from access to scientific knowledge, codified rules, technical advances, and strategic management, small-firm networks tend to rely more on informal, mainly tacit and interactive, knowledge as a source of competitive advantage as well as on individual and collective experience, apprenticeship, incremental innovation, adaptation to changing circumstances, and organizational flexibility. This neo-institutionalist theorization has contributed to the building of a theory of industrial districts which is less dependent on the original sociospatial context of the Third Italy (Figure 1) and more easily applicable to other geographic contexts.

Traveling Theory: Industrial Districts outside the Third Italy A crucial contribution to the generalization and the internationalization of industrial districts theory has come from the work of the US scholars Michael Piore and Charles Sabel and particularly from their groundbreaking concept of flexible specialization. Thanks also to their work, industrial districts started to be regarded as concrete manifestations of a generalized shift toward flexible industrial organization in post-Fordist times. In the wake of this rising attention at an international level, concentrations of specialized clusters of small- and medium-sized firms have been found and investigated in many regions of the Western World, including Southern Germany (Baden-Wu¨rttemberg), Southern France (Rhoˆne-Alpes), and the US West Coast. According to these studies, industrial districts take shape not only as a consequence of the thickening of

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Textile Clothing Leather

Conegliano

Footwear

Brescia Vicenza

Venezia

Furnitures Ceramics

Mechanical engin. Metal Others

Carpi Sassuolo

Prato

Bologna

Firenze Ancona Arezzo Macerata

0

50 km

Figure 1 Industrial districts in the Third Italy. Adapted from Sforzi, F. (1990). The quantitative importance of Marshallian industrial districts in the Italian economy. In Pyke, F., Becattini, G. & Sengenberger, W. (eds.) Industrial Districts and Inter-Firm Co-operation in Italy, pp 75–107. Geneva: International Institute for Labour Studies.

cooperation ties between autonomous small-sized producers, like in the Third Italy, but also as a result of outsourcing strategies and the restructuring of previously vertically integrated production systems or in the wake of state-led industrial development. Related dynamics of industrial reorganization have been observed in a wide range of geographical contexts and economic sectors, such as South Korea (electronics, fabricated metal, and textiles), Japan (Toyota city), Seattle (Boeing production system), California (wine industry), Ile-de-France (fashion clothing and high-technology industries), and many others, especially in the so-called Global South, as shown in the remainder of this paragraph. A notorious example in this respect is the Hollywood’s film and television industry. Similarly to design-intensive industries, film production required continuous upgrading and had to deal with increasingly volatile and fragmented markets during the 1950s and 1960s. Responses to this uncertain economic situation have been of a different kind: from vertical disintegration to a widespread reliance on contingent staff, from the decreasing size of studios to their outright abandonment, and from product differentiation to the spread of specialized independent companies.

Scholars have observed that these organizational strategies are aimed not only at fostering specialization but also at externalizing and socializing risks and losses. The rise of industrial districts and the disintegration of Fordist industrial complexes are thus complementary processes highlighting the convergence of both large and small firms toward increasingly networked organizational structures. From this point of view, districts being dominated by locally owned small-sized firms can be distinguished from industrial clusters having a more hierarchical organization. The German region of Baden Wu¨rttemberg, for example, shares many features with the Third Italy, including the role of regional socioeconomic history, local culture, intermediary institutions, and a widespread attitude toward interfirm cooperation. Being specialized in the production of machine tools and automotive components, and similarly to Japanese industrial districts, the innovation process is to a larger extent internalized in leading large companies that are keen to preserve their technological know-how and have a key role in coordinating the production process. The shift toward flexible modes of production has been investigated and documented also within old industrialized

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regions in the context of decentralizing strategies pursued by large companies. But the majority of flexible production systems has been highlighted, as said in the introduction to this article, mostly with reference either to regions whose local development trajectory has taken shape over the long run, such as those of the Third Italy, or to ‘new industrial spaces’, such as those of the American Sun Belt, which have developed in more recent times. The so-called Californian School of external economies interpreted the rise of flexible production strategies as a response to the growing uncertainty of contemporary markets. The increasing division of labor between autonomous and at the same time interdependent firms has been understood as an attempt at maximizing the benefits of specialization and reducing the risks of technological lock-in. Disintegration of production and the intensification of interfirm linkages raise transaction costs due to the need for more frequent, less predictable, and more complex interactions. Spatial agglomeration is an optimal solution for keeping transaction costs low, allowing a more direct relationship between buyers and suppliers, the adoption of just-intime supply systems, mutual trust, and a host of shared interests. Other contributions in this field have focused on the relationship between agglomeration and innovation, drawing inspiration from evolutionary and neo-Schumpeterian economic theory and trying to go beyond the abstract idea of an industrial atmosphere as something intangible. In doing so, the analytical focus has shifted from the complex network of interdependencies that keep industrial districts together to the role of these synergies in sustaining the evolution and regeneration of the whole regional innovation system. From this point of view, the economic process has been viewed as aimed at producing knowledge, rather than products or simply technology, and incremental innovation has been interpreted as an interactive learning process. In a world where codified knowledge can be easily transmitted across long distances, noncodified or tacit knowledge becomes increasingly valuable, being difficult to be (re)produced and impossible to be imitated. The notion of tacit knowledge was first introduced by Michael Polanyi to refer to aspects of technological know-how which cannot be easily expressed in formal statements or communicated over long distances. Its transmission is based on interpersonal relationships, contextual experience, learning by doing or by seeing, and face-to-face contacts. Information exchanges, as well as market exchanges and the coordination of production, demand physical proximity as they require frequent face-to-face interaction, rapid feedback, the transmission of noncodified information, and multidimensional and performative communication.

The neo-Marshallian conceptualization of external economies flowing through vertical relations with subcontractors along the value chain is complemented with the idea of horizontal relationships taking shape between firms and a wide range of actors. Empirical studies have demonstrated that the role of direct exchanges has been largely overestimated and that input–output relations are not sufficiently dense to account for the concentration of firms in the majority of industrial districts and for their performance. Especially in innovative clusters, the adoption of the industrial district model is not due to the need to reduce transaction costs related to market exchanges, but is due to nonmarket exchanges and a variety of ‘untraded interdependencies’: firms need to locate in mutual proximity in order to participate in a buzz of communication and interaction that fosters innovation and technological experimentation. This could explain not only the rise of industrial districts but also the agglomeration of high-tech industries, like in Silicon Valley, and even the concentration of financial, advertising, law, and other advanced producer services in global cities such as New York or London. From this perspective, Marshallian industrial districts came to be regarded as a specific manifestation of a more general tendency toward spatial clustering and interfirm cooperation. A controversy has arisen about whether hyperspecialized industrial regions are able to provide such a relational and communicative buzz in an efficient way when compared to more diversified and socially dense urban environments. The New York garment district has been presented as a demonstration of the importance of both sources of externalities. The concentration of apparel manufacturers and their contractors in midtown Manhattan, in proximity with a wide range of fashionrelated businesses such as retailers and specialized services, design schools, or fashion magazines, has proven to be a crucial source of competitiveness despite the high cost of location that firms have to afford. Similarly, innovative clusters like Silicon Valley are located in the outskirts of metropolitan regions in search of a balance between the benefits of industrial specialization, defined as Marshallian externalities, and the so-called Jacobs’ externalities (from the work of urbanist Jane Jacobs) associated with the economic and social variety of large cities. Another influential contribution to the generalization of the idea of the industrial district has come from Michael Porter and his theory of clusters. Clusters differ qualitatively from industrial districts, even though the two terms are frequently confused and used interchangeably. Business clusters generally include more varied forms of geographic concentrations of firms compared to those conventionally highlighted under the banner of industrial districts theory. Clusters literature considers, for instance, both hierarchical and nonhierarchical structures in the

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Table 1

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A typology of industrial districts and related local production systems

Type

Firm size

Specialization

Governance

Features

Regional examples

(Neo)Marshallian industrial districts The ‘Emilian model’

Small

Craft production, design-intensive sectors Labor-intensive industries

Non-hierarchical

Industrial atmosphere

Prato, Santa Croce sull’Arno

Semi-hierarchical

Modena, Sassuolo

Flexible production systems

Mixed

Manufacturing, technological innovation

Semi-hierarchical

Learning regions

Small and medium

High-tech

Mixed

Business clusters

Mixed

A wide range of manufacturers and services providers

Semi-hierarchical

Institutional thickness, embeddedness Spatial division of labor, coordination economies Knowledge exchanges, face-to-face contacts Policy-led development, intersectoral linkages

Small and medium

governance of contractual interfirm relations, while industrial districts theorists usually privilege the nonhierarchical structures developed by locally owned smallsized firms (Table 1). Moreover, cluster scholarship investigates a set of economic agents which is wider than the one considered in industrial districts studies: for instance, a cluster can be formed by service providers, while industrial districts are customarily indentified with reference to the manufacturing sector. Despite its elusiveness, the theory of clusters has the merit of providing a more simplified and generalized account of the importance of proximity and specialization for industrial competitiveness. From this point of view, dealing with spatial clustering has proven to be a more viable analytical task as compared to the conceptual vagueness and lack of theoretical rigor frequently characterizing the work of geographers and economic sociologists dealing with industrial districts. Consequently, the notion of the cluster has entered economic analysis far more readily than the concept of industrial districts, contributing to a geographic turn in economic theory and to a renewed attempt at integrating spatial agglomeration into formalized economic models. The theorization of clusters and industrial districts has contributed, moreover, to the updating of the lexicon of local economic development policies. Scholars usually have approached industrial districts not only as viable analytical concepts but also as success stories and as policy tools. These sociospatial entities exemplified the paradoxical image of an increasingly globalized world where competitive advantages increasingly lie in localized knowledge spillovers and relationships. This regioncentered representation of the world economy is in stark contrast to previous functionalist understanding of the center–periphery relationship and has invited scholars and policymakers to embrace a distinctly endogenous

Hollywood, Seattle, BadenWu¨rttemberg, Japan Silicon Valley, Cambridge

California, Massachusetts, Singapore

approach to industrial upgrading. Industrial policies, in Europe and elsewhere, have been committed to the enhancing of existing industrial districts (in Italy, for example, with the Law 317/1991) and have more generally emphasized the importance of cooperation, endogenous development, and regional uniqueness. The rediscovery of the region as a strategic unit of coordination and governance has inspired political studies investigating rising forms of new localism and new regionalism. The industrial district model, originally interpreted as an alternative pathway for the organization of advanced economies, has been exported to the developing world and to the peripheral regions of industrialized countries, such as the Italian Mezzogiorno. This is no surprise, as Marshallian industrial districts are industries mostly located in areas like the Third Italy, which have never undergone a process of Fordist industrialization. The formation of industrial districts is rather the result of the upgrading of local agglomerations of small-sized craft producers, which are widespread in the Global South. A well-known example is that of the Sinos Valley district, in the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, with more than 1500 firms involved in shoes production. Unlike Marshallian industrial districts, the cluster has developed as a supplier of the large US companies and many local firms have grown in size and have integrated vertically and horizontally. The co-presence of small and large firms, of flexible specialization and Fordist organizational patterns, of localized ties and external linkages has indeed turned out to be a common feature in regions which were customarily regarded as exemplary cases of industrial districts incubators. The two Mexican footwear districts of Guadalajara (women’s shoes) and Leo´n (men’s shoes) have a similarly dualistic industrial organization, with some firms operating in quasi-hierarchical chains dominated by the US-based buyers and a number of smaller

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firms producing for the domestic market on a more equal and cooperative basis. Other examples of industrial districts have been found in India, Thailand, Kenya, Zimbabwe, and in many other geographic contexts, including the villages and the township communities of rural China. These countries are thought to hold a comparative advantage in specializing in labor-intensive industries which do not require the employment of advanced technologies. Focusing on the endogenous evolution of locally owned small firms, the industrial districts model has offered a regionally embedded pathway to industrialization which diverts from conventional statedriven development strategies.

Conclusion The traveling of the theory of industrial districts through different geographic contexts and theoretical perspectives has contributed to the reassertion of the importance of space and place in economic analysis and to improve conventional understanding of regional development processes and policies. This not only has enriched the original conceptual model, but has also attracted criticism for a tendency to excessive generalization and empiricism at the same time. Some authors have contended that the generalization of the original model has been mostly instrumental to its translation into a tool of regional and industrial policy, as has happened in other lines of new-regionalist enquiry. The institutionalist rereading of the industrial districts literature has been criticized for its conceptual fuzziness. This literature – it has been argued – provides a sophisticated understanding of the complex links that tie economic processes to specific places, but is unable to explain why this has happened there rather than somewhere else. The balance between competition and cooperation, local and translocal interdependencies, and competitive success and economic decline is inherently precarious, and its repositioning is continuously changing and transforming places. The spatial clustering of firms is likely to configure itself as a transitional stage in a trajectory of organizational change. The standardization of production and an increasing price competition, over the medium run, could favor the integration of production and delocalization as attempts at reducing costs and enlarging the scale of production, at the expenses of quality and product differentiation, as occurred in both the Third Italy and Silicon Valley during the 1990s. Being specialized in labor-intensive products, (neo-) Marshallian industrial districts are particularly exposed to competition from developing countries with lower wage rates. Scholars have long wondered whether industrial districts would survive the increasingly powerful forces of

globalization. In the Third Italy, increasingly competitive pressures have led to groundbreaking restructuring processes. Small-sized firms have fled high-quality niche markets, trying to grow in size, through mergers and acquisitions. Only a small number of leading medium-sized firms have been able to transform themselves into global brands. In many cases, these firms have delocalized the production process in newly industrializing countries and have retained the service functions such as design, marketing, and retailing. Long-distance links with production branches and suppliers located in Eastern Europe (particularly in Romania) and in East Asian countries, in many cases, have entirely replaced local interdependencies or shorter-distance networks (with producers located in the South of Italy, for example). The small size of firms, the informality of their mutual relationships, and overspecialization, which were once supposed to be strategic assets, have proven to be obstacles put in the way of the necessary internationalization of industrial districts. The institutional foundations of districts, on the other hand, have proven to be difficult to be reproduced over time, being constantly challenged by firms’ individualist agency, opportunism, and generational turnover. Case studies conducted in ‘paradigmatic regions’ such as Tuscany or Baden Wu¨rttemberg have shown how place-based ties are likely to engender forms of institutional lock-in: routines and conventions which hinder the district’s regeneration process. Scholars have rarely succeeded in providing an evolutionary explanation of how industrial districts rise and fall within the contexts of increasingly multiscalar socioeconomic formations. Interscalar production relationships lack systematic investigation and have been weakly theorized. The emphasis which has been placed on geographically localized ties overlooks the role played by external relations of coordination linking districts to the global economy. Clusters serve as nodes of dense interfirm relationships which nurture innovations within the global networks of production. These networks are in many cases dominated by large multinational corporations needing at the same time to be embedded in specific places and to be stretched across larger geographic space. The representation of a locally bounded network of cooperative relations dealing with global markets has thus been amended with the analysis of a wide range of transcalar linkages connecting local production systems to global commodity chains through networks of hierarchical and uneven relationships. While the emphasis placed on self-contained and locally bounded interdependencies allowed early proponents of industrial districts theory to leave aside conventional sector-centered views of the industrial process, embracing instead a place-based perspective, more recent insights have reasserted the importance of network representations, approaching spatial clustering

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as only one among many relational proximities enabling production to be coordinated and the global economy to function. Local production systems are interpreted as entities being directly or indirectly connected to each other across differing geographic scales and persistently rooted in specific places and locales, which are themselves embedded in wider geographic networks. Skepticism toward rigid scalar representations of the spatialities of globalization have opened the way for the embracing of a so-called ‘flat ontology’: connectivity between places and firms is not understood merely in terms of geographic co-location, but rather in a topological fashion. Spatial clustering coexists with longdistance networking: both local buzz and global networks are important for coordinating production and creating knowledge, for industrial upgrading and adaptation. From the perspective of relational economic geography, this means trying to broaden the reach of production networks and to open up ‘black boxes’, such as the firm, the district, and the region, in order to understand how networks function and develop connections between actors and structures through power relations. See also: Agglomeration; Embeddedness; Fordism, PostFordism and Flexible Specialization; Global Commodity Chains; Global Production Networks; Institutionalism/ Institutional Geographies; Learning Regions; Local Development; Local Economic Development, Politics of; Local Economic Development; Locality Debates; New Regionalism; Regional Development and Noneconomic Factors; Regional Development, Endogenous; Regional Innovation Systems; Relational Economic Geography; Social Capital; Spatial Clustering, Detection and Analysis of; Spatial Division of Labor.

Further Reading Amin, A. (1999). The Emilian model: Institutional challenges. European Planning Studies 7(4), 389--405. Amin, A. and Thrift, N. (1992). Neo-Marshallian nodes in global networks. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 16, 571--587.

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Asheim, B. T. (2000). Industrial districts: The contributions of Marshall and beyond. In Clark, G. L., Feldman, M. A. & Gertler, M. S. (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Economic Geography, pp 413--431. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bagnasco, A. (1977). Tre Italie. La problematica territoriale dello sviluppo italiano. Bologna: Il Mulino. Becattini, G. (ed.) (1975). Lo sviluppo economico della Toscana. Florence: IRPET. Becattini, G. (ed.) (1987). Mercato e forze locali: Il distretto industriale. Bologna: Il Mulino. Becattini, G., Bellandi, M., Dei Ottati, G. and Sforzi, F. (2003). From Industrial Districts to Local Development. An Itinerary of Research. Cheltenam: Elgar. Brusco, S. (1982). The Emilian model: Productive decentralisation and social integration. Cambridge Journal of Economics 6, 167--184. Cooke, P. and Morgan, K. (1998). The Associational Economy. Firms, Regions, and Innovation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hadjimichalis, C. (2006). The end of Third Italy as we knew it? Antipode 37, 82--106. Harrison, B. (1992). Industrial districts: Old wine in new bottles? Regional Studies 26(5), 469--483. Markusen, A. (1996). Sticky places in slippery space: A typology of industrial districts. Economic Geography 72, 293--313. Markusen, A. (1999). Fuzzy concepts, scanty evidence, policy distance: The case for rigour and policy relevance in critical regional studies. Regional Studies 37, 701--717. Martin, R. and Sunley, P. (2003). Deconstructing clusters: Chaotic concept or policy panacea? Journal of Economic Geography 3, 5--35. Park, S. O. and Markusen, A. (1995). Generalizing new industrial districts: A theoretical agenda and an application from a nonWestern economy. Environment and Planning A 27, 81--104. Piore, M. J. and Sabel, C. F. (1984). The Second Industrial Divide: Possibilities for Prosperity. New York: Basic Books. Porter, M. (1998). Clusters and the new economics of competition. Harvard Business Review 76, 77--90. Scott, A. J. (1988). New Industrial Spaces: Flexible Production Organization and Regional Development in North America and Western Europe. London: Pion. Sforzi, F. (1990). The quantitative importance of Marshallian industrial districts in the Italian economy. In Pyke, F., Becattini, G. & Sengenberger, W. (eds.) Industrial Districts and Inter-Firm CoOperation in Italy, pp 75--107. Geneva: International Institute for Labour Studies. Storper, M. (1997). The Regional World. Territorial Development in a Global Economy. New York: Guilford Press. Tinacci Mossello, M. (1982). Economia e geografia. Dall’analisi delle economie di agglomerazione alla teoria dello sviluppo regionale. Rivista Geografica Italiana 90, 304--331. Trigilia, C. (1986). Grandi Partiti e Piccole Imprese: Comunisti e Democristiani Nelle Regioni a Economia Diffusa. Bologna: Il Mulino.