The international division of labour and local economic strategies: thoughts from London and Managua

Abstract

It is probably now an accepted tenet of local economic analyses in the First World that they must be set within a wider, and specifically international, context. In major urban areas such analyses are synonymous with analyses of local decline. After a period in which attempts were made to confine explanation of such decline to the characteristics of the id place itself - bureaucratic planners, high rates, high land values, low environmental standards, high concentrations of 'the unemployable' - the necessity of placing such 'factors' within a broader explanatory Wong T framework seems now to be widely recognised. The implication is that some element of causality is to be found at that level, that local areas are caught up in wider processes of, possibly international, restructuring.It is probably now an accepted tenet of local economic analyses in the First World that they must be set within a wider, and specifically international, context. In major urban areas such analyses are synonymous with analyses of local decline. After a period in which attempts were made to confine explanation of such decline to the characteristics of the id place itself - bureaucratic planners, high rates, high land values, low environmental standards, high concentrations of 'the unemployable' - the necessity of placing such 'factors' within a broader explanatory Wong T framework seems now to be widely recognised. The implication is that some element of causality is to be found at that level, that local areas are caught up in wider processes of, possibly international, restructuring.If anything, that argument was pursued by those on 'the left' of the political spectrum.na The point was to establish that local, and often seemingly specific, occurrences had systemic causes. The turning point in the UK was possibly the Community Development Projects; set up to work on locally-based initiatives they ended up challenging 'thelur system', by pointing to causes both outside the area and endemic to capitalism. In policy or political terms, the implication was thatal if anything serious was going to be done about urban problems, action was needed at a national and at a more fundamental level.