A Comparative Study on the Changing Regional Structures in the Advanced Capitalist Countries

20世纪70年代初，一些日本经济地理学家提出了一种研究区域问题的新方法，即所谓的“区域结构方法”（Chiiki-Kozo-Ron），距今已有25年。这种方法的特点是从资本主义再生产结构的角度对国民经济中的区域和城市系统进行动态分析，并阐明在区域结构变化中起关键作用的大型企业的区位战略。大量实证研究揭示了各工业化国家主导产业的区位动态和区域结构特征。对于这一方法的新发展，区域结构变化的国际比较是一个重要课题。在这个研究项目中，我们已经看到先进资本主义的演变和信息经济的出现导致了整个发达世界的地方和地区的经济地理的重大重组。这种重组改变了许多与工业资本主义相关的区域发展的核心-边缘模式。然而，核心-边缘格局和区域经济差异，如英国的南北分化、德国的东西分化、美国的雪带与阳光带，并没有消失。相反，它们被重新配置和强化了。发达国家的核心区域通常集中在城市工业中心地带，但最近由于服务活动的地理位置，特别是商业服务，以及与全球化、去中心化和集聚相关的新的空间分工的印记而有所改变。

About 25 years have passed since a new approach to regional problems, the so-called "Chiiki-Kozo-Ron" or Regional Structure Approach, was established by some Japanese economic geographers in the early 1970s. This approach is distinguished by its dynamic analysis of regional and urban systems within the national economy from the viewpoint of the capitalist reproduction structure, and by its articulation of locational strategies of large enterprises that play a pivotal role in the changes of regional structures. Numbers of empirical studies have revealed the locational dynamics of the leading industries and the characteristics of the regional structure in each industrialized country. As for the new development of this approach, international comparison on the changes in regional structures is one of the important subjects.In this research project, we have seen that the evolution of advanced capitalism and the emergence of an informational economy have led to a significant reorganization of the economic geography of places and regions throughout the developed world. This reorganization has modified many of the core-periphery patterns of regional development associated with industrial capitalism. Yet core-periphery patterns and regional economic disparities, such as North-South divide in Britain, East-West divide in Germany, and Snowbelt vs Sunbelt in the USA, have by no means disappeared. Rather, they have been reconfigured and intensified. Core regions within developed countries have typically been centered on urban-industrial heartlands, but have recently been modified by the geography of service activities, particularly business services, and by the imprint of the new spatial divisions of labor associated with globalization, decentralization, and agglomeration.