The Geographies of Producer Services

Abstract

Scholarly interest in service industries, in general, and especially in producer services is a relatively recent phenomenon. The "modern" era of research on services dates only from the early to mid-1980s; it is only since this time that geographers, regional economists, regional scientists, and others have begun to analyze in a concerted and systematic way questions concerning the economic role and the locational dynamics of the full range of service activities, including producer services. The birth of the modern era was a long and difficult process for several reasons. On the one hand, the service researchers that pioneered the modern era had to contend with the prevailing paradigm-originally established in economics by Adam Smith in the late 18th century, reinforced by Karl Marx in the 19th century, and consolidated by Alfred Fisher and Colin Clark in the first half of the 20th century-that viewed all services as nonproductive activities-that is, as that which remained when productive (primary sector and manufacturing) activities had been accounted for. On the other hand, in spite of theoretical-quantitative "revolutions" within geography and regional economics early in the second half of the 20th century (which, in part, led to the creation of the interdisciplinary field of regional science), research on services was conceptually stagnant for several decades, being largely confined to the limited framework of central place studies. In this context, an almost total emphasis was placed on consumer services, to the exclusion of what now appears to be the most intellectually interesting and economically significant element of the service constellation: producer services.In order to place the present progress report in an appropriate historical and intellectual context, I will briefly review the major characteristics and achievements of the first 10 or 15 years of the modern era of service industry research. Before doing so, however, the notion of producer services requires some comment.

New Trends of Suburbanization in Beijing since 1990: From Government-led to Market-oriented

“…G. Champion, 2001), and the geographies of producer services (Coffey, 2000). Stanback (1991: 120) developed the concept of 'new suburbanization' to suggest the latest stage of suburbanization: "major new centres of business consumer and social services have developed, giving rise to agglomeration economies and posing new challenges to the social and economic structure of the central city."…”

Distribución espacial del sector servicios en México, 1999-2009. Especialización y diversificación desde una perspectiva macrogeográfica

“…Éste ha sido también el enfoque dominante en el análisis de sus patrones espaciales (véase, entre otros, Coffey, 2000;Delgado & García-Velasco, 2013;Hanssens, Derudder & Witlox, 2013;Taylor, Derudder, Hoyler & Ni, 2013). Al respecto, consideramos que el análisis de la localización de los servicios debe complementarse con la identificación del patrón de localización del resto del sector, que algunos consideran de menor importancia.…”

Relationship between producer services developing level and urban hierarchy—A case study of Zhujiang River Delta

“…According to the overseas studies, the producer services are mainly concentrated in the metropolis, especially in the developed and central big cities (Coffey, 2000). As the capital city of Guangdong Province, which is one of the most developed province in China, Guangzhou possesses the producer services with obvious function of basic economic activity, which means the industries have a good basic for exportation.…”