The Geography of RecessionAuthor(s): Alan TownsendSource: Area, Vol. 16, No. 1 (Mar., 1984), p. 81Published by: The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20002015 .

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Annual Conference 81

The geography of recession The conference as a whole gave an increased level of attention to one of its major themes, the geography of recession and decline. This whole-day session was convened jointly by the Indus trial Activity and Area Development Study Group and the Urban Geography Study Group, on the basis, be it noted, of calls for papers. Recent British experience provided here only part of the day's material; Britain was the subject of the first three papers (attracting about 70 members), before the last five widened the focus over longer time periods and at least five other countries (in modules attended by 40/45 members).

New results from the 1981 Census of Population were compared with 1971 by Andy Gillespie and David Owen (CURDS, Newcastle). Examining labour market accounts for the British con urbations, they stressed the component of net outward migration, and the distinctively different performance of London. In a different context, John Salt (UCL) also stressed the role of

migration, in a study of internal labour movement between the establishments of 93 major organis ations, and of the use of the government's Employment Transfer Scheme. In the recession, use of this scheme had fallen off heavily and internal labour markets had been strengthened. Franc Peck (Durham) presented a study computed from reports in the financial press of major job losses, 1976-81, also at the level of named corporations. Here too there was a major change from 1979, an increase in the proportion of closures outside assisted areas both in general and

within individual corporations, although problems were suggested in setting the data in a wider empirical context.

In Western Europe at large David Pinder (Southampton) analysed the high level of closures and contractions in oil refining; while they had not changed the basic geography of the industry, they showed a relative shift to the newer and more peripheral producing countries. Werner Mikus (Heidelberg) produced outline results of a study of closures in four industries in a continuous area of southern Germany, Switzerland and northern Italy, stressing variation in the causes and effects of closures between industries and areas. Elspeth Lochhead (formerly of Strathclyde) tabulated the policy instruments of six European development agencies and concluded that the

Ouest-Atlantique Industrialisation Commission (France) and the Scottish Development Agency had made similar responses to recent recession conditions in giving more support of existing firms.

From the USA Briavel Holcomb (Rutgers) clarified the nature of the urban crisis following the recession of 1975 and the reduction of federal involvement since 1980; in contrast, public private partnerships, with all their pros and cons, had become major tools of urban redevelop ment. In the Anglo-American context it was interesting to note the superficial similarities of the two governments' urban policy measures. On a national scale, Robert Hanham (W. Virginia) stressed the lack of attention to the geography of recession, and proceeded to emphasise, from sensitivity analysis of the four recessions since 1960, that the relation between the performance of subnational and national economies does not remain constant.

This conclusion was no doubt one of the main lessons of the session as a whole, applicable not least to current UK debates, that the geographical scale, time span, dates, measures and methods of analysis of decline can produce widely different results in studying the impact of temporal process on spatial form. This same intellectual diversity produced some of the familiar difficulty for the audience (if not the chairmen) in interrelating the different papers (although all speakers bar one left good time for questions). Perhaps most impressive were the linguistic abilities of our German visitor who delivered his presentation in English while combining sources from three separate countries in three other languages!

Alan Townsend University of Durham

Rapid transit systems The theme of this year's conference was rapid transit systems, an appropriate subject in north east England with the Tyne and Wear metro within easy striking distance.

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