Urban Systems, Industrial Restructuring, and the Spatial—Temporal Diffusion of Manufacturing Employment

Abstract

This macroanalysis of manufacturing employment density distribution patterns in the United States from 1947 to 1982 supports the hypothesis that the nation's hierarchical system of cities has served to sort geographically manufacturing operations on the basis of the marginal returns that could be derived from different size urban centers. As a consequence of this sorting process, nonproduction workers have become more concentrated in large urban centers whereas production workers have become more concentrated in smaller settlements. With the greater number of large urban centers in the Northeast and East North-Central regions, nonproduction workers have become more concentrated in the Manufacturing Belt and production workers more concentrated in other regions of the country. The process has helped foster the development of a mosaic of geographically bifurcated labor markets among the larger and smaller urban centers throughout the country. The research suggests that the role of the urban hierarchy in the redistribution of manufacturing employment was a historical stage in the geographic expansion of development and that its influence has begun to wane.