Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Uneven development refers to the inequitable spatial distribution of wealth and/or economic growth within a city, a metropolitan area, a nation-state, or globally. The term also represents the simultaneous occurrence of economic and wealth expansion in one area accompanied by disinvestment and/or expanding poverty in another area. Urban scholars frequently have measured uneven development statistically, through an examination of the geographic distribution of income and employment within or among metropolitan regions, or by an analysis of changes in these and other variables among municipalities, over time. For example, Hill (1974) utilized zero-order correlations to measure economic class and racial segregation by place within 127 American Metropolitan Statistical Areas. Jacobs (2003) compared the degree of place stratification in the Detroit and Nagoya Auto Regions by calculating the standard deviation divided by mean change in per capita income, population, and private employment in the two regions between 1969 and 2000 (i.e., the coefficient of variation) (see Jacobs 2005 ). A prime case of interregional uneven development within a nation-state was the large-scale shift of industrial investment from the American Rustbelt (Northeastern and North Central US) to the American Sunbelt (Southeastern and Western US) that occurred during the 1970s and 1980s. A clear illustration ... log in or subscribe to read full text