Capitalism and the temporalities of industrial location theory: Liberalism to Fordism

Industrial location theory (ILT) attempted to grasp transformations in capitalist space, particularly the growth, transformation, and decline of industrial urbanization. ILT synthesized geography, economics, social ecology, and anthropology to explain industry and settlement location. While it focused on space, distance, place, and location, historically specific forms of temporality shaped ILT. The form and content of ILT and their changes reveal changes in capitalist space and settlement driven by capitalist temporal dynamics. This critical history analyzes the transition from liberal to Fordist capitalism in ILT, and analyzes ILT as it wrestles with related transformations in capitalist space. As contemporary political leaders abandon neoliberalism for neo-Fordist national industrial policy, this period is worthy of special attention.