Geographical Economics and Urban Competitiveness: A Critique

to national prosperity and the threat to `developed’ nations posed by cheap labour in developing countries. He has also addressed questions around the clustering and agglomeration of economic activity at the subnational scale, linking competitiveness and trade to development at the regional and urban scales (Krugman, 1991a, 1995). Increasingly, as well, Krugman’ s work has touched on clustering and the localisation of economic activity at the level of the urban agglomeration or city scale. There are clearly also, questions as to the relationship between cities and the clustering of activity at the regional scale. He has addressed these issues from a formal economic perspective deriving models of clustering and agglomeration in highly abstract terms. He has also referred more generally, and in his terms discursively, to processes of urbanisation and the growth of cities and regionsÐ his 1997 book attacking Pop Internationalism concludes with a prose essay on `The localisation of the world economy’ comparing the historic development of Chicago and Los Angeles. As within economics, his ideas have attracted both appreciation but also concern from a geographical perspective (Knox and Agnew, 1994; Martin and Sunley, 1996; Dymski, 1996). Concern has derived in particular from his insistence on formal econSince the late 1980s, Paul Krugman has rapidly established himself as amongst the most prominent of economists, particularly for his work on `new trade theory’ and competitiveness. Samuelson, admittedly in the preface to Krugman’ s 1994 book The Age of Diminished Expectations, refers to him as a the rising star of this century and the nexto . The proli® c and often controversial Krugman has clearly made a major impact within his own discipline. This impact has been aided by the combination of the polemical, accessibleÐ and, he would argue, well foundedÐ manner of his attacks on some of his fellow economists and more particularly on policy advisers (Krugman, 1997), together with his contributions to formal economics. Increasingly, as well, he has attracted interest within economic geography, regional studies and urban studies. In part this is because he has explicitly set out to incorporate geography and space into formal economic models of trade and competitivenessÐ revisiting in the process a range of standard `models’ of economic geography and spatial science. In particular, he has challenged the conventional concept of trade as re ̄ ecting primarily comparative advantage, emphasising instead the role of increasing returns to scale. He has vigorously challenged the popular notion of competitiveness in global markets as the key