Looking through a Window of Locational Opportunity: Long-term Spatial Analysis of Techno-industrial in Great Britain and Belgium.

There is a growing awareness among economic geographers that the long-term industrial path of regions within major industrial countries has been subject to fundamental changes as a result of major techno-industrial transformations throughout out the industrial epoch. The first part of this study considers when and where these major techno-industrial upheavals, defined as new clusters of innovative industries, arose in Great Britain and Belgium, both leading industrial countries since the first Industrial Revolution. In order to interpret the long-term ability of regions to generate or attract these clusters, the second part of the book is devoted to the development of a dynamic theoretical concept - a window of locational opportunity - which emerged from a critical exploration of traditional spatial models. The main question is to what extent the appearance of new clusters in Great Britain and Belgium during the industrial period should be regarded as a revolutionary or an evolutionary process of change, depending on whether or not these clusters emerged independently of spatial conditions accumulated in the past.