THE URBAN-RURAL CYCLE IN THE THATCHER GROWTH YEARS

In the context of international speculation both over the geography of manufacturing change and over the continuation in the 1980s of the urban-rural shift of population and employment, the paper examines employment change in Great Britain. This is a comprehensive analysis for the years 1981 to 1989 by ten types of area, from 'Inner London' to 'Remoter, Mainly Rural'. The findings reflect government encouragement of a gradually-evident services-led southern 'boom'. They reveal the re-emergence of the urban-rural shift of employment on a cyclical basis, during which pressures of growth in the south contributed by the end of the period to a progressive displacement of manufacturing expansion to greenfield areas of the north, prior to the impact of a further recession. The location of this growth was influenced by a miscellany of surviving spatial policies. Despite previous criticisms of the method, the literature demonstrates some recent reconciliation with shift-share analysis among writers of the political economy school. Shift-share is used in this analysis principally to provide a revised framework of priorities for a research agenda in process and explanation.