The Thin Edge of Innovation
The Thin Edge of Innovation
Metro Vancouver’s Evolving Economy
Aligned with global trends in post-industrialization, the economy of Metro Vancouver is changing, but along its own trajectory. The focus is shifting away from resource-based activities and entrepreneurial initiatives have sprung up across a remarkable range of industries. And this is all happening at the national and global periphery.
The Thin Edge of Innovation draws on over 100 case studies of signature local businesses and multinational corporations in sectors including aerospace, renewable energy, video games, film, biotechnology, telecommunications, engineered wood, fashion apparel, and craft beer to evaluate the transition. It considers their capacity to foster industrial clusters and cultivate support among local institutions, and to integrate post-industrial Vancouver into the global economy. The contributors give this economic evolution a mixed report card. Changes have been driven largely from the bottom up, and this entrepreneurial foundation has attracted foreign investment, stimulated economic diversification, and offers the potential deliver high-income jobs. But the diversification has been thinly spread, it lacks deep local roots, and it has not attracted dominant anchor companies. Whether Vancouver can sustain a “high-road” innovation economy and its underlying culture to offset a reliance on real estate and tourism remains a question.
This constructive study examines the distinctive opportunities facing Metro Vancouver. Despite challenges, it reveals a region with undoubted potential for sustained, broadly beneficial local development.
This engaging work will appeal not only to researchers and students of geography and urban planning but also to practising planners and policymakers involved in knowledge-based local development. Readers living in Metro Vancouver will connect closely with this investigation of the attempts to transform its economy and social foundation.
Roger Hayter is a professor emeritus of geography at Simon Fraser University. He is the author of Technology and the Canadian Forest-Product Industries: A Policy Perspective, The Dynamics of Industrial Location: The Factory, the Farm, and the Production System, and Flexible Crossroads: The Restructuring of British Columbia’s Forest Economy. Jerry Patchell is an associate professor emeritus of social science, environment and sustainability, and public policy at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He is a co-author, with Roger Hayter, of Economic Geography: And Institutional Approach and author of China’s Greater Bay Area: Agglomeration, External Economies, Governance, and Urbanization. Kevin Rees is an associate professor and head of the Department of Geography at Swansea University.
Planning on the Edge
Vancouver and the Challenges of Reconciliation, Social Justice, and Sustainable Development
Edited by Penny Gurstein and Tom Hutton
