Shifting Balances in U.S. Metropolitan and Nonmetropolitan Area Growth

The widely advertised growth reversal between metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas in the 1970s is not well understood. In this paper, area population and industrial growth patterns are reviewed. These show that the perceived growth reversal was not uniform among regions and that there are underlying industrial continuities. Tests of hypotheses associated with polarization/polar reversal theory fail to support the theories. The wage rate as the equilibrating mechanism in area growth is shown to be only weakly supportive of neoclassical theory. Where does all this leave industrial location theory? A suggestion is made toward reconstruction of the neoclassical model.