The paper documents, for the first time at the European Community scale, a relative shift of manufacturing industry from highly urbanised to rural regions during the 1970s. This shift is evident in terms of GDP, industrial output and manufacturing employment, and has occurred despite an urban...

The paper presents and discusses new evidence on the nature and causes of the urban-rural shift of business activity and employment in England, derived from a matched pairs survey of over 1000 manufacturing and service businesses in remote rural, accessible rural and urban settlements. It...