Les industries aerospatiales en Amerique du Nord: Entre permanences et recompositions territoriales (French text).

摘要

During the 1990's the US aerospace industry (aeronautics and space) underwent a major restructuring process in order to adjust to new market conditions. Manufacturers faced an unprecedented fall in military budgets and strong international competition from foreign civil aircraft producers, leading to increased inter-company transactions. This research has two objectives: on the one hand, to understand the location patterns in this sector, and on the other hand to apprehend the way in which these profound changes affected the places in which production occurs. The analysis, based upon employment data drawn from Statistics Canada censuses and from the US County Business Patterns, has enabled an exhaustive identification of all production sites. Location changes, growth and decline have been tracked over a 20 year period. Perhaps the principal result is the strong inertia observed: despite periods of expansion and periods of crisis, the original spatial patterns remain. This is evidence of the limited extent to which certain types of knowledge diffuse. Notwithstanding this general conclusion, it is noted that in more recent years there has been a shift in the sector's centre of gravity towards places specialized in the construction of civil aircraft. The ability of areas specialized in military production to adapt to the new circumstances is quite variable, as witnessed by the uneven growth of other high-technology sectors in these places.