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Industrial district (ID) is a place where workers and firms, specialised in a main industry and auxiliary industries, live and work. The concept was initially used byAlfred Marshall to describe some aspects of the industrial organisation of nations. At the end of the 1990s the industrial districts in developed or developing countries had gained a recognised attention in international debates onindustrialisation and policies of regional development.[1]
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The term was used the first time byAlfred Marshall inThe Principles of Economics (1890, 1922)[2] and in hisIndustry and Trade Marshall talks of a...."thickly peopled industrial district".[3]
The term was also used in political struggle. The 1917 handbook of theIndustrial Workers of the World states:-
The term also appears in English literature. For instance, in a short story of 1920 byD. H. Lawrence,You Touched Me (aka 'Hadrian'):-
The strong specialisation of the workers and an appropriate support of public goods and institutions are supported by an "Industrial Atmosphere" related to a locally developingdivision of labour. Competences and knowledge are shared in informal way with processes of learning by doing and learning by using, and this promotes innovation over time.[4] Local firms, families and civic organisations are connected by way of both market mechanisms and non-market mechanisms, like trust within bilateral or team exchanges, and collective action supporting the availability of local industrial, social and environmental infrastructure. Also, the notion that firms located in geographical proximity benefit from agglomeration effects in having a common or collective infrastructure is frequently mentioned as one of the main bases in the industrial district literature.[5]
Within the study ofeconomics, the term has evolved.Giacomo Becattini rediscovered the concept to describe the Italian industrial configuration of the middle of the 20th century. Since the 1980s, the dynamic industrial development in NEC (North, East and Centre) ofItaly, where after theSecond World War geographical concentration of specialisedsmall and medium-sized enterprises (SME) raised up, led to an increasing attention to the Marshall' seminal works. A growing literature with an accompanying cloud of definitions of what is meant as an industrial district characterised the international dabate, e.g.Cluster. Industrial districts in Italy have a coherent location and a narrow specialisation profile, e.g.Prato inwoollen fabric,Sassuolo inceramic tiles orBrenta in ladies'footwear.
The success of SME-based Italian districts in the last century and the alternate fortunes of the current ones led to investigate more thoroughly some related aspects.[6] The general characteristics of the ID are consistent with gradual change supported by processes of innovation from below, or decentralized industrial creativity. However, theglobalisation processes asked non-gradual changes to the historical IDs and technical and organisational difficulties could hit them.
In theIndustry 4.0 era, the specialised capabilities of these areas seem to have the possibility to encourage the emergence of the New Artisans, Maker in the context of adapted models like the "ID mark 3.0".[7]
