From the industrial district to the districtualisation of production activity: some considerations

Abstract

The industrial district may be logically decomposed in several ways, but the first and fundamental decomposition is to be the one between the productive apparatus and the human community in which it is, so to speak, “embedded”. It is usually said, in fact, that in the industrial district the first and the second are reciprocally interpenetrated, which means that there is, between the two, a continuous, intimate correspondence as they fulfil their roles. What this particular conceptualisation suggests is the idea of a relationship between a block of economic-productive relations, spatially situated in a circumscribed territory, and another block of socio-cultural relations situated in the same territory. A relationship that is on average more intense, on the long term, than the one existing between similar blocks at higher levels (for example, at national or world level). It might also be said that the study of the district typically consists of an in-depth exploration, at local level, of the many interactive connections of that pair: productive apparatus and community.