GEOG101: World Regional Geography

Economists argue that North America is in a period of deindustrialization due to the decline of manufacturing (the secondary sector). Using the British-Australian economist Colin Grant Clark's economic model (see Figure 4.9), this begins when the number of people employed in the primary sector equals the number working in the tertiary sector.

Here is how Clark defines these economic sectors.

• The primary economic sector includes growing and extracting activities (of raw materials), such as agriculture, forestry, fishing, and mining.
• The secondary economic sector includes activities related to processing raw materials through manufacturing.
• The tertiary economic sector includes activities that produce services rather than physical products. Healthcare, real estate, hospitality, and retail are examples of tertiary activities.
• The quaternary economic sector includes intellectual or knowledge-based activities such as information technology and research and development.
  

Manufacturing does not play the role it once did in North America. However, the cities where manufacturing occurred now attract the tertiary and quaternary sectors. For example, the corridors of the old manufacturing core (Boston-New York City-Philadelphia, Pittsburgh-Detroit-Chicago, and Montreal-Toronto) are now home to healthcare, real estate, and information technology companies.

The San Francisco-Los Angeles and Vancouver-Seattle-Portland corridors in western North America also attract these tertiary and quaternary sectors. While these economic activities are not tied to natural resources, many continue to center their activities in these historic manufacturing cores. Those that have chosen to disperse are often located near space-age development sites, such as Houston, Texas, and Cape Canaveral, Florida. Others have positioned themselves near research universities or along major transportation corridors.