Micro-geographies of the evolution of urban economic clusters. The evolution of the trafalgar garment district, 1900-2018

Resumen

The small economic changes that can be observed in any neighborhood of any city are a consequence of complex factors not only at an urban scale, but also at a regional, national and international scale. The growing economic globalization means that cities configure a set of economic mechanisms to compete with other cities at a global scale. This process has a direct imprint in the economic structure of intra-urban economic spaces. The thesis aims to contribute to answering the factors that affect the evolution of mature economic spaces in European cities. The case study is the Trafalgar Garment District (TGD), in Barcelona. At the beginning of the 20th century, the TGD was configured as a garment cluster. Throughout the century, the district was losing its nature as a cluster to specialize in the clothing wholesaling. Currently, the economic structure of the TGD is based on activities related to knowledge, creativity and tourism and new micro-economic spaces such as co-workings. Therefore, the present TGD is a new industrial cluster (NIC) The main hypothesis is that the configuration and evolution of the TGD as both an earlier garment cluster and an NIC responds to multi-scalar and interrelated economic processes. However, the urban scale has a strong explanatory role because of the historical contingencies of Barcelona and the urban specificities of the TGD. The validation of this hypothesis has been carried out through a methodology based on statistical and qualitative methods on the one hand and on the use of a set of primary and secondary source, on the other hand. The research is framed within a theoretical framework that includes several concepts such as agglomeration economies, cluster, lock-in and new industrial clusters (NICs). The interrelation of these concepts aids to analyze in a polyhedral way the configuration and evolution of the TGD. The thesis concludes that the configuration and evolution of the TGD is the result of multi-scalar economic processes. However, these cannot be understood without taking in account the Barcelona’s economic processes and the own economic, historical and economic characteristics of the TGD.