Industrial restructuring

Industrial restructuring refers to structural changes of territorial economies from the manufacturing to services sector at a range of spatial scales involving national, regional or city levels. Along with the increasing global shifts of industrial activities, industrial restructuring has evolved over time and across space from North America and Western Europe in the 1960s to Japan and, later on, to the first generation of newly industrializing economies (NIEs) in Asia in the 1970s and to China since 2000. The consequences of industrial restructuring cover demographic and employment change, deindustrialization, development of producer services, and spatial shifts of urban and regional economies. Notably, in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis and economic recession, industrial restructuring has demonstrated some new tendencies, such as an upsurge of manufacturing employment through nearshoring of manufacturing to home markets in the Western advanced economies, for example, the United States.