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The Changing Balance of the Northern and Southern Regions of the United States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

Robert Estall
Robert Estall
Affiliation:
Robert Estall is Reader in the Economic Geography of North America at the London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE.
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Extract

It is now clear that the 1970s were pivotal years for the balance between major regions of the United States. Recent developments in patterns of population movement and economic growth have been altering historically-established spatial relationships and hierarchies and contributing to a transformation in the status of American regions that, in one assessment, “has quite simply shifted the balance of power in America away from the Northeast and toward the Southern Rim.” This paper examines that shift insofar as it affects “North” and “South.” Recent events have served to sharpen the rivalry and deepen the suspicions that have long existed between these regions. Within both there has been an increase of regional consciousness and a growing awareness of common problems and needs which have been reflected politically in the formation of new coalitions to identify and protect regional interests. More popularly, there has been open discussion of the economic struggle as a “second war between the states.”

It is important at the outset to emphasize that there has been no sudden reversal in the 1970s of pre-existing patterns and trends.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 14 , Issue 3 , December 1980 , pp. 365 - 386
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1980

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References

1 Sale, Kirkpatrick, Power Shift: The Rise of the Southern Rim and Its Challenge to the Eastern Establishment (New York: Random House, 1979), p. 6Google Scholar.

2 The “North” is here defined as including the states of the New England, Middle Atlantic and East North Central census divisions. The “South” includes the South Atlantic, East South Central and West South Central divisions. The “North East” embraces the New England and the Middle Atlantic divisions.

3 The phrase began to be used in the 1960s, but became more popular in the media following a Special Report in the journal Business Week, 17th May 1976, entitled “The Second War Between the States: A Bitter Struggle for Jobs, Capital and People.”

4 Rostow, W. W., in Perry, D. C. and Watkins, A. J. (eds.), The Rise of the Sunbelt Cities, in Urban Affairs Annual Reviews, 14 (1977), 100Google Scholar.

5 Ullman, E. L., “Regional Development and the Geography of Concentration,” Papers and Proceedings of the Regional Science Association, 4 (1958), 179–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Ibid. The quotes that follow are all selected from this article.

7 Perloff, H. S., Dunn, E. S., Lampard, E. E. and Muth, R. F., Regions, Resources and Economic Growth (Lincoln: Univ. Nebraska Press, 1960), P. 50Google Scholar.

8 The term “sunbelt” is not normally restricted to the states of the South as defined here, but extends to the states of the western south, including New Mexico, Arizona, California from San Francisco to the south and the southern tip of Nevada.

9 A “heating degree day” is the unit used for estimating fuel consumption. It is simply the difference between the average temperature for the day and 65 °F when the average temperature is below 65° F. Each degree of difference is a “degree day.”

10 Norton, R. D. and Rees, J., “The Product Cycle and the Spatial Decentralisation of American Manufacturing,” Regional Studies, 13, No. 2 (1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 W. W. Rostow, “Regional Change in the Fifth Kondratieff Upswing,” in Perry and Watkins, pp. 83–103.

12 “Investing in the US: Let's Go Where the Unions Aren't,” The Economist, 4 06 1977, pp. 101–02Google Scholar.

13 Jusenius, C. L. and Ledebur, L. C., Documenting the “Decline” of the North, U.S. Dept. of Commerce, 06 1978Google Scholar.

14 Business Week, 30 01 1978, p. 68Google Scholar.

15 The southern states, being generally less industrialized than the North, and with a large, dispersed, rural population have tended to suffer more from under-employment.

16 Business Week, 30 01 1978, 66–68Google Scholar.

17 For a general assessment see Estall, R. C., “Regional Planning in the United States: An Evaluation of Experience under the 1965 Economic Development Act,” Town Planning Review (10 1977), pp. 341–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 A summary of the Conference Proceedings and Workshop Reports is available as The White House Conference on Balanced National Growth and Economic Development: Final Report, 1–2, Washington, 07 1978Google Scholar.

19 Estall, pp. 353–60.

20 Texas and California remain largely outside of these groupings at the present time, as do parts of the Appalachian Piedmont and the southern portions of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota.

21 Myrdal, G., Economic Theory and Underdeveloped Regions (London: Duckworth, 1957), esp. Chaps. 2–5Google Scholar; Hirschman, A. O., The Strategy of Economic Development (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1958), esp. Chap. 10Google Scholar.

22 Kirkpatrick Sale, p. 14.