Economic Geography

17 On the intersection of policy
and economic geography 
Selective engagement, partial
acceptance, and missed 
opportunities
Amy K. Glasmeier
My chapter considers the role of academic geographers as policy advisers, and
explores what may lie behind the absence of economic geographers in American
national policy contexts. I look at a moment in history when scholars, loosely
described as economic geographers, did weigh in on national economic policy
issues. I discuss research practice in a policy context and then note that in the
United States, economists dominate the practice of policy science because of
their specific world view and epistemology. I then examine what happens when we
do weigh in on policy issues and what happens to our ideas, including their use in
unintended ways. I conclude with some topics that should receive geographical
investigation – topics about which geographers are unusually quiet despite the
incredible spatiality of such problems.
By way of introduction, I am speaking of the American context. I acknowledge
that in the United Kingdom and other parts of the world, economic geographers
are among the many academic advisers to policymakers. The peculiar history of
American geography and its half century quest to be considered a ‘science’, the
discipline’s struggle with its positionality, the lack of exposure to geography in k-12
educational settings, and the dominance of policy debates by economists have
constrained the discipline’s ability to make relevant and necessary contributions
to public discourse on social policy.
Other issues reduce the attractiveness of policy research to academic geogra-
phers. Many geographers are not motivated to acquire the skills required to
conduct policy research. These tend to be drawn from economics and evaluation
research. Geographers often find unattractive the epistemological orientation of
policy debates, which are confined to or defined by a model of ‘normal science’
that uses statistical tools and techniques. The academy’s lack of recognition of
the value of policy research in a person’s career further diminishes its relevance.
There is a perceived difficulty in translating policy research into scholarly publi-
cations and extra effort is required to bridge the gulf between the languages of

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policy and academia.
1
While I note these five factors I will only address two of
them directly in the remainder of this essay.
Articles like this usually contain some personal confessions. This intervention
will be no different. First, I am not a degree-carrying geographer. Although I was
trained by geographers such as Peter Hall and Richard Walker, and influenced by
others such as Doreen Massey, David Harvey and Dick Peet, as well as my grad-
uate student colleagues Michael Storper, Meric Gertler, Mary Beth Pudup, Susan
Christopherson, Suzanne Hecht and others, my degrees from the University of
California at Berkeley were in planning. In the early 1980s, geography and plan-
ning were intertwined. Today many of my former graduate school colleagues in the
geography department are in planning programs even as some planners are in
geography programs. The factors that led to this convergence are a good starting
point in considering geographers’ roles in policy debates.
History
Two concatenated experiences and the importance of key actors contributed to
the emergence of a group of geographers and planners who were policy-oriented
and sought to be policy-relevant at Berkeley in the early 1980s. Turning the
clock back to that time, I was a member of a group of aspiring academics who
came together at UCB and spent five years completing dissertations on various
topics loosely linked with the subdiscipline of economic geography. How we
converged on Berkeley is a separate story, but suffice it to say that while there we
were influenced by issues and struggles occurring in the nation at the time.
The two previous decades of social activism around issues such as the Vietnam
War, Women’s rights, inner-city urban decline, and the rise of the environmental
movement served as potent stimulants for the emergence of new social movements
and citizen-based activism. Coincidental with, but largely distinct from those
seeds of activism, was the economic crisis of the late 1970s when high interest
rates, falling productivity, corporate malfeasance and internationalization of the
economy led to massive job losses in basic industries. Whole regions such as the
Industrial Manufacturing Belt came under siege as American firms shed millions
of jobs in the wake of revived competitors such as Germany and the emergence
of new competitors including Japan and the emerging Asian Newly Industrializing
Economies, that were profoundly changing the industrial landscape (Harrison
1997; Harrison and Bluestone 1988; Harrison et al. 1980, 1982; Harrison and
Glasmeier 1997). This period of tumult stimulated policy engagement and critique.
In the early 1980s it was difficult to ignore the massive upheaval engulfing 
the nation. Such extreme change served to legitimize activism and encourage
engagement with social issues of an immediate nature.
Our engagement was further facilitated by the presence of public scholars and
academic activists who were working inside the ‘conventional world’ acting as role
models for our own politicization. They included Bennett Harrison, Norm
Glickman, Dick Walker and Ann Markusen, who were academics and activists.
Especially important, people like them engaged the policy context by offering
On the intersection of policy and economic geography
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theoretically informed commentary about contemporary empirical evidence
focused on major social issues of the day. Comparable actors in the United
Kingdom were people like Doreen Massey, Peter Hall, Richard Meegan, and many
others (Massey and Meegan 1982, 1985). Thus the context and the company encour-
aged inquiry into issues that were policy-oriented and socially relevant. Concern
about societal problems was not enough; we were encouraged on a daily basis to
take part in public debate. We felt comfortable in and received encouragement to
pursue research projects on contemporary problems.