Dispersal of Economic Activity and Industrial Development.

A RJE conference paper on economic activity and industrial development in the then Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Paper Presented at Symposium for Industry In Rhodesia, June 11th-12th, 1969.Ever since Lord Keynes propounded his “General Theory”, it has increasingly come to be held that man is not merely a cork on the economic ocean, being flung this way and that by blind economic forces, but that he can determine his economic condition. It is this newer view, that we are no longer entirely creatures of our economic circumstance, but are indeed in a position to “create” our own future to some extent, that underlies the thinking on dispersal of economic activity. We feel capable of guiding economic forces into directions which will build an economy more closely resembling that which we want rather than being prepared to accept the economy which free market forces build for us. Not only do we want to “create” our own future insofar as this is possible ; we also want, each one of us, to feel that we have a “place in the sun”— that we count for something in the general scheme of things. However, with the increasing sizes of cities and the concomitant massing together of vast hordes of humanity, it is suggested that many people may experience a disquieting awareness of some loss of their worth as individuals. Indeed, the struggle to find that place in the sun seems to increase in difficulty the more people there are who have to be pushed out of the way in the process