Traditional theories of industrial restructuring assign the most explanatory weight of the structural change phenomenon to increasing pressures via globalization and falling trade barriers. This thesis offers a new model of thinking about industrial restructuring that includes multiple stressors. The thesis focuses on three main drivers of structural change: market pressures, environmental regulation and changes in land use and land pricing, using two case studies of leather and footwear industrial clusters in Mexico, located in the cities of León and Guadalajara. Evidence of multiple drivers of structural change is found in the dissertation. Furthermore, responses to restructuring drivers in León and Guadalajara are found to be substantially different. Firms in the leather and footwear cluster in León have implemented countervailing strategies such as price competition, government lobbying, and more recently, investment in socio-economic research (competitiveness) projects. However, firms in the leather and footwear cluster in Guadalajara focused on a specific, high-end target market. At the larger, urban scale, footwear and its allied industries in the city of León resisted change and have tried to remain in operation while the city of Guadalajara has focused on a diversification strategy, attracting new (arguably more technically advanced) industries. This thesis offers empirical and theoretical advances. Empirically, it applies a firm demographics approach to the study of industrial clusters under multiple stressors. This approach has not been previously used on Mexican data. Theoretically, it demonstrates that future analyses of industrial complexes’ structural change can be strengthened through the use of an integrated assessment framework investigating the effect of multiple stressors (market forces, land pricing, technical change, environmental regulations, and consumer preferences) on industrial restructuring.

Traditional theories of industrial restructuring assign the most explanatory weight of the structural change phenomenon to increasing pressures via globalization and falling trade barriers. This thesis offers a new model of thinking about industrial restructuring that includes multiple stressors. The thesis focuses on three main drivers of structural change: market pressures, environmental regulation and changes in land use and land pricing, using two case studies of leather and footwear industrial clusters in Mexico, located in the cities of León and Guadalajara. Evidence of multiple drivers of structural change is found in the dissertation. Furthermore, responses to restructuring drivers in León and Guadalajara are found to be substantially different. Firms in the leather and footwear cluster in León have implemented countervailing strategies such as price competition, government lobbying, and more recently, investment in socio-economic research (competitiveness) projects. However, firms in the leather and footwear cluster in Guadalajara focused on a specific, high-end target market. At the larger, urban scale, footwear and its allied industries in the city of León resisted change and have tried to remain in operation while the city of Guadalajara has focused on a diversification strategy, attracting new (arguably more technically advanced) industries. This thesis offers empirical and theoretical advances. Empirically, it applies a firm demographics approach to the study of industrial clusters under multiple stressors. This approach has not been previously used on Mexican data. Theoretically, it demonstrates that future analyses of industrial complexes’ structural change can be strengthened through the use of an integrated assessment framework investigating the effect of multiple stressors (market forces, land pricing, technical change, environmental regulations, and consumer preferences) on industrial restructuring.

Traditional theories of industrial restructuring assign the most explanatory weight of the structural change phenomenon to increasing pressures via globalization and falling trade barriers. This thesis offers a new model of thinking about industrial restructuring that includes multiple stressors. The thesis focuses on three main drivers of structural change: market pressures, environmental regulation and changes in land use and land pricing, using two case studies of leather and footwear industrial clusters in Mexico, located in the cities of León and Guadalajara. Evidence of multiple drivers of structural change is found in the dissertation. Furthermore, responses to restructuring drivers in León and Guadalajara are found to be substantially different. Firms in the leather and footwear cluster in León have implemented countervailing strategies such as price competition, government lobbying, and more recently, investment in socio-economic research (competitiveness) projects. However, firms in the leather and footwear cluster in Guadalajara focused on a specific, high-end target market. At the larger, urban scale, footwear and its allied industries in the city of León resisted change and have tried to remain in operation while the city of Guadalajara has focused on a diversification strategy, attracting new (arguably more technically advanced) industries. This thesis offers empirical and theoretical advances. Empirically, it applies a firm demographics approach to the study of industrial clusters under multiple stressors. This approach has not been previously used on Mexican data. Theoretically, it demonstrates that future analyses of industrial complexes’ structural change can be strengthened through the use of an integrated assessment framework investigating the effect of multiple stressors (market forces, land pricing, technical change, environmental regulations, and consumer preferences) on industrial restructuring. / Science, Faculty of / Resources, Environment and Sustainability (IRES), Institute for / Graduate

This cumulative dissertation presents an environmental economic geography approach to the study of waste and recycling. Thereby, it introduces the notion of ‘waste economies’, which describes the conjunction of the production of waste with the societal handling as well as the valorisation of waste. Two distinct regional case studies serve to illustrate different aspects of waste economies. The first case investigates the valorisation of surplus manure from intensive livestock farming through biogas production in a highly industrialized rural region in north-western Germany – the example of manure and digestate in the Oldenburger Münsterland. The second case focuses on the recovery and revalorisation of wasted materials in the labour-intensive urban informal economy of a metropolitan area in eastern India – the example of informal plastic recycling networks in Kolkata. On a theoretical level, the conceptualization of waste economies is located at the intersection of environmental economic geography and the interdisciplinary field of waste studies. It draws on the global production networks approach, social metabolism and Marxist political economy to analyse waste as a form of ‘hybrid’ socio-nature. Following a qualitative research methodology, the analysis of the two cases depicts the close entanglement of economic and environmental processes in the production, societal handling and economic valorisation of waste, and reveals how this intersection is conducive for capital accumulation. Three different economic processes and dynamics serve as central analytical dimensions to delineate the characteristics of waste economies with regard to the expanded reproduction of capital accumulation, that is, the continued growth of capitalist economies: processes of externalisation as well as dynamics of expansion and intensification. Through the combined up-scaled analysis of two empirical cases on a higher level of theoretical abstraction, this dissertation offers a better understanding of the economic function of waste in growth-oriented capitalist economies. In this way, it contributes to the global recycling network and global destruction network approaches within economic geography and relates them to scholarly concerns about global environmental change.