The urban contradictions of Silicon Valley: regional growth and the restructuring of the semiconductor industry.

The article focuses on the urban contradictions of Silicon Valley. The growth of Santa Clara County during the years since the Second World War has been explosive. It has also been highly contradictory. Prior to the Second World War, Santa Clara County was a sparsely populated agricultural valley. Between 1940 and 1970, the county's population increased by almost one million people. Countywide employment doubled itself during each successive decade, resulting in the creation of about 350 000 new jobs. The growth of personal and family incomes surpassed both state and national averages and by 1969 median family income in the county was a full 30% above the U.S. as a whole. By 1975, Silicon Valley was distinguished by unbearably congested freeways, dangerous levels of air and water pollution and a nogrowth movement calling for a halt to further industrial growth. The story of Silicon Valley's growth is also the story of the birth and development of a new industry, the semiconductor industry. Regional growth and industrial development have thus been inextricably linked in Silicon Valley. The paper examines relationship and interactions between these two processes arguing that neither the region's growth nor the development and spatial patterning of the semiconductor industry can be understood in isolation.