terials, storage for shipment, processing, waste disposal, storage again, onward
shipment, and consumer marketing and trading. Fluctuations in consumer
demand, raw materials availability, and labour periodicity can be identified.
Friction analysis sets out to identify the key factors inhibiting beneficial eco-
nomic flows andto spotlight opportunities for facilitating greater beneficial inter-
action between regions. Bendavid-Val (1991: 62) establishes a basis for friction
analysis by focusing upon a set of ‘leading questions’ organized under investiga-
tor headings – whatare the regional exports? whatare the intermediate imports?
andwhatfinished essential consumer goods have to be imported from without
and are available within a region? A scientific analogy is illustrative for, as with
physics, where the attraction of one mass to another varies in inverse proportion
to the square of the distance between them, so too with friction analysis does the
so-called ‘friction factor’ increase with the distances travelled and the volumes
of exports and imports handled. For non-metropolitan regions it is practical to
proceed directly to a study of commodity analysis, and an assessment of produc-
tion and trading chains and the consumer spending patterns which indicate loca-
tional-preference patterns. The somewhat maligned inputs–outputs patterns array- offered previously as box 4.4 – has utility here.
Finally there is the facility of ‘Shift and Share
Employment Analysis’ to consider. The principle
factor here being the regional share of employment
in industry, agriculture, tourism and the service
sectors (relative to the box 4.2 Export and residen-
tiary construct) expressed as regional quotients.
These ‘linkage and pattern’ considerations search out
ways to increase the employment absorptive capac-
ity of a region, to improve the within-region supply
of raw materials to all processes, and to facilitate all
manner of resource, cash and commodity flows.
Attention is now shifted to linkages viewed as part
of the within-region (rural-with-urban) context.^6Rural-urban understandings
For rural-urban regions the historical emphasis has
been centre-to-periphery for both orthodox ‘port’ and
‘plains’ cities. A converse suggestion in relation to the
non-metropolitan contexts is to appraise such regions
from periphery-to-centre: from the ‘space-draining’
productions of farming, forestry, mining, recreational
and tourism, through to the ‘space-organizing’
activities conducted in the main centres and small
towns.^7 In this way the normative central-place
urban-hierarchy and size-and-rank analyses, although132 Practice
Port city and plains city