Import replacement

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Import replacement refers to an urban free market economic process of entrepreneurs replacing the imports of the city with production from within the city.

The idea was invented by Jane Jacobs [1] who spun off from the idea of import substitution developed by Andre Gunder Frank and widely discussed during the first and second Latin American debt crisis. Import substitution is a national economic theory implying that if a nation substituted its imports with national production the nation would become wealthier, whereas Jacob's idea is entirely about cities and could be called urban import substitution. However, even this would lead to confusion since, in practice, import substitution in India and Latin America were government subsidized and mandated, whereas Jacobs' concept of import replacement is a free market process of discovery and division of labor within a city.

Jane Jacobs American–Canadian journalist, author on urbanism and activist (1916-2006)

Jane Jacobs was an American-Canadian journalist, author, and activist who influenced urban studies, sociology, and economics. Her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961) argued that urban renewal did not respect the needs of city-dwellers. It also introduced the sociological concepts "eyes on the street" and "social capital".

Andre Gunder Frank was a German-American economic historian and sociologist who promoted dependency theory after 1970 and world-systems theory after 1984. He employed some Marxian concepts on political economy, but rejected Marx's stages of history, and economic history generally.

Latin American debt crisis

The Latin American debt crisis was a financial crisis that originated in the early 1980s, often known as "La Década Perdida ", when Latin American countries reached a point where their foreign debt exceeded their earning power, and they were not able to repay it.

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References

  1. Jacobs, Jane (1985). Cities and the Wealth of Nations. New York, NY: Vintage Books. ISBN   978-0394729114.