Dynamics in economic geography 2e druk - Ton van Rietbergen, Sierdjan Koster

1.2 | The rediscovery of economic geography

play significant roles in explaining differences, they are by no means all-determin ing, as we saw earlier from the example of Switzerland.

Box 1.1 Silicon Valley, the world’s most innovative region

The name Silicon Valley, first used by American journalist Don Hoefler in the early 1970s, referred to the emerging semiconductor industry in the southern San Fran cisco Bay area, a region stretching from Palo Alto in the north to San Francisco Air port in the south, and from the Santa Cruz Mountains to the southwest to San José to the west. Prior to the arrival of high-tech companies, the region was known for its excellent plum orchards. The valley had a pleasant climate and none of the man ic traffic of the big American cities.

Silicon Valley

Oakland

San Francisco

0 1000 km

San Francisco Bay

Daly City

Hayward

Paci c Ocean

San Mateo

1

1 Oracle 2 SRI 3 HP 4 NASA 5 Veritas 6 Google 7 Yahoo

Urban Area

2

15

Redwood City 16

4

14

3

6

13

7

5

12

Palo Alto

Milpitas

8 Dell 9 Intel 10 Apple 11 Ebay 12 Sun microsystems 13 Cisco systems

S I L I C O N V A L L E Y

8 9

10

Cupertino

11

San Jose

Santa Clara

14 KLA Tencor 15 VA Software 16 Facebook

0

10 km

Figure 1.3 Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley, home of the headquarters of Apple, Meta (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp), Alphabet (including Google), Cisco, Intel and Yahoo, is often considered the nursery for the semiconductor, the personal computer, and the internet. Fre drick Terman, former Dean of the Stanford Engineering Faculty, is generally regard ed as the Father of Silicon Valley. His aim was to create jobs for graduates near the university, so they would not need to move to the East Coast. In 1939, Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard built an oscillator for Walt Disney studios in a garage in the Valley. In 1977, local boy Steve Jobs began to build Apple computers in his parents’ garage.

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