Relocation process and its characteristic in manufacturing industry firms in Ankara metropolitan area: An empirical study

The debates in the literature of industrial geography have been concentrated on industrial restructuring as an outcome of new technologies and production dynamics. There has been a growing concern at the issue of industrial relocation as a spatial reflection of this restructuring process.This research, parallel to the increasing interest in last decades, focuses on relocating behaviours of manufacturing industry. Working on such a frame aims at showing what types of factors interconnected with behaviours of industrial location mobility and what is the role of planning in this locational behaviour. To reach this aim, information on the relocated firms in Ankara Metropolitan Area which are the members of Ankara Chamber of Industry in the period of 1988-2007 is collected and the representatives of the firms are interviewed.The research findings show that the relocated firms did not experience an extensive decentralization and that they moved to proximal locations within the metropolitan area. In this process, it is observed that the firms mostly moved from the city center to the periphery of the city center and to the city fringe only with the industry development plans prepared by government institutions.In summary, the result shows that firms experienced relocation not with in their own iner dynamics but with plan enforcements.