Servitizing industrial regions

The paper explores the evolving role of service sectors in relation to manufacturing activities within local systems of production and it discusses whether issues related to spatial proximity have shaped the value chains of manufacturing activities. Territorial servitization is defined here as the symbiotic recoupling between services and manufacturing that impacts on their relative value creation contribution to both value chains and consumers. The paper presents empirical evidence from the UK by means of employment data at the NUTS-2 level and by five-digit sector level.