THE CONNOTATION OF FLEXIBILITY AND ITS ENLIGHTENMENTS ON THE STUDIES OF ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY
梳理了灵活性概念的理论背景与内涵，从专业化和精益生产角度总结经济地理学在产业空间与集群方面的研究成果，并指出未来研究方向。
Flexibility has become the synonym of the new mode of production in the age of Post Fordism. The studies on Flexibility and its special influences as well as special structure have been the mainstream in academia of international Economic Geography. Taking the Flexibility as the main thread, the paper attempts to apprehend the new trend of development of the modern mode of production and industrial organization, and thus reveals the engendering mechanism of modern economic regions, especially that of industrial districts and industrial clustering. Therefore, firstly the paper briefly reviews the theoretical background from which the studies of Flexibility originated, and then explains the connotation of Flexibility. Based above, and from the specialization of Flexibility and the Japanese mode of Lean production, the paper further to sum up the theoretical achievement on new industrial space and industrial clustering gained by studies of economic geography on special form of Flexibility. Finally it proposes the future questions for discussion.