What is Core Periphery by John Friedman?

J. Friedmann (1966) maintained that the world can be divided into four types of region. Beyond the cores are the upward transition regions-areas of growth spread over small centers rather than at a core. Development corridors are upward transition zones which link two core cities such as Belo Horizonte and Rio de Janeiro.

The resource-frontier regions are peripheral zones of new settlement as in the Amazon Basin. The downward transition regions are areas which are now declining because of exhaustion of resources or because of industrial change. Many 'problem' regions of Europe are of this type.

This concept may be extended to continents. The capital-rich countries of Germany and France attract labor from peripheral countries like Spain, Greece, Turkey, and Algeria. Higher wages and prices are found at the core while the lack of employment in the periphery keeps wages low there. The result may well be a balance of payments crisis at the periphery, or the necessity of increased exports from the periphery to pay for imports. In either case, development of the periphery is retarded.