Locating the mid Wales economy

This chapter concerns itself with interrogating the multiple, sometimes contested, ways of knowing, narrating and locating contemporary mid Wales as a political-economic context, and its contingent social relations. This analysis proceeds through the specific spatial lens of what we term the Central and west Coast Locality (CWCL); an area arcing across central Wales and the south west seaboard, extending from St David’s Head to the Shropshire border and from the Preseli Mountains and Teifi Valley to the Berwyn range and the River Dyfi (see Figure 6.1). The landscape of the CWCL is regarded as broadly and predominantly rural, with no town in this locality having a population of more than 17,000 people.