The Roanoke region recently competed for a Dell manufacturing facility, and lost out to North Carolina, which offered Dell a whopping $242 million in tax credits. That's an awful lot to pay for just one firm that could easily pick up and leave after a few years. Imagine what a few hundred small businesses with good business plans could do if given ten or fifteen years of tax relief.
But that's not the story today. In today's Roanoke Times, an article says that one of the issues with Dell was access to an airport that could handle long range 747 freighters--one of the biggest commercial airplanes made. Not only does Dell get parts from suppliers worldwide, they ship their computers all over the world.
This is a good example of how the global marketplace is changing things. Forty years ago, it was rare to make goods in one country and ship them to another. Most manufacturing plants made things for regional or national consumption. You can tell how much things have changed when ordinary items like paper towels and batteries come with packaging printed in three or four languages.
Geography is still important, but not the way we think. You no longer have to be close to markets, because the entire world has become a single, large marketplace. But while many products and services can be delivered via the internet, not everything can, so regions have to consider transportation facilities in a new way. In Roanoke, airport capacity was, according to the newspaper, not on the list. You can bet it is now.