Search

This paper analyses the use of the concept of territorial cohesion in policy documents produced by the European Union. It is an idea celebrated in community documents, such as cohesion reports, the Territorial Agenda of the European Union and the Green Paper on Territorial Cohesion; after more than a decade of political debate, the concept is about to gain a legitimate institutional role, after being included in the Lisbon Treaty, and is among the competences that the EU shares with other member states. At first, territorial cohesion seems to oppose the logics of neo-liberalism by reinscribing welfare problems and policies in spatial terms. However, using the analytical framework of cultural critics, and intending cohesion to be a discourse carried on by a community of European scholars and policymakers, the research will discuss the conceptual relationship between competitiveness and territorial cohesion in European policies and narratives.

An organization’s capability to build, handle and exploit relationships and learn from these relations, defined here as relational capabilities, is increasingly important in a networked economy and in innovation activities. The paper introduces a framework that helps understand and analyse the relational capabilities of various organizations engaged in innovation activities. Based on theoretical discussion and empirical analysis the paper argues that the literature on organizational level capabilities and relational capabilities would benefit from deeper integration with the systems of innovation perspective. The empirical findings from three Finnish regions indicate that relational capabilities become particularly relevant in research–business–government cooperation contributing to innovation in the field of bioeconomy. Relational capabilities embedded in an organization’s capability configurations can boost the efficient use of that organization’s resources, bring greater flexibility, a chance to create value in networks and support renewal and innovation. Missing or underdeveloped relational capabilities may also hinder an organization’s ability to tap into the economic opportunities that arise leading to failures at the regional and system level thus hampering the transition towards a bioeconomy. publishedVersion

Recently, the notion of spatial justice has been discussed as a possible conceptual foundation for rethinking EU Cohesion Policy. While scholars have adopted a dual distributive and procedural understanding of spatial justice, the paper argues that, applied to cross-border areas, such a conceptualisation is challenged to explain how the border contributes to disparities. We argue that actively questioning the role of law is paramount for better examination of the dynamics within border areas. An understanding of spatial justice informed by legal geography allows examination of how law fosters and impedes movement across borders. The paper presents three recent examples where policy representatives from affected communities have fought to adapt legal provisions to cross-border spatiality. Whether such initiatives increased border communities’ capacities to shape their own development (i.e. European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation) or not yet (i.e. co-development at the Lorraine-Luxembourg border; European Cross-Border Mechanism), these examples show that analysing EUropean borderlands as a spatiolegal category helps understanding of how space and law constantly struggle with one another, and how spatial justice emerges from a movement out of this conflict. The paper concludes by discussing the practical and conceptual implications of combining legal geography and spatial justice for analysing EU Borderlands.

High-growth firms - also called gazelles - have the potential to create jobs and to drive regional development. Yet, there remains a lack of understanding about how to best support these companies in their growth process. Hence, the types of support offered to these firms are often misdirected and fail to provide relevant support to appropriate types of businesses. This paper focuses on one support policy aimed at support gazelles to cope with their growth challenges, namely intermediary actors, who provide matchmaking, advise and networking activities directed to gazelles. More specifically, this paper aims at identifying what challenges are encountered by gazelles and whether the support provided by intermediary actors is matching the need of support. The empirical focus of the paper is on gazelles within the construction industry and situated in the Swedish municipality Norrkoping. Findings indicate that challenges relate to recruitment, interactions with the public sector, lack of support and entrepreneurial personalities/skills. These challenges overwhelm the everyday work of entrepreneurs, who struggle to find solutions, despite the support of intermediaries. Implications for high-growth companies, intermediary actors and policymakers are discussed with the aim of finding a better match between high-growth challenges and intermediary support. Funding Agencies|Swedish Energy AgencySwedish Energy Agency [49379-1]

This paper focuses on path development processes after a sudden path exhaustion. We analyse the decline, the closure and the attempts at the re-orientation of a forestry-based industry agglomeration in Southern Norway, located around the municipality of Hønefoss. In particular, this paper focuses on the Treklyngen holding company in Hønefoss. This paper explores how policy may be influenced by and built upon regional capabilities to support new path development in the aftermath of path exhaustion. It also shows how natural resources and institutional endowments could contribute to path development, under such difficult circumstances in a peripheral region.

Innovation is increasingly decentralized, traded and transferred internationally. Specialized suppliers of knowledge-intensive business services have emerged, enhancing the international transfer of knowledge and technology. This has important implications for the global geography of technological and innovative capabilities. This paper focuses on the role of European KIBS providers for the catch-up process in the Chinese wind turbine industry. Drawing on in-depth studies of three central technology domains in wind turbine research and development, it shows how the recent catch-up in the Chinese wind turbine industry was closely connected to organizational changes taking place in the incumbent wind turbine lead markets in Europe. The paper suggests that access to knowledge through KIBS can unlock rapid but bounded latecomer development in emerging markets.

This paper aims at identifying the current main economic thought influencing the EU Cohesion Policy. Postulates and assumptions on how economic growth spreads spatially in key EU policy framework documents are discussed and compared to different economic theories. Strategic EU documents increasingly foster the urban dimension, and focus resources on cities at the expense of cohesive regional development. The findings indicate large overlaps with Perroux’ ‘growth pole theory’. However, several of the key assumptions of growth pole theory are not met in the new context of post-industrial globalized service economy, which is fundamentally different from its original use. This is a troublesome finding when seen from a strategic planning perspective. Current implications for regional policy and planning boil down to the cardinal question of supporting urban areas and/or peripheries. Taking the strategic EU policy documents and their trajectories in economic thought into consideration, this paper confirms that regional development focuses on cities. Yet, it suggests a new perspective on an urban-centred EU Cohesion Policy, one that normatively requests the ‘responsibility’ of cities towards their hinterland, instead of fostering a further dissociation of cities from their hinterland. This suggests a reorientation towards supporting the linkages between urban areas and peripheries.

This paper aims to unravel how superdiverse cities re-imagine themselves in response to migration-related diversity. Based on a double case study on the branding strategies of two superdiverse Dutch cities, Amsterdam and Rotterdam, this paper shows that although diversity is part of the brand identity in both cities, it is not used prominently in brand communications or in urban planning. Place brands are constructed in wider discursive and political settings that affect whether and how migration-related diversity is used in the symbolic representation of places as well as in urban planning. Migration-related diversity is re-defined strategically (as ‘cosmopolitan’ and ‘international’) for two reasons: (1) to turn it into an asset that enhances the brand, and (2) to align the brand with existing policies and political discourses on migration and accommodate political pressures. City marketers have depoliticized place branding. Marketing logic pushed migration related-diversity to the background, because according to the city marketers diversity does not help a city to stand out.

The aim of this paper is to offer an empirically grounded conceptualization of the dialogical relationship between spatial planning and place branding in the context of regionalization. The analysis displays the discursive nature of such relationship by highlighting the intertwining of spatial planning with place branding as strategic actions devoted to, and included in, regional development processes. The analysis is based on two cases in Sweden. The first is linked to the emergence of the brand ‘Stockholm, the Capital of Scandinavia’, and the other is linked to the emergence of the brand ‘Swedish Lapland’. By combining data collected longitudinally, these cases represent two contrasting examples of dialogical relationships that materialize through two distinct yet somehow similar strategic processes of regionalization. Based on the two cases, the paper presents and discusses an empirically driven, albeit conceptual, model that highlights the dialogical relationship of regionalization as regional strategic policy and points out its spatial and political evolutionary features.

Large housing estates (LHE) account for nearly half of the housing stock in the cities of Poland and other countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The ageing of the housing stock and change in the social composition of the communities may lead to serious changes in the development of estates and pose serious challenges to the regeneration of block housing estates. This paper presents initiatives undertaken towards the regeneration of LHE in large Polish cities. A detailed description of the rehabilitation of LHE is presented using the example of Kraków, which is a city that has a large share of multi-dwelling buildings and a long history of improving the quality of life in LHE. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the current state of Polish LHE in the context of ongoing urban regeneration activities. The authors present an overview of regeneration measures pursued within LHE, analysing the changes that have taken place as a result of regeneration efforts. Using the example of Kraków, they also demonstrate how large cities manage the regeneration of LHE. The authors argue that the way housing estates will develop depends largely on how the regeneration will be conducted.

Literature on science and technology parks (STPs) lacks a systematic understanding of how regional contextual factors affect the performance of STPs. Most studies focus on park-internal factors and neglect the regional context and connections when evaluating STPs' performance. This paper provides new insight on the role of regional factors for STPs by combining and discussing existing studies on STP performance with literature on regional innovation systems. We conduct an exploratory, systematic literature review of 64 papers that refer to park-external factors in their studies of STP performance. We identify five regional factors (university and research institutes, industrial structure, institutional settings, financial support and urbanization) and assess how these factors have been shown to play a role for STP performance in previous studies. Based on this review, the paper develops a comprehensive framework of how regional contextual factors influence the performance of STPs, which can be used in designing and/or improving STP-performance while taking regional characteristics and needs into consideration. We believe a dynamic and comprehensive understanding of these regional connections can help improve designs of STPs, and thereby their performance.

This paper gives an overview of over two decades of research projects on the study of the relationship between local development and social innovation (SI) made by the international action research network coordinated by the first author and funded by the European Commission. It explains the need to study the relationships between local development and opportunities for human development, and the aspirations for an epistemological turn, away from local growth to local development, and from disciplinary to inter- and trans-disciplinary perspectives. Using a chronological overview, the paper concentrates on questions related to the specific objectives of the projects and their epistemological (ontological, theoretical, methodological and validation) challenges. It explains how by meeting these challenges, over the years the network built a Social Innovation Action Research framework that can now be used as a reference for mutual enrichment between different approaches in SI action research.

While innovation should be about socioeconomic transformation of society, concerns have been raised about its negative externalities including growing disparities within and between regions. Arguably, Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) offers a potential solution to address these concerns. However, in theory, its conceptualization and operationalization remain ambiguous. Further, in practice, this makes its application to regional development difficult. Accordingly, this study first conducts a systematic literature review of conceptual papers on RRI. It identifies themes and categorizes them into four domains: drivers, tools, outcomes and barriers. Second, these domains are applied to regional innovation studies. The paper contributes to an increased understanding of RRI and its applications to sustainable regional development as well as how RRI and regional innovation studies can benefit from each other.

There is a growing orthodoxy that since the global financial crisis European policy-makers and planning systems have become more dependent on inward investment and the availability of global finance to fund welfare services and projects. This process of financialisation, it is claimed, is driven by the needs of developers and investors, who are focused on maximising returns and limiting their social and economic liabilities. Planning agencies and traditional territory-based arrangements are viewed with increasing suspicion, as standing in the way of investment and acting as a brake on much needed house-building and regeneration. However, in this paper, drawing on detailed research with investors and developers in London, we argue that there needs to be a stronger focus in academic and policy writing on the multiple, variegated, and diverse calculations and framings that private sector actors take when making investment decisions. Too often their perspectives are caricatured and/or over-simplified. We show that perspectives and imaginations of planning and regulation are more complex and that many firms have realised that market success results from becoming more deeply embedded in the local political, social, and regulatory environments in which they are investing. A greater understanding of these multiple forms of calculation, in turn, opens up opportunities for the maintenance and/or implementation of more effective forms of territorially-based soft and hard regulation. The paper concludes by outlining a broader research agenda for planning and urban studies.

This paper examines the role of accelerator programmes in promoting transnational entrepreneurship. Designed to assist the growth of start-ups by providing seed finance and structured entrepreneurship support, these programmes are now a prominent feature in many entrepreneurial ecosystems around the world. Drawing on in-depth qualitative evidence focused on one particular programme, the paper shows accelerators play an important intermediary or “brokerage mechanism” providing start-ups with enhanced relational connections and networks. Transnational entrepreneurs attracted to these programmes are highly focused on exploiting these networks whilst maintaining multiple levels of embeddedness in various contexts to maximise the opportunities afforded by accelerators. While many governments are attempting to replicate accelerators programmes within the public sector, the paper concludes that such attempts may prove problematic within weaker entrepreneurial ecosystems. Postprint

Although the benefits of horizontal collaboration have been well documented in the literature, research has yet to offer a detailed understanding of the mechanisms that firms employ to create successful horizontal collaboration. Further, the role of logistics clusters in facilitating horizontal collaboration is crucial but not clear yet. This paper addresses these gaps. In order to address the research objectives, we employ a systematic literature review methodology. As a result of this process, one hundred thirty-three (133) papers published in leading academic journals were systematically analyzed. These studies are reviewed under the theoretical lenses of the transaction cost economics (TCE) and the derived identification of governance mechanisms (i.e. joint value propositions, informal governance, formal governance and information exchange) to achieve successful horizontal collaboration. Further, we provide a detailed description of how logistics clusters can facilitate and promote the development of such mechanisms, illustrated with companies’ best practices. As a result, several testable research propositions are put forth. © 2019, © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor and Francis Group.

This paper is focussed on the development of an exploratory integrated perspective to understand and measure Social Innovation Ecosystems through the notion of Social Innovation Regime. This concept builds upon the interrelation between socioeconomic contexts of SI (meso–macro levels) and intra/inter-organizational dynamics (micro level), where SIs are developing. That is to say, the ways in which the social economy and social organizations are connected to a broader SI Ecosystem where the socioeconomic contexts surrounding National Welfare Regime try to answer to the policy and market failures that have an impact on regional vulnerability rates. This article suggests the hypothesis that there is an interrelation between the strength of Welfare Regimes and Social Innovation Ecosystems, at a time where Social Policies and Welfare States all over the world are weakened or in crisis, opening the door to social innovation. This paper describes this connection through the notion of Social Innovation Regime, proposing an interesting exploratory framework to explore the socio-structural factors through which a country or region presents a set of vulnerabilities which can transform into unattended social problems. Finally, this analysis can contribute to the methodologies on SI measurement and impact by determining the regional vulnerability rate – social, economic, institutional, environmental – inside welfare regimes.

The paper offers a theory-based evaluation of the ongoing reforms in the Finnish spatial planning regime. The paper argues that Finnish planning is moving in a reactive and market-driven direction. This development is not being brought about solely through a direct decrease in public discretionary powers in planning, but is also unfolding indirectly through a process of rescaling in the spatial planning regime. These processes increase municipal autonomy in relation to other planning scales, despite problems observed in the municipality-centred market-driven planning orientation. The resulting reduction in manoeuvring room in public planning is conceptualized in the paper as expanding vacuums of strategic planning. Building on concepts from the literature on state transformation theory and scale theory, the paper draws together theoretical and empirical conclusions from several case studies conducted in close-to-administration projects.

Trust is a key mechanism for explaining the ease and frequency of knowledge spillovers within regions. While the importance of trust is virtually uncontested, there have been few attempts to rigorously disentangle the way in which trust formation is related to space and proximity. The aim of this paper is to advance the understanding of trust formation in terms of its main antecedents within the context of regional studies. This is done by reviewing the rich literature on trust formation from psychology, sociology, and organization studies and connecting it conceptually to different types of proximity. In doing so, the paper maps out a number of avenues for future research on trust and geography.

The rise of knowledge-based territorial development has been fuelled primarily by aspirations of competitiveness and wealth creation. Another upcoming ambition is that of sustainability, not only as an accompanying goal but as a core mission driving territorial initiatives such as clusters development. This paper explores mission-driven territorial development along theoretical and empirical lines. The paper starts by discussing a basic heuristic model intersecting the three concepts of ‘mission’, ‘knowledge’ (distinguishing ‘substantive’ and ‘significant’ knowledge) and ‘governance’. This leads to an analytical framework for territorial development focusing on (1) mission formulation, (2) production and exchange of knowledge in supportive milieus, (3) embedding of substantive knowledge, (4) anchoring of significant knowledge, and (5) feeding of significant knowledge into the (re) design of institutions and strategies of policy design and implementation. This framework is applied to three cases of ‘Metropolitan Food Clusters’ to illustrate and test the framework. The paper shows how especially the continuous anchoring of significant knowledge poses major challenges to knowledge-based territorial development and should be a central issue in future research and policy.

Recent literature stresses the increasing importance of global innovation networks (GINs) as a mechanism to organize innovation across geographical space. This paper investigates why and to what extent citizenship diversity of the firm's employees relates to the engagement of small and medium size companies in GINs. Citizenship diversity provides knowledge about the institutional context of other countries, increased capabilities to deal with institutional differences, larger social networks to build GINs and a broader search space. Further, the paper examines how the absorptive capacity of firms mediates the relationship between citizenship diversity and GINs. The empirical study is based on a linked employee-employer dataset with 6,771 observations of innovative small and medium size firms in Sweden. It provides strong evidence that the engagement in GINs is positively related to citizenship diversity, depending, however, on the absorptive capacity of firms.

This is a summary of the Editorial of the 25th Anniversary Special Issue of European Planning Studies. The editorial summarizes three representative articles from planners and economic policy actors published in 1993, the first year of publication of the journal. These write of threats and possibilities from privatized planning, from the European Single Market and the prospects for regional innovation policy. In the second part, nine papers are summarized. These range from an exegesis of the Anthropocene, the rise of populism and the transition in neoliberalist planning, and migration as a city planning issue in European cities. Other papers then analyse aspects of evolutionary change upon city and region policy and process dynamics. Finally a group of papers explore the rise of creative cities, 4.0 era industry and services and the role of ‘starchitects’ in city renewal as well as 4.0 digital settlements.

The economic crisis that started in 2009 has negatively impacted in the Netherlands the available financial resources for urban development. Dutch municipalities struggle since then with falling local financial sources, especially since active public land policy, traditionally an important additional financial source, became not so profitable anymore. One supposed effect is the limited degree to which municipalities can nowadays finance public infrastructure that serves wider areas, thus more than one specific development site (i.e. large' public infrastructure). Until now, however, there are no data available that support this claim. In this paper, we explore this and the role that developer obligations can play as an alternative, compensating financial source. Developer obligations are in many countries a growing popular public value capturing instrument, but in the Netherlands, a relative new phenomenon. On the basis of surveys, interviews and policy analysis, we conclude that at least a quarter of Dutch municipalities use developer obligations to obtain financial sources for large infrastructure. This seems, however, so far not to compensate for the diminishing of other municipal financial sources. The paper ends with some speculation about the future evolvement of developer obligations in the Netherlands.

Graduates are considered a convenient source of human capital in today's knowledge-based economy. It is therefore crucial to understand what drives their mobility intentions to retain larger numbers of graduates. This is particularly true for peripheral regions, which need to compete with economic centres that are assumed to be more attractive. This paper adds a euregional perspective to the existing literature on graduate migration by investigating whether or not students intend to stay in the Euregio Meuse-Rhine (EMR) after graduation. It takes into account the role of hard and soft locational factors, social factors as well as individual characteristics in shaping future graduates' mobility preferences. Using survey data from 2015 from five higher education institutions in the EMR, this paper finds that mobility intentions are determined by students' perceptions of the quality of life, openness and career opportunities in the euroregion. In addition, distance to the partner and other social ties such as family and friends influence migration intentions.

There are only a few studies dealing with capabilities in the knowledge-based regional development and especially in implementation of contemporary innovation policy. Drawing upon the resource-based view, the capability perspective identifies combinations of regional resources and capabilities that generate competitive advantage. In light of theoretical and empirical advancement, this paper introduces a capability framework to reveal the multi-layered and dynamic nature of capabilities in knowledge-based regional development. The paper argues that in the regional context, it is important to consider and analyse (1) the organizational level resource and knowledge base and (2) ways in which the regional networks of organizations, engaged in knowledge-based development activities, exploit and renew regional resources and capabilities. The empirical analysis is based on personal in-depth interviews and document analysis. The findings indicate that studies on knowledge-based regional development should...

The aim of this paper has been to address the apparent paradox that culture has been the high-profile victim of funding cuts in the period of austerity; at the same time, culture has prospered. Is culture then the ‘poster child for resilience’? The paper seeks to de-couple the notion from neo-liberalism and austerity. It counters with an argument that resilience as a concept is relational, it does not have a unitary meaning and its forms will change depending on context (that is, the cultural field and the field of governance). Hence, the strange survival of culture is explained not by austerity, but by the dynamism of the cultural field. However, this disjunction between governance and culture also carried a number of risks and problems.

Urban entrepreneurialism is generally characterized by a series of spectacular events, organized and orchestrated by powerful actors. Recently, this has given rise to a series of urban policy agendas that have become ubiquitous across the world. This paper draws attention to an emergent form of urban entrepreneurialism that privileges environmentalism, social inclusion and grassroots creativity. Based on the 2015 European Green Capital process taking place in Bristol in the United Kingdom, this paper shows how the European Green Capital Award is being used to engage a large and diverse range of organizations in the name of the Bristol Green Capital Partnership. We argue that rather than reiterating narratives of urban entrepreneurialism as dominated by narrow economic agendas and being socially exclusionary, this form of urban entrepreneurialism encourages us to look at cities as places that can be coproduced in context-sensitive ways by multiple entities. The paper is informed by primary data gathered through fieldwork conducted over 2014 and 2015, including primary documents, key informant interviews and participant observation.

In recent decades in Europe, municipalities have promoted many poorly qualified and widespread industrial parks. These policies have caused various problems such as oversupply of industrial land, obsolescence and high vacancy rates. The future of these sites is uncertain and has become a key issue in planning. Nowadays, policies are focused on upgrading these sites and on implementing regional coordinated practices. This paper describes a methodological approach to identifying a subregional network of industrial parks in the Ave valley, Portugal. The network is based on the parksâ attractiveness and has the purpose of supporting planning policies in terms of upgrading and providing new sites. The approach was based on a multi-criteria analysis whereby the parks were ranked according to their attractiveness considering their coverage in terms of infrastructures, services and accessibility. Results show that the majority of the existing and planned parks, even if upgraded, will not be very attractive and will be limited to a municipal scale due to structural problems related to their location and poor coverage. Moreover, the paper also discusses the challenges in implementing this planning approach at a subregional level. Despite the specificities of the case study, this methodology could be adopted in similar studies.

This paper discusses the early-stage experience of the smart specialization agenda within EU Cohesion Policy. The analysis examines the types of policy prioritization choices made by different member states and regions and seeks evidence on the extent to which weaker regions, in particular, might be constrained in their choices. The paper then reviews the evidence arising out of various surveys of policy-makers’ own experience and perceptions of the agenda, and concludes with a discussion of the major features of the policy progress so far and the main challenges ahead.

This paper examines the entry of Indian information and communication technology–information technology-enabled services (ICT-ITES) companies on the Dutch service outsourcing market. Using this case study, the paper integrates two academic debates: the rise of emerging country-based multinationals and the international dynamics in the ICT-ITES sector. Indian ICT-ITES firms can no longer only rely on cheap labour in their home country and need to build global delivery capacity in order effectively to compete with Western ICT-ITES multinationals. By examining their entry strategy in the Dutch service outsourcing market, this paper highlights the difficulties of latecomer multinationals in entering the more profitable domains of the ICT-ITES market.

The aim of this paper is to explore the relation between the critical knowledge base of firms and how firms respond to incentives embedded in the institutional framework surrounding them. The analysis gives us a better understanding of the complex development of the food sector in Southern Sweden in the past decades. Theoretically, the paper combines concepts of path dependency and knowledge bases, and applies this framework to a set of development trajectories of firms in the Scanian food sector. Three development paths are identified—path extension, path renewal and new path creation. Findings illustrate that these are rooted in different knowledge base combinations of firms, which make them respond differently to similar place- and sector-specific institutional conditions.

This paper explores cluster change using the case example of New Media in Vienna. It addresses the question of how cluster elements (such as firms and institutions) interact to shape and transform the thematic and spatial boundaries of clusters as they shift along their developmental stages. Clusters go through different phases underpinned by technical change, renewing and destroying previous cluster specialisations. Creativity is a key feature in modern economies underlying competitiveness in a range of sectors which cluster in urban areas. Sectors such as software and computer services, advertising and market research, printing and reproduction of recorded media, motion pictures, creative arts and entertainment are supported by regional conditions that enable creative processes in local interacting firms, and the translation of ideas into innovative products and services. These perspectives are used to explore the New Media cluster in Vienna based on 25 semi-structured interviews with firms specialising in New Media technology areas. When analysed using a life cycle perspective of clusters, the findings in this paper suggest that cluster thematic boundaries are shaped by change in technological variety via complex processes such as inter-disciplinary problem-solving in projects, re-activation of latent local and global networks, and firm capabilities to respond to rapidly changing client needs in devices, communication and design.

The literature on universities’ contributions to regional development is broad and diverse. A precise understanding of how regions may draw advantages from various university activities and the role of public policy institutions in promoting such activities is still missing. The aim of this paper is to provide a framework for analysing universities’ contributions to regional economic and societal development in differing national contexts and the policy institutions that underpin them. To do this, we review four conceptual models: the entrepreneurial university model, the regional innovation system (RIS) model, the mode 2 university model and the engaged university model. The paper demonstrates that these four models emphasize very different activities and outputs by which universities are seen to benefit regional economy and society. It is also shown that these models differ markedly with respect to the policy implications and practice. Analysing some of the public policy imperatives and incentives in the UK, Austria and Sweden, the paper highlights that in the UK, policies encourage all four university models. In contrast, in Sweden and Austria, policy institutions tend to privilege the RIS university model, whilst at the same time, there is some evidence for increasing support of the entrepreneurial university model.

Throughout the last two decades, cultural quarters have been used by many local councils across the UK as attempts to redevelop and revitalize declining urban centres. Cities have spent millions of pounds developing cultural quarter policies, justified by the prevailing rhetoric of culture revitalizing the local economy and the creation of a “cultural milieu” that stimulates creative industry activity. However, in many cases in the UK, visitor numbers remain lower than expected, and in some cases, flagship projects have been sold off or closed down. High rents force out small and freelance creative industry actors, and (non-commercial) artistic interventions are strictly policed. Forming part of the wider debate on the political circumscription of the creativity paradigm, this paper argues that cultural quarters have been viewed within a predominately economistic, dichotomous and simplistic framework. This paper argues that there is a need for a more practiced-based, subjective account of cultural quarters that goes beyond such a traditional framework to include more deleterious practices such as community impoverishment, precariousness and short-termism.

The paper contributes to the on-going debate about the relative importance of economic and amenity-related location factors for attracting talent or members of the creative class. While Florida highlights the role of amenities, openness and tolerance, others instead emphasize the role of regional productions systems, local labour markets and externalities. The paper sheds light on this issue by analysing the changes in the spatial distribution of four groups of artists over time: visual artists, performing artists, musicians and writers. Little evidence is found for amenity-related factors influencing the growth rates of regional artist populations. Moreover, artists are shown to be a heterogeneous group inasmuch as the relative importance of regional factors significantly differs between artistic branches.

This paper investigates the networking behaviour of biotechnology start-ups in peripheral locations. The aim is to understand whether the conditions found in this type of environment introduce some specificities in the networking process, namely in network building and early mobilization to access key resources. The paper compares biotechnology start-ups in Portugal and in Southern Italy, focusing on relationships with research organizations and on the relevance assumed by international connections, and investigating the role played by entrepreneurs' personal networks. The research identified some common features that diverge from the typical biotechnology start-up behaviour and can be regarded as firms' adaptive responses to the conditions faced. Notwithstanding the frequent presence of close connections with local research organizations-that often play functions that go much beyond that of a knowledge source-the local environment is a lesser determinant for a substantial proportion of firms than would be expected in start-ups. A distinctive feature of these firms is an extensive reliance on foreign sources, for different purposes and from the very early stages. Entrepreneurs' personal networks are found to be instrumental, both to identify and obtain knowledge in the vicinity and to support the establishment of more complex distant relationships info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

This paper assesses the relevance of the knowledge base conceptualization and the relationship between the symbolic knowledge base and the spatiality of knowledge flow in the context of the animation industry in Ireland. The paper draws on findings from a study of four innovation case studies. In broad terms, the findings provide further support for the applicability of the knowledge base approach and the association of the animation industry with the symbolic knowledge base. However, in relation to the spatiality of knowledge flows, the findings contradict the theoretically deduced postulations. Nearly all of the knowledge sources are located overseas. In addition, the study finds little support for the role of local buzz in knowledge flow. The local animation community “buzzes globally” at international events.

It is argued in this paper that the nature of innovation networks can vary substantially with regard to the type of knowledge that is critical for innovation. Subject to the knowledge base of an industry, networks between companies can differ in various aspects, such as their geographical configuration, their structure, the type of actors holding a strategic position and the type of relations between actors. The paper comprises a conceptual discussion on social capital theory and networks, followed by a theoretically informed discussion on differentiated knowledge bases and innovation networks, which is subsequently illustrated with empirical material. The empirical analysis is based on social network analysis in association with exclusive data about patterns of cooperation and knowledge exchange in a number of regional industries located in different parts of Europe. The findings suggest that networks in analytical industries are not much constrained by geographical distance; knowledge is exchanged in a highly selective manner between research units and scientists in globally configured epistemic communities. Synthetic industries source knowledge within nationally or regionally configured networks between suppliers and customers, and within communities of practice. Symbolic industries rely on knowledge that is culturally defined and highly context specific, resulting in localised networks that are temporary and flexible in nature.

This paper aims to show the levels of local and regional embeddedness of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (GMB) as well as its effects on the position of Bilbao within global networks. Although it is often said that the GMB as an international art franchise did not fit well with the local traditions, values and culture of Bilbao and the Basque Country, this paper attempts to show that the GMB is quite embedded into the local and regional context of institutions, private agents and policies. This effect increases with the growing recognition of the potential effects of the GMB on the creative and service industry in the Bilbao region. On the other hand, there is also an increasing tendency for Bilbao and the GMB to be included in global networks, as can be demonstrated by the branding effect of the GMB on the attraction of tourists or the increasing importance of the term “Bilbao” in semantic networks. The authors conclude with some recommendations on strengthening both the regional embeddedness and th...

In Dutch planning, there has always been an important role for spatial concepts. Their role has arguably changed with the recent decentralization of planning to the regional and local level. At the national level, guiding concepts of a more procedural nature have replaced the more substantive and place-based spatial concepts, leaving more room for regional and local interpretation. At the regional and local level, spatial concepts are still in use, but this seems to be in a more communicative, negotiating and developing role than before. In this paper, we analyse how place concepts are used to exercise power, mobilize recourses and frame meaning over the use of the peri-urban areas, in the changing Dutch planning context. This paper focuses on two competing place concepts for overlapping green urban fringe areas in The Hague Region, which have been promoted by different actor constellations and which represent different visions about the meaning of these peri-urban areas. The case study allows conclusions about the changing role of spatial concepts in Dutch spatial planning. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Fostering border relations among the people in border regions seems a precondition for the future envisagement and success of cross-border regions and European Integration. Related studies to border relations observe the weakness of these informal border contacts and relations. However, weak ties represent an opportunity for interaction, and little has been said about how they might play in the construction and performance of institutional cross-border cooperation (CBC). In this work, we examine the nature of personal border networks of professionals working in CBC and how they are interconnected with the institutional CBC. This paper is based on a mainly qualitative research of two different border regions: Andalusia, Algarve and Alentejo (AAA) and South Finland and Estonia (SFE). Nevertheless, the methodology is multi-method, using semi-structured interviews, with specific questions for applying a social network analysis. Conclusions point out different patterns of border relations in both border regions. In AAA, most of the cross-border relations are weaker and related to their professional involvement in institutional CBC. In SFE, border relations rely both on working and personal reasons. All of these cross-border relations imply a significant value as opportunities for social capital construction across the borders and, hence, for greater interaction and cross-border integration., Primary data used in this paper are part of the Teresa Gonza´lez-Go´mez Doctoral Thesis in process, titled “Social Capital Applied to Cross-border Cooperation: A Comparative study of two border regions”, supervised by Estrella Gualda, and supported by the Regional Ministry of Innovation, Science and Enterprise (Government of Andalusia,Spain) granting one of the co-authors with a Pre-doctoral Scholarship. This paper has also been partially supported by the ESEIS, Social Studies and Social Intervention Research Centre (University of Huelva, Spain, www.eseis.es), by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT, Portugal) and the Centre for Spatial and Organizational Cross-Border Networks 15 Downloaded by [Universitaria De Huelva], [Teresa González-Gómez] at 02:44 02 May 2013 Dynamics (CIEO, University of Algarve, Portugal, www.cieo.pt). At the same time, this work is partially integrated in the project “Territorial Analysis and Cross-border Cooperation of Euroregion Alentejo–Algarve–Andalusia: Historical balance and potentialities for the new European period/frame 2014–2020”, University of Huelva. Research project of Excellence (Call 2011). Financed by the Regional Ministry of Economy, Innovation and Science, Secretary of Universities, Research and Technology, Andalusia (Government of Andalusia, Spain).

Recent, dramatic spatial development trends have contributed to the consolidation of a unique territorial governance landscape in the Baltic States. The paper examines the transformation of this evolving institutional landscape for planning practice and knowledge, which has been marked by the disintegration of Soviet institutions and networks, the transition to a market-based economy and the process of accession to the EU. It explores the evolution of territorial knowledge channels in the Baltic States, and the extent and nature of the engagement of actors' communities with the main knowledge arenas and resources of European spatial planning (ESP). The paper concludes that recent shifts in the evolution of these channels suggest the engagement of ESP has concentrated among epistemic communities at State and trans-national levels of territorial governance. The limited policy coordination across a broader spectrum of diverse actors is compounded by institutionally weak and fragmented professional co...

Over the last few decades, the term urban shrinkage has come to be accepted as a valid concept in international academic circles, and has gradually gained importance, with its causes the subject of well-documented discussion. While previous discussions of urban shrinkage have directed attention to cities shrinking as a whole, recent research started to recognize the case of shrinkage in growing cities and regions. As such, recent discussions of urban shrinkage indicate that patterns of shrinkage vary considerably from city to city, and from sub-region to sub-region, with the importance of local dynamics in responding to changing economic pressures given much consideration. Recent studies have tended to disregard the role of government policies and strategies put in place to facilitate the adaptation of the urban economies to the new conditions. Taking Izmir as an example, being a fast-growing metropolitan region in Turkey, this paper presents evidence of government policies and strategies aimed at enhancing the development of peripheral areas that have led to shrinkage of the metropolitan core. This paper focuses on this experience and discusses its implications.

Many international differences can be experienced in shopping spaces on both sides of a national border. Other languages, unfamiliar goods and unknown spatial codes are only a few of the physical-functional and socio-cultural differences that could cause exciting and stimulating situations but could also be perceived as problematic and deterring. This paper analyses perceptions, motivations and practices of cross-border (non-)shoppers and provides insights into ways in which people from cross-border regions deal with differences and the extent to which they interact across borders. The aim is to both theoretically and empirically substantiate the dynamic concept of (un)familiarity by scrutinizing the impact of “push”, “pull”, “keep” and “repel” factors on shopping (im)mobility in the Dutch-German Rhine-Waal Euroregion. These factors are seen as rooted in dynamic processes of constructing, deconstructing and reconstructing differences between places on both sides of the border. In so doing, attention is paid to changing shopping practices and motivations and influencing changing perceptions of international differences. As such, the paper also discusses “familiarization processes” in crossborder regions. The concluding section provides critical reflections on the current European policy approach towards cross-border regional development. In fact, the paper ends with a plea for more instead of less borders, as borders are markers of international differences which could promote cross-border mobility.