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The research on agglomeration and pollution has not reached a consistent conclusion in recent years, and the relevant research mainly focuses on the manufacturing industry. This paper takes producer services agglomeration as the research object, integrates environmental regulation into the research framework, and use the inter-provincial panel data from 2003 to 2017 to explore the impact of producer services agglomeration on industrial pollution. Using system GMM and difference GMM method to build model to carry on the empirical analysis, the results indicate that the agglomeration of producer services through economies of scale and technology spill-over effect to reduce industrial pollution, environmental regulation has promoted the effect to the former, the interaction between producer services cluster and environmental regulation can promote industrial pollution emissions.

Digital finance (DF) is a technology-driven financial innovation. Its rise has had an impact on financial business, making finance begin to break through the limitations of time and space. As the core content of the modern economy, the development of the financial industry provides important support for the healthy development of the real economy, the improvement of resource allocation efficiency, and the emergence and growth of emerging business formats. It plays an incomparable role in the development of our country’s national economy. As a product of financial development to a certain extent, financial agglomeration is an important symbol of high-quality financial development. As a hot topic in finance, DF and financial agglomeration have research enthusiasm and research significance. This article aims to study the agglomeration and development of the Internet digital financial industry under the background of big data. Based on the analysis of the characteristics of digital financial agglomeration and the effects of financial agglomeration, with the help of location entropy method, it analyzes the case of 5 regions in a certain region, sorts out the mechanism of digital finance in the region to promote the development of financial agglomeration, and provides a reference for the development of other regions. The case analysis results show that the development of DF in the region has a positive correlation with the degree of financial agglomeration, and the development of DF has promoted the deepening of financial agglomeration.

Transport, including agglomeration transport, is one of the most important factors determining economic development. Developed and effective broadly understood transport infrastructure, i.e., both road and transport means contributes to strengthening social, economic, and spatial cohesion and contributes to the increase of competitiveness within the global economy. However, the development of the infrastructure referred to also has negative effects, such as high emissions of noise, dust, carbon dioxide, and other gases harmful to health and the environment. Achieving a balance between the ability of transport to serve economic development and respect for the natural environment and preservation of quality of life in the future, therefore, requires changes in the approach to public transport. This can be done, among others by increasing the number and share of passengers using public transport as well as by investing in low- and zero-emission vehicles: hybrid, gas and electric. Due to the fact that buses are currently the most popular and the most commonly used means of public transport, the present state of electromobility in Polish cities is shown, with an indication of electric buses and the most important factors stimulating its development.

Rail transport is becoming an increasingly common mode of transport supporting agglomeration/metropolitan traffic. It is affected by a variety of factors, such as substantial degree of punctuality and safety, possibility of transporting a significant number of passengers at the same time, limited negative impact on the natural environment and the quality of being independent from road congestion. The emerging metropolitan rail networks can effectively counteract the uncontrolled development of individual transport, thus promoting the use of public transport in handling passenger traffic in urban and metropolitan areas.

Beneficiation of high-ash coals has been a topic of great concern around the world. There has been considerable research aimed at development of highly effective yet economically viable ways to perform coal beneficiation. At present, coal cleaning is primarily accomplished through physical separation of mineral matter from coal particles. However, the known processes like jig, density separation and froth flotation typically demineralizes coarse coal particles. The only two techniques which can handle coal fines are froth floatation and oil agglomeration; nevertheless froth flotation fails for ultra-fine coals (

This chapter explores the role of the Big Four accountancy and the World Bank in honing “infrastructure” into a tool for furthering capital accumulation. Public–Private Partnerships (much promoted by the Big Four) are critical to this agenda, since they ensure guaranteed high rates of profit. Firms such as KPMG have also been active in facilitating mega infrastructure corridor plans and advising companies on the opportunities they offer for increasing profits. The corridors envisage the wholesale re-engineering of economic geographies to enable capital to benefit from the free flow of goods and the agglomeration of cheap labor along corridor routes. Labor relations are being fundamentally transformed as supply chains are increasingly subjected to the disciplining “logic of logistics.”

The construction of “smart city” is a new urbanization development mode that promotes intensive, intelligent, green and low carbon, aiming at enhancing the innovation capability of the city and further promoting the high integration of industrialization, urbanization and informatization. Based on the panel data of 279 prefecture-level cities in China from 2005 to 2015, this paper uses PSM-DID method to comprehensively investigate the impact characteristics and mechanism of “smart city” construction on urban innovation capability. The main conclusions are as follows: First of all, the construction of “smart city” can significantly promote the city’s innovation capability. Secondly, mechanism analysis shows that the construction of “smart city” can effectively promote economic agglomeration and promote the level of urban informatization construction, thus enhancing the innovation capability of the city. Finally, the analysis of urban heterogeneity shows that in cities with high level of human capital, high intensity of scientific and technological financial expenditure and high level of financial development, smart city construction has a more significant effect on improving urban innovation capability.

Agglomeration economies are benefits that firms obtain when they locate close to one another or are constrained spatially. Tourism is heavily reliant on agglomeration economies rather than mere resource endowments. Policy formation requires an understanding of how tourism agglomeration impacts entrepreneurship within regions. In this chapter, we focus on how agglomeration economies impact enterprise birth and death rates within the tourism sector in Ireland using a comprehensive dataset on tourism firm births and deaths. Agglomeration economies have been studied in the area of regional economic growth and prosperity, but less is known about the extent to which spatial agglomeration economies affect regional firm births and deaths in the tourism sector. Our results provide evidence of positive spatial dependence in regional tourism enterprise births and deaths. Co-location of a diverse set of complementary enterprises fosters greater tourism enterprise births. Greater local specialisation rather than diversity lowers regional tourism enterprise deaths.

Everyday different powder products produced by a wide variety of industries such as food, cosmetics, detergents, agricultural, pharmaceuticals, mineral, nutraceuticals, and chemical industry. However, in the vast majority of cases, powder manufactures struggle to improve the properties of the powdered products by different modification methods. Size enlargement techniques such as agglomeration are the efficient methods for lowering dusting or product losses in the process line and during handling and storage, reducing lump and cake formation, improving flow properties, decreasing processing costs, increasing production efficiency, decreasing wetting, disperse and dissolve times in an aqueous liquid, improve handling and storage properties by densifying the products, decreasing dispersion of powder in the environment and lowering inhalation, correctly designing processes and types of equipment, and controlling powder properties such as porosity and solubility. Chemical, physical and functional properties of powdered products can be modified by different agglomeration and non–agglomeration processes. In this chapter, some of these methods have been outlined and their effects of instant properties of powdered food have been discussed.

Cities are our greatest invention, an arrangement of homes and businesses that drastically increases the speed of interaction. This interaction then leads to numerous benefits, which is the primary subject of this chapter. We discuss first agglomeration economics—the benefits to firms and people productivity of being in clusters (agglomerations). Our discussion follows the traditional classification of benefits into sharing, matching, and learning. Then, we discuss research that shows that proximity also increases the possibilities for consumption, with a brief case study of restaurant variety in rural and urban areas. Finally, the chapter ends by arguing that the demographic forecasts are clear, urbanization is coming, and humanity therefore must turn its focus to the crucial question of what kind of urban world we want to live in.

Due to the reduction of traditional oil reserves and price volatility, there is a risk in the supply of raw materials for petrochemical and refining enterprises. In order to make the most optimal management decision that contributes to the continuation of the life cycle of these enterprises, cognitive technologies contributing to the development of communications between participants are needed. The authors propose scenario models for enterprises of the agro-industrial and fuel and energy complexes, focusing on the enterprises operating in petrochemical and oil refining industries in particular. The authors argue that focusing on interactions between organizational structures within the cluster and the creation of a cooperative platform in it are of the highest importance. The purpose of such a platform is to solve specific tasks of the cluster strategy that contribute to the production of an innovative range of commodity products (biofuels in particular). The cognitive approach helps to reduce the cognitive dissonance between enterprises, especially during a crisis, and to stabilize prices on diesel fuel, which, in turn, slows inflation. The introduction of innovations reduces the cognitive distance between intellectual workers and production. It also contributes to the development of agglomeration of territories, the continuation of the life cycle of petrochemical and oil refining enterprises, and the increase of economic growth in the region and the quality of life of people.

The research aims to explore the drivers and barriers that influence the inter-firm competitive collaboration within clusters. In this view, a case study on the emerging apparel cluster in the Republic of Moldova was accomplished. It focused particularly on identifying the types of existing collaboration linkages between firms and evaluating the context-specific factors that inhibit or encourage these linkages. The results suggest that despite the relatively dense agglomeration of firms within the emerging cluster, this does not translate into extensive collaboration networks. Entrepreneurs manifest hesitation toward collaboration and the lack of relational capital, as a common feature of most post-socialist economies, remains a big issue in making the cluster work. This represents a missed opportunity for cluster performance, specifically as the social capital crucially matters for knowledge and innovation to be transferred more readily.

When Chinese firms make OFDI decisions, their investment motives and layouts are often influenced by peers or trends, resulting in investment agglomeration and a “herd effect”, which can alter the knowledge of a host country’s risk, influence the risk attitudes of the Chinese firms, and affect their foreign investment decisions. To quantify the Chinese Outward Foreign Direct Investment (OFDI) herd effect, four dynamic indexes were developed at both industry and country levels based on a combined dataset from 2004 to 2015 for 1207 Chinese OFDI events. Data mining was then used to determine the links between Chinese OFDI volume and the herd effect and to examine the heterogeneous characteristics of the host countries, industries and firms. Using a random forest method, 50 decision attributes that affected the firms’ investment volume were identified, which were then incorporated in an optimized BP neural network to generate a Chinese OFDI decision-making model. It was found that: (1) there was an obvious herd effect in Chinese OFDI associated with host country and industry selection; (2) when a firm invested, it tended to choose a host country that has a smaller political risk and higher degree of labor freedom and globalization; (3) large firms with low efficiency tended to make larger OFDI decisions.

Based on the bay area economic theory, this paper takes the mechanism of regional agglomeration and metropolitan circle effect as the framework; utilizes humanity-oriented entrepreneurial and innovative spirit as an example to examine the construction and regional agglomeration of GHM-Greater Bay Area (GHM-GBA) being the influence of the development factor upon the regional economic development of heterogeneous service trade export firms. By means of the humanity-oriented entrepreneurial and innovative spirit effect, we construct a specialized level empirical model of the fuzzy association location Corpus-Metaphor-WordNet schema with Markov & Bayesian thought; data mining-radar monitoring software is applied for analysis. The empirical test suggests the main research results of the heterogeneous service trade export enterprises using humanity-oriented entrepreneurial and innovative spirit to improve competitiveness by virtue of three main implementation paths: GHM-GBA drive, regional agglomeration drive and industry clusters drive, based on which a conclusion is drawn with relevant suggestions.

Uni- and bi-variate crystallization processes are considered that are modeled with population balance systems (PBSs). Experimental results for uni-variate processes in a helically coiled flow tube crystallizer are presented. A survey on numerical methods for the simulation of uni-variate PBSs is provided with the emphasis on a coupled stochastic-deterministic method. In this method, the equations of the PBS from computational fluid dynamics are solved deterministically and the population balance equation is solved with a stochastic algorithm. With this method, simulations of a crystallization process in a fluidized bed crystallizer are performed that identify appropriate values for two parameters of the model such that considerably improved results are obtained than reported so far in the literature. For bi-variate processes, the identification of agglomeration kernels from experimental data is briefly discussed. Even for multi-variate processes, an efficient algorithm for evaluating the agglomeration term is presented that is based on the fast Fourier transform (FFT). The complexity of this algorithm is discussed as well as the number of moments that can be conserved.

Cities in the modern world are competing for resources – material, financial, scientific and, of course, human. They need investors, specialists, labour force for low qualification jobs with low wages and also tourists to adore their beauties and to bring money into the budgets. The important role in the attraction process is played by the city marketing and branding which are also some kind of resources giving new development possibilities and chances in the hard competition. It is a very new trend for modern cities to become “smart” and it is a question if “smartness” makes the city brand more attractive for various user groups or these groups are indifferent to the image of a “smart city” making the decision about the investing into the city, coming to live in this city or choosing the city as a place of interest. The situation gets even more complicated in the regions of mega-cities because of their size and complicated structure. They are not ordinary cities in a “normal” sense of the word but huge agglomerations. To make the agglomeration “smart” and to reflect this characteristic in a brand is a difficult task. The problem is not less important for St. Petersburg than for other European cities and agglomerations.

Compression tests and models are commonly used to understand the densification characteristics of metal, pharmaceuticals, agriculture, and food. Compression models help reveal the behavior of biomass grinds or particles during pelleting and can help to optimize the pressures required to manufacture a quality pellet. Pellets are formed by using either pressure agglomeration or compaction processes in which the particles are bound together with or without binders. The compression models expressing the relationship between pressure and time during the compaction of different raw materials are available in the literature. This chapter will focus on the various compression models and their suitability for different biomass feedstocks. This chapter also focus on how response surface methodology and advanced computational methods can be used for densification process modeling and optimization.

The paper presents results of preliminary tests of selected biomass types on the basis of which it is possible to assess their agglomeration properties. The research material was the biomass commonly used as a raw material for the production of compacted solid biofuels. Used raw materials was widely considered as: easy to a pressure agglomeration (softwood—pine), difficult, straw kind raw material (miscanthus), and relatively little studied, in the context of the pressure agglomeration, raw material (cup plant). Has been developed and presented a course of action which allows in a parametric manner to classify a different kind of biomass in terms of its agglomeration potential. The presented method allows to assign the tested type of biomass to the proposed groups. This should give information which of the tested types of biomass has best features of the material promoting compaction and which of them has the characteristics of the material which made it hard to agglomerate. The developed method allows to assess the pro-agglomeration potential of a given type of biomass, omitting in this assessment the impact of moisture content and the degree of fragmentation of the raw material. It allows to parametrically indicate whether a given biomass can be used in the compacted solid biofuels production process as a binder, basic material or difficult material requiring the addition of a binder.

Analysis of the smoothness flows of public transport vehicles on selected tram and bus lines has been presented. The need of priority services for public transport systems in agglomeration ITS system has been justified. The concept of the logical architecture of ITS for urban agglomeration area has been presented too.

Mobility management in agglomerations requires an integrated approach. For this purpose, Metropolitan Association was established in the Upper Silesia Agglomeration, which is polycentric in nature, with over 2 million inhabitants living in several dozen cities here. Metropolitan Association began to operate on 1 January 2018, after several months of organizational work. It has its own separate (although small) budget. The first task is to carry out the tariff and ticket integration of public transport in the Agglomeration area. However, several redistributive actions have also been taken: implementation of free travel on public transport for individuals under the age of 16 and financial support for municipality investment within the framework of the so-called Solidarity Fund in the amount of almost one-third of the Metropolitan Association budget. The efficiency and effectiveness of the presented organizational solution can only be assessed after a longer period; however, the activity of Metropolitan Association should already be analysed, because it is regarded as an organizational solution for the future, serving as model for other agglomerations.

Hubei Province is rich in tourism resources and plays an indispensable role in the development of tourism in the whole region of the Middle Triangle. Cultural tourism industry is a potential industry in modern service industry. Cluster effect plays a very important and positive role in promoting regional economic development and enhancing regional well-being. The market demand of cultural tourism in Hubei Province is vigorous and the development environment is good, but it is faced with such problems as the scattered elements of cultural tourism and the lack of prominent brand image. Based on the tourism resources and cultural tourism industry in Hubei Province, this paper studies the development of cultural tourism industry cluster in Hubei Province based on global tourism, and puts forward a global construction model of cultural tourism industry chain in Hubei Province. It promotes the development of cultural tourism industry cluster through the upgrading of the industry structure, actively promotes the adjustment and transformation of the industrial structure of cultural tourism, and serves the regional economic construction and development.

According to the United Nations, 68% of the world’s population is expected to live in urban areas by 2050. This makes urban growth one of the cornerstones of sustainable development policies that must be implemented from the outset. Well-managed urbanization is essential to minimize environmental degradation and land use, while maximizing the benefits of agglomeration and ensuring the expected well-being of all city dwellers. On the other hand, it is equally important that these growth dynamics interface systematically with ongoing climate change and its expected effects on the urban environment. Local climate regulation is a crucial urban ecosystem service as it directly affects the quality of urban life. Although its link with soil sealing and land-use change is theoretically known, it is worth explaining this relationship in terms of significant parameters of both altered surfaces and type of urban expansion.

This paper studies multiple aspects of modeling user preference in a heterogeneous environment, where different individuals describe their level of comfort with the temperatures in different rooms in a building. The study shows that sampling based on fuzzy clustering provides the best approach for addressing the imbalance resulting from limited feedback points. Another issue addressed in the paper is a comparison of models based on agglomerated dataset for the entire building versus datasets for individual rooms. Ideally, personalized models for individual rooms should provide the best models. However, the number of feedback points for individual rooms is much smaller resulting in even larger imbalance in data. In many diagnostic situations in engineering and health sciences, recalling the critical decisions is more important than the prediction accuracy. The paper studies the quality of modeling by maximizing recall versus maximizing the AUC of models.

For successful product development and production of nanocosmetics, the interplay between material properties, formulation, process equipment, and process parameters must carefully be understood. Agglomeration or aggregation state of the starting material and its breakage behavior in combination with the desired product fineness define the necessary process equipment and its applied process parameters. Formulation with additives is crucial for the process performance as well as for product stability. Equipment should be operated in optimal parameter settings to combine the advantages of low energy consumption, high productivity, high product quality, and low product contamination. To realize complex nanocosmetic products, such as nanoparticle-loaded nanoemulsion droplets, process integration, and application of microsystem technology can assist.

The share of individual motorization in everyday commuting still increases. This situation is dictated by the fact that alternative ways of urban transportation are still not competitive, especially due to the time and convenience of moving in a “door-to-door” relation. Railways are the fastest means of agglomeration transport; however, very often the time benefits achieved during the travel are lost at interchange points. Thus, one of the key factors is railway stations and stops, which very often are a barrier to pedestrian traffic and do not fully utilize their integration potential in the passenger transport system. The aim of the chapter is to present a new Railways Stations Strategy with a new categorization of railway stations managed by Polish State Railways (PKP SA) and to show the contribution of this strategy to creating the competitiveness of alternative solutions in urban transport in relation to individual motorization.

Japanese regional capitals—such as Sapporo, Sendai, Hiroshima, and Fukuoka—have rapidly grown since the 1950s. These cities, in addition to the former six largest cities (Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, Yokohama, Kyoto, and Kobe), have become metropoles. The main driving force behind the remarkable development of regional capitals was not industrialization but the agglomeration of branch offices headquartered in Tokyo or Osaka: These cities are now referred to as “branch-office economy cities.” However, during the latter half of the 1990s, branch agglomeration in regional capitals stopped increasing and began to decrease. Consequently, regional capitals needed to explore ways other than development to achieve hierarchical inter-city linking with Tokyo as the apex. We propose a way to expand the city network of horizontal intercity linkages focusing on individual cities. The network is called the “individual city-centered network.” Actors that develop these networks are various entities—such as government agencies, companies, civil-society groups, citizens, and travelers—operating in the city. To sustain urban vitality, we conclude that it would be necessary to understand the actual conditions of the networks inside and outside of the city and to develop an environment in which to expand them.

This chapter investigates the determinants of the location of MNEs’ overseas R&D activities, by focusing on two major drivers. On the one hand, external location factors lead the firm to separate its activities along the value chain and geographically disperse these activities in different locations. On the other hand, the R&D location choice may be driven by the existence of internal (intra-firm) linkages that motivate firms to locate their value chain activities in the same location (intra-firm co-location). Using data from the fDi Markets database, the study examines 2580 location decisions of new R&D greenfield investments made by MNEs in 110 global cities worldwide, over the period 2003–2014. Results from Conditional and Mixed Logit econometric models reveal that both external and internal factors matter. Findings confirm the strong role of external agglomeration economies, but also suggest that previous R&D and production activities of the same MNE increase the probability to locate R&D in a given global city.\ud \ud

Increasing problems resulting from the growing mobility and travel elongation of the suburban area inhabitants force to search for solutions that would help sustainable transport development. The process of sustainable development supports integration of various transport modes. The case study of the integration of public transport modes operating within the Krakow agglomeration area can be presented as an example of a good practice for integration of rail with bus systems. The article presents solutions applied in the field of railway connection integration with bus lines. It also presents the degree of the use of bus lines in integration with the railway connection.

Mobility preferences of residents of a specific area have a significant impact on the shaping of transport systems on a microscopic and macroscopic scale. Preference data is used to improve existing systems or design new ones that have an impact on improving the living standards of residents. This condition is one of the transport postulates. In order to present the analysis data on mobility preferences of the inhabitants of the Upper Silesian agglomeration were used.

The article presents the characteristics of the specifications enabling the use of a dual-system tram in the Upper Silesian Agglomeration. Technical and socio-economic specifications have been taken into account. The dual-system tram is a system of public passenger transport connecting the subsystems of rail transport: train and tram. The most widespread model is the “Karlsruhe Model”, i.e. the model in which the vehicle is adapted to moving on the tram tracks and railway tracks.

This chapter presents how spatial network adjustment on transportation infrastructure can provide sufficient accessibility to the market and to the society. In particular, the argument focuses on a situation when a change of social dimension, such as long-run population decline, is observed. Since such areas face insufficient economies of scale to engage economic activity, it is also necessary to adjust the organisation of market areas. This methodological framework leads on to regional policy for establishing more effective spatial planning and design under the condition where local governments face severe budget constraint to provide public services.

The use and application of nanotechnology in the agricultural field is marked by utilization of fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, sensors, emulsions, and growth formulations with nanomaterials. These revolutionary products offer a wide range of promising options for improving the quantities and quality of plants and seeds grown for consumption, reducing the costs of production as well as negative impacts on the environment, to achieve sustainable food development. Because of their small size and physicochemical characteristics such as shape, surface chemistry, electrical charge, and agglomeration, nanofertilizers can be synthesized depending on the requirements and needs of each crop, using several kinds of material such as silver, titanium, zeolite, copper, silica, aluminum, carbon, zinc, and nitrogen. Different applications in this sector include desalination and removal of heavy metals from wastewater, reduction of soil erosion, tracking devices, targeted delivery of nutrients, and food safety. Nevertheless, before nanofertilizers are industrialized and commercialized, more studies should be carried out to evaluate their impact once they come into contact with human beings and the environment, to guarantee social safety while avoiding—as much as possible—toxic effects.

To reduce coke consumption in blast furnace ironmaking, this study proposed a new method of applying iron-coke briquette prepared using hematite powder and pulverized coal to protect coke in BF iron making. Results showed that, with a ratio of hematite to coal of 2.0, the iron-coke briquette could obtain a satisfying compressive strength of more than 1500 N both before gasification and after being gasified by CO2 for 1 h. The activation energy of the iron-coke briquette was 93–135 kJ/mol, which is lower than the coke and therefore could protect the coke in BF. The agglomeration and stratification of iron particles occur in the course of iron-coke briquette gasification and is beneficial to the improvement of the iron-coke briquette strength.

The regional development of the rural and semi-urban territories in the south of Europe presents serious difficulties that limit their capacity to generate enough welfare to attract and even less to retain population. The EU Common Agriculture Programs are focused on retaining population, with a soft approach to a service economy. Regional development policies for rural areas should not be a continuation of agriculture policies because the issues involved are different. Agglomeration economy, particularly in Industrial Districts, when focused on the circumstances of the rural, semi-rural and semi-urban territories, provide the right policy tool to generate the desired development and create the opportunities for growth encompassing the initiatives for innovation and entrepreneurship. To study the level of actual development and the capacity for industrial agglomeration in rural regions, an exploratory action was carried out in the territory of Valladolid, Spanish Autonomous Region of Castilla y Leon, from the end of 2011 during one year. The results are exposed in this document.

This paper taking Yangtze River Delta as an example, select Shanghai, Jiangsu province and Zhejiang province relevant data in 2004–2015; Use SPSS software run principal component analysis to research current situation of financial agglomeration in this three provinces (city); Through the establishment of panel data model, using least squares regression analysis, this paper studies the impact of fiscal expenditure on financial agglomeration in the Yangtze River Delta. The study shows that the fiscal expenditure of Yangtze River Delta has a significant positive correlation on financial Agglomeration. Then we put forward some suggestions for improving the status quo.

In this chapter the competitiveness of Accra, Ghana, is compared to cities in other regions of the world. Integrating the resource-based view of the firm with other perspectives, the study theorizes the city as a bundle of resources including knowledge and capabilities that can confer some advantages on firms located within it. The study utilizes data from the World Bank Enterprise Surveys to validate the arguments, bringing to the fore issues of resource advantages within specific locations, especially cities. In doing so, it makes a significant contribution, establishing a link between location theory (agglomeration and industrial complexes), the new economic geography, the new growth theory and resource-based theory (including capabilities).

Ambitious EU environmental policy decreasing CO2 emissions from combustion of fossil fuels impact on whole EU economy. Utilization of biomass as carbon neutral fuel helps to address these challenges Combustion and co-combustion of biomass, especially agriculture residue biomass, is associated with many technical problems such us: bed agglomeration, slagging and fouling, chlorine corrosion, decreased boiler efficiency which do not occur in conventional fossil fuels combustion. In this study six fuels were investigated on their deposition ability (2 types of straw, Miscanthus and herbaceous pellets, RDF—Refuse-Derived Fuel and reference coal). Biomasses were selected as the most commonly used in Polish and German power industry. Analysis comprised chlorine and sulphur contents of the fuel, ash oxides analysis and ash fusion temperatures. The main objectives of this work were to predict ash deposition tendency of chosen fuels using ash deposition indices and compare it with reference fuel. Next weaknesses of selected indicators are pointed out.

This chapter aims at theoretically linking entrepreneurship and institutional conditions in the case of “smart cities”. After discussing how agglomeration economies shape entrepreneurship through the main relevant body of literature, the chapter articulates on the concept of “smart city” and presents a newly collected dataset on a “smart city” for the Emilia-Romagna Region in Northern Italy. Elements that drive improvements in the “smartness” of a city are presented in order to derive policy implications and the theoretical linkages between entrepreneurship, particularly “green” entrepreneurship, and a peculiar case of such an institutional setting as a “smart city”. The absence of proper data to test for a bi-directional causal link between entrepreneurship and smart city is discussed as a limitation of the current analysis and as a research line that deserves further investigation.

Much of the literature on agglomeration emphasises labour mobility between firms as a potential source of externalities. However, while there is a large literature on interregional migration, the empirical literature on the employment-mobility of workers within the local arena is surprisingly thin. Furthermore, there is almost no empirical evidence on the relationship between local and non-local employment movements, especially across industries. In this paper we analyse how agglomeration of the high technology industry as well as regional amenities affects labour mobility. In order to do this we employ panel data on the regional and industrial labour mobility of the Finnish high technology firms and regional economies on a period of 1991–2007. Analysing this dataset allows us to identify the roles which the structure of the high technology sector, regional economic and amenity variables have played both in the inter-regional and inter-sectoral labour mobility of high technology workers over the industry life-cycle. Our findings confirm that the structure of the high technology sector as well as regional economic and amenity variables have an influence on the migration decisions of the high technology workers, and their roles vary in within-region and across-region mobility. In addition, the effects of the variables seem to vary at different stages of the industry life cycle.

The spatial concentration or agglomeration of economic activity leads to the emergence of externalities in the form of collective resource pools.

Another example of the industrial application of SVE technology for briquetting is the Coldry process, developed by the Australian Research Company Environment Clean Technology (ECT) for the agglomeration of the brown coal.

This chapter situates the socio-economic development of Tunxi since the mid-Ming Dynasty within a wider, global context of trade by examining its tea-making industry and the peripheral supporting sectors. The geographical advantages of Tunxi were converted into a business currency that had as much driven local urban expansion as had attracted a demographic influx of migrant workers from all over the country. In a nutshell, the core industry helped to conceive the urban embryo, which, when mature, would turn outwards to its suburbs for expansion and further development. The developed urban centre could not be sustained unless through the provision of a large number of consumption and financial services, with intensive land utilization due to the concentration of populations.

The central city drives the development of the surrounding cities through the agglomeration effect of producer services. This paper measures the clustering abilities of producer services in central city of the three urban agglomerations through the location quotient coefficient. Conclusions can be drawn as follows: the agglomeration effect of the central cities of “Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei” is the largest, followed by the “Yangtze River Delta” and the “Pearl River Delta”. Based on this, this paper puts forward some policy suggestions for the healthy development of the three major urban agglomerations.

This chapter investigates industrial clusters as building blocks of the Gauteng economy. As economic clusters are regarded as critical masses that are spatially concentrated, are somehow related, and impact one another as a result of their complementarities or similarities, such clusters reflect synergies between industries, suppliers and the public sector. The competitive advantages of such clusters are driven by agglomeration economies that ensure that firms benefit through availability of intermediate resources, relative lower costs of inputs, and increased multifactor productivity of management innovation, labour and capital inputs, for example. By applying principal component analysis to the Gauteng Social Accounting Matrix (GSAM), we identify six key industrial clusters for the Gauteng region. We further highlight inter-industry linkages within the dominant service clusters in the regional economy by means of a multiplicative decomposition model, the structural path analysis (SPA). These clusters are dominated by the Services and Trade cluster, which by itself, provided 68.5% of Gauteng’s regional employment, and contributed 55.9% to GVA, in 2015. These results will assist the relevant decision-makers in formulating and implementing appropriate strategies for economic growth and employment creation, leading to sustainable economic development in the Gauteng regional economy.

This chapter is an elaboration on a 4-stage model of cluster development (through incubation, nucleation, agglomeration and attrition) proposed in an earlier paper by the author based on an analysis of the inception and growth of the Bangalore ICT Cluster. Through a chronological analysis of several centuries of Bangalore’s history, this chapter identifies ‘intercultural interaction’ as the principal means of ‘incubation’, which made a significant contribution to the human capital development of the region, especially in terms of its technological and entrepreneurial capabilities. The city was therefore ready to receive (nucleate) and nurture the ICT industry that landed there due to a series of ‘negative pushes’ it experienced elsewhere. Agglomeration, therefore, was a natural consequence. The chapter further explains the process of cluster formation and agglomeration using an analogy of the chemical process of crystal formation and growth. Both of these involve a fairly long period of preparation (incubation) and a rather sudden and unexpected change within (nucleation) induced by changes in the external environment. The new entity thus formed will attract similar entities to itself and achieve fast growth under the nourishment provided by the internal environment already prepared and enriched by the long period of incubation.

This paper discusses the future of technology and its implications for regional agglomeration and related research. In regions with strong agglomeration economies, positive externalities generated by spatial proximity lead to higher productivity. Urban scale economies raise the productivity of people residing in dynamic cities. Firms benefit from regional clusters of similar firms. Now we are entering a second machine age, with potentially exponential growth in productivity based on pervasive, interconnected computing power, massive digital information, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and robotics. Productivity may depend more on the “cloud”-based advantage of machines, rather than “crowd”-based advantages of humans. Employment may fall with the automation of routine tasks. However, non-routine tasks requiring tacit knowledge may rise, given comparative advantages with machines. Machine learning and robotics will both substitute and complement employment. Agglomeration benefits may then accrue to regional employment based on non-routine tasks. Even so, the size and stability of agglomeration benefits will require further inquiry. With better measures of agglomeration, future research will potentially delve deeper into the three main sources of regional productivity from agglomeration: (1) better labor skill matching and local pooling; (2) more efficient input sharing along deeper and specialized supplier relationships; and (3) enhanced localized learning and knowledge flows.

Warsaw agglomeration rail transport comprising of tram and metro lines ensuring transport within Warsaw and suburban railway connections ensuring transport between a number of satellite cities and main Warsaw railway stations can be rearranged to achieve much better rail transport offer without enormous financing. The article proposes creation of a new services and points necessary investments showing that much better rail transport service is not only technically possible but also economically reasonable and feasible in relatively short time. Safety challenges associated with the proposed rearrangement are pointed and described together with the ways to meet them. The proposed solution allows operational improvement together with not only keeping rail transport high safety level but even lowering risk associated with different types of failures during extended rail service in future.

Along with various environmental concerns, Japan has an important policy issue arising from the development of its economy, which is how simultaneously to attain regional economic growth and energy efficiency. This study examined the impacts of agglomeration economies on energy efficiency of Japanese manufacturing industries. Using a prefecture-level panel data set from the Energy Consumption Statistics by Prefecture, this study reveals the following three empirical findings. First, productivity growth has improved energy efficiency, but not vice versa. Second, agglomeration economies, which are a driving force for productivity growth, have improved the energy efficiency of Japanese manufacturing industries. Finally, by agglomerating similar industries, localization economies are effective in improving energy efficiency in rural areas. The third finding is consistent with many previous studies claiming that agglomeration economies based on localization occur for many medium-sized cities. The result implies that an important policy direction for Japan will be to formulate medium-sized cities in rural areas than large metropolitan cities in terms of improving the energy efficiency of manufacturing industries.

Market liberalization in emerging economies has attracted a large number of multinational enterprises that possess advanced technological and managerial capabilities to enter the market. As domestic firms in these markets are mostly technologically and managerially backward, they are pressured to catch up by acquiring strategic resources and capabilities to compete with these multinationals in the home and overseas markets. This study discusses their catch-up strategies in the form of strategic linkages building through inward internationalization, compositional offering, agglomeration, and internationalization of research and development. Such discussion is then illustrated by the selected cases of Indian and Chinese firms. The study concludes with key implications for advanced economy firms as well as emerging economy firms and governments.

Today agglomerations are faced with a number of transport issues related to the increasing mobility, especially by car. Growing congestion and environmental pollution are forcing to search for solutions to encourage changes in travel behavior. One of the effective tools supporting public transport is the integration of different transport systems in urban areas. The case study of the railway line Wieliczka—Krakow Airport operating within Krakow agglomeration area can be presented as an example of good practice for integration of rail with other transport systems. The article presents the solutions in the field of infrastructural, organizational, financial and economic together with informational integration. It also presents the dynamics of the passenger flow volume as an effect of transport systems integration.