National competitiveness has become a misnomer, as competitiveness is increasingly understood as a regional phenomenon and regions in turn are not confined to the boundaries of the nation state. This focusses on the port of Rotterdam and its hinterland, i.e. the Lower Rhine and the Ruhr area.
Many communities and regions are being left behind in the new economic order. The book starts with the premise that, in today's knowledge-based economy, innovation is key, but that only seems to happen in larger urban centres. It seems that smaller centres and peripheral regions can only look forward to decline and eventual irrelevance, but this need not be the case.Wherever there are people, there is the potential to innovate. This book demonstrates that innovators are not limited to inventors and entrepreneurs. Each innovation starts with an idea that is nurtured by its creator and incubated by the larger community. The book identifies different categories of creators such that many readers will recognize themselves as being, in fact, creators. And it identifies different ways of coming up with ideas, which may validate how creators spend their time. It identifies ways to judge whether ideas should be pursued or not and looks at the steps required to turn an idea into an innovation. Many declining communities and regions around the world have resuscitated themselves by being creative and innovative - sometimes in startling ways. This book will provide some ideas to help any region reinvent itself. But having a few individuals with good ideas is not sufficient to revive a region. This book also shows how effective leaders are needed to help stimulate more creative activity and, just as importantly, to coordinate the necessary resources to turn creative ideas into innovations.The book will appeal to students, scholars and researchers of economic, regional, social and sustainable development, innovation, public policy and economic geography, as well as practitioners and policymakers concerned with regional development and regional innovation policies.
The smart city concept, together with the growing importance of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals, has a significant impact on city management and governance. This book examines real cases of smart city management across Asia and Europe.It covers regions such as Iceland, Estonia, Poland, Germany, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Vietnam to systemize the knowledge in the field. It evaluates smart cities' efficiency and analyzes and assesses the standards, norms and best practices involved in the management of smart cities. The book answers questions such as what it is that makes smart cities stand out, why some countries in Europe and Asia have more smart cities than others, whether smart cities support the economy and GDP growth of the country, and what the main determinants of forming smart cities in Asia and Europe are. It also evaluates whether smart cities secure higher standards of living for their citizens as compared to regular cities. Many theoretical concepts and theories are developed and then verified from the perspective of Western economies. Central Eastern European and Asian countries are frequently overlooked, thus, examining the smart city idea from the viewpoint of non-Western economies offers a fresh insight into the concept and its adaptation and evolution. The range of issues analyzed in the book are multilayered and approached from a wide array of perspectives, from macroeconomics to management, finance and technology, and public policy. Thus, the book is addressed to researchers, students, and academics who specialize in sustainable and regional development, economic geography, and management. It will also be of interest to urban planners, environmental scientists, and policymakers.
This book constitutes a novel contribution, combining recent theoretical developments and empirical contributions, as well as the recent and latest trends and challenges on the issue of Forgotten Spaces. Forgotten Spaces - like the Forgotten Regions, in particular - are spaces that in potential can and do create significant value (if their resources are properly rediscovered) and create many potential costs (if these spaces are increasingly neglected by economic agents). The editors have identified a gap in current research because there is not enough empirical evidence about these places, as well as about the role of their actors.Abandoning regions can lead to, for example, pollution, uncontrolled forest fires, vandalism heritage deterioration, and potentially untreated industrial facilities, carrying potential costs not only in environmental sustainability, but also in values such as landscape aesthetics.Thus, this book reflects on the dimensions of the identification of such Forgotten Spaces, on the design of policies focused on minimizing associated costs and on the scope of programs to promote these areas, not only for upgrading them but also for promoting their environmental sustainability. The comparative approach of the empirical part also allows knowledge and experience from diverse longitudes and latitudes. The editors highlight the richness of the experience of Latin American countries, the polarization and interesting experiences from several sector rediscovered in Europe, as well as the holistic cases coming from several African experiences.This book will attract the attention of academicians, politicians and ultimately the attention of all decision-makers who most likely are forgetting many of the Spaces around them.
The shortcomings of traditional regional policies led to a major policy. Thus, regions have become more active in the design and implementation of policies, following a bottom-up approach and involving the participation of the local community in strategic planning, as opposed to the traditional top-down method. This book addresses regional development theories and policies, with a special focus on forgotten places, and raises emerging questions about recent theoretical advances, as well as trends and challenges in the field. It examines two main and related issues: the crucial role of regional actors for development and the role of Forgotten Spaces. It emphasizes the spatial/territorial approaches from different theoretical perspectives, underlining place-based approaches and compares the experiences of both successful and failed cases, attempting to identify lessons and policy recommendations, as well as adding empirical evidence to this field. The different cases presented, which focus on Forgotten Spaces, allow the reader to assess the role of different actors for regional development as well as some sectoral approaches. While there is a clear focus on European countries with different geographical, institutional and sociocultural characteristics, the book also examines good and bad examples of regional development and policies related to forgotten places from different regions worldwide, including developed and developing countries.The book benefits from contributions from over 20 authors from different nationalities, and a rich diversity of case studies, approaches and methods of discussion. The authors discuss practical examples and more complex theoretical approaches, involving techniques of spatial analysis, spatial econometrics, social networks, content analysis as well as regional planning techniques. The book will appeal to an interdisciplinary audience and will provide academicians, politicians, and policy designers with original and detailed analyses.
This book provides a comprehensive analysis of long-term changes in the car market of an emerging economy, with a focus on its spatial and temporal dimensions. Poland, the case study in question, represents a unique "laboratory of automobile revolution" during the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The volume brings to the fore several key aspects of the car market, such as car ownership, markets for new cars, import of second-hand cars, car use, electromobility and environmental impact. Many of them are the subject of a global debate in the context of achieving sustainable development goals. Others, meanwhile, point to the unique nature of transformations related to the car market in Poland. Altogether, consideration of these aspects enriches the international literature with new results and findings that will broaden the field of discussion on the car market onto the emerging economies, especially those of Central and Eastern Europe.The book combines the results of quantitative and qualitative research. The former is based on a big data set (ca. 40 million vehicles) and the latter on an in-depth social survey (questionnaire interviews with more than 4,000 drivers). The discussion of the geography of automobile revolution is linked to other social, economic and spatial phenomena and processes (e.g. urban sprawl or rural marginalisation; consumer decisions and the evolution of quality of life; and the development of individual entrepreneurship or environmental protection), as well as to transport, tax and customs policies. The analysis of the dynamics of change pays particular attention to the role of "critical junctures", such as the collapse of the communist system, EU membership, the world financial crisis (2007-2009) and first period of COVID-19 pandemic (2020-2021).The book will be of interest to scholars, students and practitioners dealing with transport research, geography of transportation, spatial economy, urban and regional planning and sustainability studies, and for car hobbyists.
The book opens by developing a theoretical framework and then presents a range of international case studies, exploring the experiences of the service hub cities of Dublin, Bratislava, Budapest, Prague and Cracow.
This is an experience-derived and evidence-based analysis of how sustainable development impacts the transformation of the economy and how the business environment influences economic transformation in the light of the sustainable development principles.
In today¿s globalized world, clusters are an important factor in explaining the different growth rates of firms, cities and regions. This book will be of interest to scholars and policymakers in economic geography, regional studies, entrepreneurship and international business.
In Australia, regions are not just a geographic category, they are also cultural. Being regional means being located outside the nation¿s capital cities and in the periphery of centres of power and influence. It is thus significantly different than its European or American counterparts. However, surprisingly little has been written about this unique dynamic; this book has been written to fill this gap.
The book opens by developing a theoretical framework and then presents a range of international case studies, exploring the experiences of the service hub cities of Dublin, Bratislava, Budapest, Prague and Cracow.
Smart Development in Smart Communities discusses the cross-fertilization between smart specialization and cities in fostering smart development and its interactions with the macro, micro and meso-economic framework, from both a theoretical and applied perspective. Specific topics covered by the book include: human capital formation and utilization; centralized / decentralized industrial policies; innovation policies; collective learning; and the role of public utilities in sustaining smart development processes.
All over the world societies are facing a number of major problems. New developments, challenges and opportunities cause these issues and yet cases tell us that traditional spatial planning responses and tools are often insufficient to tackle these problems and challenges.This book draws together examples from across the globe ¿ from France to Australia; from Nigeria to the United States, as it observes international comparisons of the strategic planning process.
Research interest in the service sector has boomed in recent years as deindustrialisation became entrenched. Instead of being regarded as merely supplementary to traditional industry and manufacturing, services have generated progressively rising levels of growth in developed economies while at the same time coming to be recognised as major drivers of innovation. Knowledge Intensive Business Services and Regional Competitiveness charts the the rise of these influential actors and their influence on regional competitiveness.
In Australia, regions are not just geographic locations, they are also cultural ideas. Being regional means being located outside the nation''s capital cities and in the periphery of its centres of power and influence. Regional development in Australia is thus significantly different than its European or American counterparts. However, surprisingly little has been written about the unique dynamics of development in Australia''s regions; this book has been written to fill this gap. In recent decades the Australian government has made repeated policy efforts to achieve sustainable development in its non-metropolitan areas. Over the same period, those who live and work outside the nation''s capital cities have come to identify as regional Australians. This book takes an anthropological approach to understanding the particularities of regional development in Australia. It draws upon rich, on-the-ground observations of towns, industries, universities, development organisations, and communities across different settings to provide an in-depth understanding of the subject. This book will be of interest to researchers and practitioners concerned with regional development and policy.
Tourism has become one of the largest and fastest growing sectors in the world economy. Increasingly, research on tourism destinations has been at the centre of debates concerning destination competitiveness, governance, policies and destination management and marketing. This book investigates tourist destinations from two key perspectives and will appeal to academics, scholars and practitioners in tourism studies, management, urban and regional studies and economic geography, etc.
By drawing on fresh original research by a new generation of urban researchers located in research institutions across the global South and North, this book addresses old debates in new ways and raises new questions about sustainable urban development. It will be of interest to researchers, city managers and a wide range of policy actors in government, civil society and the private sector.
This book aims to link quality of life to related issues such as sustainability, equity, and subjective well-being. In the last few decades, urban quality of life has received increasing interest from policy makers who aim to make cities better places to live. In addition to the aim of improving quality of life, sustainable and equitable development is also often included in the policy agendas of decision makers.
This book explores the dynamics of place, location and territories from the perspective of an experience-based economy. It offers a valuable contribution to this new approach and provides insight into the unique planning and management challenges it faces.
This book explores the relationship between families, firms, and regions and the extent to which these relationships contribute to regional economic and social development.
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