Re-thinking non-core regions: planning strategies and practices beyond growth

ABSTRACT

Periods of ongoing growth in the economy and demographics have come to a halt for many European regions for various reasons, challenging their economic development prospects. Despite the heterogeneous nature of stagnation, decline, peripheralization or even stigmatization to be found there, these configurations ‘beyond growth’ have in common that short-term ‘fire-fighting’ policy approaches aiming to foster regional economic growth face some important limitations. We argue that this has to do, among other things, with the overall direction of established and orthodox planning approaches that are predominantly based on growth-oriented paradigms and implicitly or explicitly work with dichotomous categories such as core–periphery and metropolitan versus non-metropolitan spaces; these do, however, not capture local realities in these cases. Using the notion of non-core regions, we plead for conceptualizing non-core regions and their regional economic development trajectories in different ways: thinking ‘beyond growth’. Such alternative ideas should be informed by alternative understandings of growth, development and sustainability in order to influence theories and concepts, but also to support new approaches to planning practice. To this aim, we discuss non-core regions from a social constructivist perspective, elaborating some points of departure for conceptualizing and practising regional planning ‘beyond growth’.     

Planning strategies and practices in non-core regions: a critical response

ABSTRACT

The development of non-core regions has attracted growing interest within the current debates of economic geography, regional studies and spatial planning. The divergence between economically successful core regions and less privileged non-core regions continues despite policy interventions aimed at tackling spatial disparities and income inequalities. While traditional growth-oriented policies raise concerns over their effectiveness and relevance beyond large cities and metropolitan regions, there is growing interest in exploring new research paths and policy options that are better able to address development challenges in non-core regions. Contributors to this special issue engage with these debates by reflecting on planning policies and practices in five European countries, paying special attention to identifying planning strategies for non-core regions. This paper argues that alternatives to growth-oriented models require additional conceptualization and analysis to translate values into policies and institutions.     

Economic resilience of metropolitan,old industrial,and rural regions in two subsequent recessionary shocks

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we focus on the question of how particular types of regions react to economic shocks. Drawing on a case study of Czech microregions, we aim to determine if the old industrial regions differ significantly from other types of regions (metropolitan, urban, rural) in (post)crisis economic development. Two aspects of regional resilience (measured by unemployment growth) were considered: recession and recovery. We focused on the comparison of two subsequent recessionary shocks: the 2008–2010 global recession and the 2012–2013 austerity crisis. Metropolitan regions showed relatively stable economic development. Old industrial regions were more resilient than expected. Rural regions exhibited highly diverse reactions: lower resistance was characteristic for regions specialized (mostly) in automotive and some labour-intensive industries. The first wave of recession increased unemployment mostly in (rural) regions dependent on export-oriented manufacturing, the second wave especially hit larger cities with metropolitan functions. Regions that experienced a sharp unemployment increase in the first recession were generally more resistant in the second wave. All types of regions were internally highly diverse in their reactions to economic crises, which points to the importance of micro-regional variations of economic resilience, the performance of individual local firms and subsidiaries, and extra-regional factors of regional development.     

Urban regeneration in Poland’s non-core regions

ABSTRACT

After many years of efforts aimed at reaching a cohesive and inclusive socio-economic development, Poland keeps witnessing some significant disparities in the distribution of wealth. Moreover, these disparities intensified in the course of the post-socialist transition and they have not been diminished by the regional policy of the EU. In this light, urban regeneration appears as an important, emerging sphere of public intervention intended to support the less developed regions. The objective of this study is twofold: first, to characterize the place of urban regeneration in the Polish strategic planning system, and second, to carry out an in-depth analysis of planning strategies and practices of urban regeneration at the regional level and conclude with recommendations for planning. The latter is achieved by examining the Polish experience with urban regeneration practices in the 1999–2015 period using Wielkopolska region as a case study. In order to reach this objective: (a) all strategic documents related to urban regeneration have been collected and analysed, (b) a survey has been conducted in 100 cities and towns of the region and finally (c) 50 interviews have been carried out with various stakeholders involved in the urban regeneration process. The article concludes with recommendations for planning and further urban regeneration projects aiming to alleviate the development disparities between core and non-core regions.     

Are there differences in social capital related to corporate regional engagement in dynamic and less dynamic non-core regions?

ABSTRACT

This article explores corporate regional engagement and related social capital in non-core regions. Corporate regional engagement comprises various activities of firms to influence regional contexts, which are challenging in non-core regions (e.g. on account of their organizational or institutional thinness). Corporate regional engagement engenders positive effects for regional development when firms collaborate among themselves (bonding social capital) and with other actors (bridging social capital) to improve regional endowments. We assume that dynamic regions have at their disposal higher levels of inclusive social capital in terms of collaboration networks for regional concerns and trust, while less dynamic regions have more exclusive and fragmented social capital. Consequently, less dynamic regions in particular appear to have potential to develop in a more social sense by activating the endogenous potential of region-wide collaboration. Those assumptions are tested based on a survey with Chief Executive Officers from the manufacturing industry from three dynamic and three less dynamic Swiss regions. The findings show that in dynamic regions, more firms are members of regional cross-industry associations, favouring regional collaboration; in less dynamic regions, meanwhile, more firms are members of industry-specific associations and service clubs, where benefits seem to be higher for individual firms than for the regional business environment.     

The development of metropolitan regions in Germany in light of the restructuring of the German states: two temporally overlapping discourses

The topics of the territorial structure of the German states and the strategic development of the metropolitan regions are at first glance two completely separate discourses. However, this paper demonstrates that the development of the metropolitan regions in Germany, supported by Federal Spatial Planning, has at least in some cases been influenced by the possibility of offering an alternative to state restructuring and that the metropolitan regions today continue to represent a basis for interstate cooperation. The in-depth observation of four cross-state metropolitan regions makes clear that different development paths have been followed. Thus, while certain metropolitan regions have distanced themselves from issues relevant to interstate cooperation, the examples of Hamburg and Berlin-Brandenburg show the value of metropolitan regions for cooperation between states and as an alternative to state restructuring.     

Leaves in the wind? Local policies of small and medium-sized towns in metropolitan regions

Small and medium-sized towns (SMSTs) contribute to the economic performance of whole metropolitan regions. However, the variety of factors that influence the economic development of SMSTs is understudied and the impact and relevance of their local policies are especially unclear. This article studies local policies of SMSTs within the metropolitan region of Zurich (Switzerland) and the impact of local policies on the economic specialization of these towns. Switzerland serves as an interesting context in which to study SMSTs, particularly those in metropolitan regions, due to their constant growth and the high local autonomy enjoyed by Swiss local governments. Using a multiple case study design that relies on a pair-wise comparison, we find that the economic specialization of SMSTs can mainly be explained by factors that are exogenous to local policy-making such as the town’s location and its connectivity. Land-use strategies are the only local policies that can influence the economic specialization of SMSTs. Therefore, SMSTs are well advised to invest in professionalized land-use departments and to coordinate their land-use strategies with neighbouring jurisdictions.     

Knowledge-Intensive Business Services as Knowledge Intermediaries in Industrial Regions: A Comparison of the Hsinchu and Tainan Metropolitan Areas

Abstract

The literature repeatedly stresses the role of knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) as a provider of knowledge and information to other businesses and organizations. KIBS simultaneously promotes, mediates and enables client innovation. This investigation mainly seeks to link KIBS to the analytical structure of concepts, including regional innovation systems, knowledge exchanges and innovation patterns. This investigation interprets the role of KIBS as that of a knowledge intermediary that mediates and transmits knowledge among actors. This study also clarifies the mechanism of knowledge exchanges in different geographic innovation systems. The analytical results obtained by this investigation are applied to analyse the intermediary functions of KIBS in various metropolitan areas in southern and northern Taiwan. This investigation demonstrates variations in how KIBS act as knowledge intermediaries, and that these variations depend mostly on industrial cluster patterns, the dominant innovation patterns at their locations and the birth of sustainable KIBS. KIBS in large/core metropolitan regions, thus, are initially based on science, technology and innovation industrial activities, and further closely resemble doing, using and interaction industrial activities. Consequently, more informal learning processes, such as local buzz and discussion/competition relations, tend to develop in such regions.     

What Kind of Entrepreneurship Drives Regional Development in European Non-core Regions? A Literature Review on Empirical Entrepreneurship Research

Regional policies across Europe aim at stimulating regional development in non-core regions through fostering entrepreneurship. However, the policies applied in non-core regions and the concepts of entrepreneurship these policies are based on differ. Therefore, the goal of this review is to identify different understandings of entrepreneurship and their role for regional development processes in European non-core regions. To this end, empirical studies investigating entrepreneurship in European non-core regions from 1999 to 2011 were analysed. The results of the analysis are presented along three drivers and outcomes of entrepreneurship identified inductively from the literature: innovation, social capital and institutional change. We made out seven different types of entrepreneurship in European non-core regions. These seven types of entrepreneurship comprise particular mechanisms through which they stimulate regional development. Further research should study the interplay between these different mechanisms of regional development in non-core regions which may induce a more territorial approach to understand entrepreneurship in non-core regions across Europe.     

Foreign direct investment and renewal of industries: framing the reciprocity between materiality and discourse

ABSTRACT

Informed by the evolutionary literature on economic geography, this paper develops a conceptual framework for analysing the complexity between foreign direct investment (FDI) and renewal of industries. Present contributions tend to explain the impact of FDI on regional industry evolution as a static, output-oriented phenomenon, that is, informed by an instrumental rationale in which the dynamism of FDI and regional industry development is linked to polarization of stagnation/decline vs. growth/development. Opposing this, we argue for an epistemological shift in approach to the reciprocity between FDI and renewal of industries as dynamism between material outcomes and discursive processes. To accomplish this, we build on key concepts and understandings from evolutionary economic geography; review the regional effects of FDI literature and build a framework sensitive to contextual dimensions of FDI. We focus on multinational companies’ practices and material outcomes in terms of regional spillovers and the discursive processes in terms of FDI narratives. This framework is exemplified by data from the salmon farming industry and the subsea industry in Hordaland and the oil and gas industry and the mining industry in Finnmark.     

Agglomeration,foreign firms and firm exit in regions under transition: the increasing importance of related variety in Hungary

ABSTRACT

Related variety of economic activities is widely recognized to induce regional development; however, it is not clear how this mechanism takes place in regions that go through major structural and institutional transformation. Furthermore, foreign direct investment (FDI) is typically a major source of structural change in these areas; and we still need a better understanding on how foreign-owned (foreign) firms affect the dynamics of domestic-owned (domestic) companies. For these reasons we analyse firm-level exit in Hungarian city regions between 1996 and 2011, over the late post-socialist transition in manufacturing industries, focusing on the difference between foreign and domestic firms. Introducing ownership into the related variety calculation, we estimate the probability of firm exit with the region-level related variety calculated separately for foreign and domestic firms. Our results suggest that related variety of foreign firms decreases the probability of domestic firm exit earlier during the economic transition compared to the related variety of domestic firms. This finding supports the idea that FDI plays a formative role in regions under transition, and shows that domestic firms benefit from being in agglomerations where foreign firms are technologically related to each other.     

Overcoming barriers to institutional integration in European second-tier urban regions

Within the debates about the socio-economic advantages of cohesive urban regions, several barriers to institutional integration are said to exist, especially when a metropolitan government is absent and integration relies on inter-municipal cooperation. Some barriers are associated with different urban region structures, such as the asymmetric power relations and sociocultural contrasts between municipalities in systems with dominant core cities, or the lack of a leading city to overcome fragmentation and provide a shared identity in polycentric urban regions (PURs). This paper investigates whether urban regions formed around second-tier cities, whose features depart from both dominant core and PUR models, are able to mitigate these barriers when pursuing integration strategies. The analysis relies on interviews with municipal leaders in three representative European case studies, examining how they perceive the barriers to inter-municipal relations in second-tier urban regions. The findings show that perceptions vary not only between regions, with the three cases following different trajectories of integration, but also within regions, according to the geographical and socio-economic context of municipalities and the legacy of past relations. In general, barriers to integration are not minimized without explicit efforts to rebalance power relations, approach political cultures, mobilize core city leadership and develop a metropolitan identity.     

Region‐specific determinants of the foreign direct investment in China

This study revisits region‐specific determinants of foreign direct investment (FDI) in Eastern, Central, and Western China using econometric and spatial analyses. It uses a data set covering 31 Chinese provinces and autonomous regions spanning the period 2005–15, together with panel data regression. Our statistical results show that in Eastern China, FDI is significantly associated with bilateral trade, orientation towards the service industry, industrialisation level, and availability of strategic assets in the region. In Central China, FDI is mainly pulled by availability of the domestic market and strategic assets in the region. In Western China, FDI inflows are mainly determined by natural resource endowment, industrialisation level, and regional innovation and production effectiveness in information and communication technology industries. Our analysis also reveals the impact of FDI in China's regional development and its capacity to hollow out the three Chinese macro‐regions. Our findings for China lead us to suggest that those governments seeking to attract FDI should not solely rely on it to facilitate local economic development and should make use of local circumstances in combination with FDI to boost their economies.     

都市区与非都市区城镇用地扩张的驱动力研究——以长三角地区为例

本文利用土地变更调查数据与经济社会统计数据,分析2001-2006年间长三角地区都市区与非都市区以及都市区内部不同单元的城镇工矿用地变动差异和主要影响因素,探讨都市区城镇用地扩展的驱动机制及演变特征。研究发现,虽然长三角地区城镇用地的整体扩张速度正趋于放缓,但变化趋势在不同类型的区域间存在明显差异。都市区比非都市区增长地更快,其中外围县地区超越中心市成为新一轮的增长热点地区。利用人口、非农产业、房地产投资等社会经济活动指标数据所做的回归分析表明,非农产业的发展是推动都市区城镇用地扩展的关键因素,而对非都市区的城镇工矿用地扩展而言,城镇人口集聚的拉动仍在起主要影响作用。在都市区内部存在功能分工的背景下,中心市与外围县在驱动因素和效果上存在差异。     

中国外商投资区位选择的时空格局与影响因素

以中国274个地市为样本,引入空间分析和计量模型等方法,分析外资分布特点及影响因素,结果表明：①中国目前尚不存在大规模外资"逃离"现象,外资利用总量在波动中上升,结构趋于优化。②空间上由集聚集中趋向分散均衡,呈"北进西移"态势,东部高度集中,中西部发展较快。外资高值集聚区逐渐向北推进,低值区向西南收缩;③劳动力成本、市场规模、专业化经济、FDI累积、市场化水平和开放度均对外资有正向作用。其中,传统因素对外资的吸引作用正逐渐下降,FDI累积的作用上升明显,集聚对外资分布作用显著。从不同区域看,集聚经济和FDI累积效应等新经济地理因素在东部外资区位选择中受到更多的关注,而劳动力成本、基础设施、开放水平等传统因素在中西部吸引外资中作用更大。④中国应遵循因地制宜、因时制宜的原则制定差异化的外资政策。     

FDI and Local Economic Development: The Case of Taiwanese Investment in Kunshan

The extent to which foreign direct investment (FDI) can foster the long-term economic development of lagging regions remains a highly debated issue in the literature, even in the current era of intense territorial competition for mobile investment and resources. The emergence of new industrial spaces in China that have flourished through FDI offers a good opportunity to revisit the topic. Kunshan in Suzhou, China has evolved from an impoverished area into a world-class information technology (IT) centre within 25 years. FDI, mainly from Taiwan, has enabled Kunshan to gradually upgrade its economy, following a development path that has been largely based on the transplant of entire production chains from Taiwan. Local innovative strategies for attracting and increasing the embeddedness of Taiwanese FDI are also an important element of Kunshan's success. This paper discusses the positive aspects, as well as the potential costs and negative facets, of FDI in Kunshan, with the view to draw some policy lessons regarding the impact of FDI on the economic development of lagging regions.     

中国社会服务业外商直接投资的空间格局研究

利用省际数据探讨我国社会服务业FDI的空间集聚特征及格局影响机制,以期从新视角分析各地的对外开放程度。研究发现:①我国社会服务业FDI呈地带性分布特征;②社会服务业FDI的空间布局并不完全追随地区的经济发达程度;③我国社会服务业FDI存在不显著的空间正相关,其空间集聚程度低于生产性服务业FDI;④近年来空间正相关省份数量明显增多,东中部沿海及长三角的极化作用加强。⑤经济发展较快的区域逐渐显示出吸引外资进入社会服务业的优势;⑥政策及实施细则、经济发展水平和行业属性,是空间格局的重要影响机制。     

Property developers and the robust downtown: the case of four major Canadian downtowns

By and large, the downtowns of Canada's largest cities have remained important business nodes within their metropolitan regions, even though they have experienced some dimensions of decline. This fact can be ascribed to political, economic and social factors. The focus of this paper is on the property dimension: the structure of property ownership and the role of property developers. Large and powerful property developers and owners (property development firms, banks, life insurance companies and, more recently, pension funds) control a substantial stake in downtown top-quality commercial properties. These agents attempt to reinforce the prominence of downtowns to keep the outstanding performance of their assets. Developers consider Canadian downtowns safe investment outlets in which they hold core assets. Through proactive measures they sustain the health of downtowns.     

A note on,wind‐stars

There has been a revival of interest in recent years in the relationships between multinational corporations (hereafter MNCs) and the host regions in which they operate. The branch plant thesis which generally views inward investment by MNCs in a negative light — as reinforcing power relations between core and peripheral regions — has been challenged, with the suggestion that such developments can play a key role in linking up local economies to important flows of knowledge and information in a global economy. It has also been suggested that MNC branch plant activities are in practice often upgraded over time, leading to the development of important competitive advantages for host regions. In this paper, such claims are investigated through a case study of the Aberdeen oil region in the north east of Scotland. The changing position of Aberdeen within the oil industry's corporate division of labour is evaluated in terms of the wider theoretical debate.     

U.S. and Japanese Foreign Direct Investment in East Asia: A Comparative Analysis

East Asia has led the world in economic growth and export expansion in recent decades. The phenomenal rate of economic growth among the so‐called “four little tigers”—Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan—enabled them to achieve newly industrializing country (NIC) status in the 1980s, followed by Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand. Earlier studies explained the development from the government‐led development paradigm, or the so‐called the statist approach. Scholars also argue that foreign direct investment (FDI) played an important role in the economic development, thanks to technology transfers. Kojima and Ozawa and later Kohama, however, argue that Japanese FDI help East Asian economies while U.S. FDI do not because Japanese technology transfer practices are appropriate for East Asian countries but not the United States'. Thus, we revisit the issue of East Asian economic development and test the economic effects of FDI from the United States and Japan. Using a Barro‐type growth model, we test the effects of FDI from the United States and Japan on economic growth in East Asian NICs. We find that FDI from both the United States and Japan helped economic growth in the “four little tigers,” but not in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand.