The Scientific Trajectory of the French School of Proximity: Interaction- and Institution-based Approaches to Regional Innovation Systems

The multi-faceted concept of proximity is often used nowadays in many theoretical and empirical analyses. It mainly originates in some French regional scientists' attempt, in the early 1990s, to develop new conceptual and methodological avenues with a view to the study of the industrial and spatial dynamics. The wide diffusion of the resulting research findings is explained by the fact that these scholars realized early on that it was in their interest to collectively structure their works through the setting-up of a research group. The present paper sets out to outline the scientific and institutional trajectories of the French group “Proximity Dynamics”, while underlining the progressive broadening of its scientific and institutional dimensions, as well as the main theoretical research fields these trajectories have permitted to investigate.     

Book reviews

Dynamique de l'espace français et aménagement du territoire. (The Dynamics of French Space and Spatial Planning), Michel Rochefort. Paris: L'Harmattan, 1995, 138 pp, £15.00, ISBN 2 7384 3338 3

Urban Process and Power. Peter Ambrose. London and New York: Routledge, 1994, 245 pp, £12.00 pb, ISBN 1 415 00850 6; £40.00 hb, ISBN 0 415 00850 4

Transport Systems, Policy and Planning: a Geographical Approach. R. Tolley and B. Turton. Harlow: Longman, 1995, xviii + 401 pp, £20.99 pb, ISBN 0 582 00562 0

Transport Policy—Ways into Europe's Future (Strategies and Options for the Future of Europe: Basic Findings 8). K. Button, with contributions by W. Weidenfeld, G. Wolfgang Heinze, H. H. Kill, R. Münch, N. Walter, G. Topmann, H. Holzapfel and K. O. Schallaböck. Gütersloh: Bertelsmann Foundation Publishers, 1994, 227 pp, £9.00, ISBN 3 89204 065 6

The European Challenge: Geography and Development in the European Community. M. Blacksell and A. M. Williams (Eds). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 429 pp, 1994, £45.00 hb, ISBN 0 19 874176 6; £15.95 pb, ISBN 0 19 874177 4