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This chapter presents the case of a historic industrial district in the city of Bologna (Italy): Roveri District. Here a transition process towards a smart sustainable district has been started and a systemic, integrated and bottom-up approach put the basis for the conception of the sustainable model in order to transform the district into Roveri Smart Village. Roveri Industrial District was settled in the early ‘70s as an industrial area in the outskirts. In the last years, the whole district was incorporated into the southern urban area of Bologna. Currently, Roveri Industrial District represents one of the Italian Metropolitan areas with the highest concentration of small and medium-sized enterprises. Nevertheless, district management does not already exist. Recent economic contingencies have induced a general, not coordinated transformation of the past industrial structure. Therefore, the combination of regeneration and sustainability actions is the main challenge to which Roveri Smart Village Project aims. This chapter presents the development of a collaborative and integrated approach to support the Roveri industrial district transformation. Especially, methods and actions supporting the creation of new sustainable industrial practices for the Roveri Smart Village community are described in detail. In this process, governance models, collaborative processes and innovative solutions based on industrial symbiosis scenarios and energy efficiency have enforced the Roveri transformation. The results are connected to steer the innovation towards an industrial Smart Sustainable District (SSD) and to build the district community based on a strong network of enterprises and local stakeholders. In this process, circular economy and energy efficiency applications can act also as strategic tools favouring this collaborative and integrated approach establishment and put the basis for a transferable model that can inspire the transformation of other industrial districts.

In Italy a “second type” of clusters was defined at the beginning of the 2000s with the name of technological district (TD), specialized in high-tech sectors, characterized by a significant interaction between companies and research centers and managed by a legal entity. The technological district changes the perspective and focus of the previous industrial district aggregative model, based on the localization, size scale, and production intensity, passing from the productive sector to the technical-scientific strategic one.

Understanding the role that places and settings can play as creative ecosystems is marked out by structural and spatial praxis. Drawing on the empirical case of co-creative design in Copenhagen, co-creation, together with new ways of working, is framed as a significant process for harnessing value in the creative economy. Extending conceptual thinking on hidden culture, the chapter considers the way value is embedded in tacit and hidden co-production and socio-industrial work settings. Using the example of Underbroen, one of Copenhagen’s most notable maker spaces, emphasis is given to the way creativity emerges from informal and collegial interactions and settings, which underscore the micro scale of the creative economy. The chapter argues that value in the creative economy is more a product of the setting in which it occurs and its governance, than the physical combination of factor inputs. The chapter therefore serves to highlight the informality and governance structures of Underbroen in the creation of a third space and micro industrial district, which support value construction in the Danish creative economy.

We carry out a firm-level empirical analysis to evaluate the economic impact of the sequence of earthquakes that occurred in 2012 in the Italian region of Emilia-Romagna and to address the question of whether the localization of a firm within an industrial district mitigated or exacerbated this impact. We estimate the effect of the earthquake on firms’ performance via two alternative methods: Difference-in-differences and propensity score matching in levels and first-differences. Our findings suggest that the earthquake reduced turnover, production, value added, and return on sales of the surviving firms, at least in the short term. In addition, the debt over sales ratio grew significantly more in the firms located in the areas affected by the earthquake. The empirical evidence also suggests that the negative impact of the earthquake was slightly higher for the firms located in industrial districts, thereby suggesting that, at least in the short term, the usually positive cumulative processes associated with localization within an agglomerated area could have reversed and magnified the negative impact of a disruptive exogenous supply shock.

This paper adds to the literature by deconstructing knowledge heterogeneity for the understanding of cluster evolution. Starting from the distinction between sustaining and radical innovations, as moderators of knowledge heterogeneity in Marshallian industrial districts (MIDs), this study’s objective consists of answering the question why and how districts evolve, through the understanding of the differing processes creating knowledge, i.e. sustaining and radical, and the type of firms that do so, and analysing critical issues such as how technological changes affect the pattern of district evolution. Theoretical development states that (1) in MIDs radical disruption can be expected to be led by new firms and not by incumbent technology gatekeepers (TGs), which are mainly oriented to providing incremental innovations in order to maintain their status quo and centrality, and (2) in MIDs leading incumbents demonstrate predominantly an orientation towards the creation of sustaining knowledge in dense and orchestrated networks and aim to develop competence-enhancing variety which ensures their centrality and the status quo, making clusters evolve expanding central stages, i.e. specialization. Our argumentation has also challenged a central assumption in MIDs about leading incumbents: the type of knowledge necessary to challenge leading incumbents must be new to the industry and to the district, based on exploratory district boundary-spanning, technology-distant knowledge.

Using a “difference-in-differences” approach, we show that the share of entrepreneurs in Italy declined more in industrial districts than in comparable labour markets during the 3 years following the 2008 recession. We have examined alternative explanations of this finding, thus concluding that it is consistent with the idea that intense social interactions typical of industrial districts act as a multiplier that amplifies the response to shocks. However, we cannot exclude that this may translate into a positive effect on employment as the flows from entrepreneurship to employment appear to be greater within industrial districts.

The I-district effect establishes the existence of dynamic efficiency in Marshallian industrial districts in the form of a positive innovative differential comparing to the average of the economy. The hypothesis has been empirically validated for the case of technological innovation using patent indicators. Empirical research has assumed that all types of patentable figures (utility models, national patents, EPO, WIPO) have the same weight regardless of its actual or expected market value, which may be questionable given the differences in coverage, protection and cost of each figure. In this article, we question the existence of the I-district effect when each patent is weighted by its expected potential value. As the I-district effect theory predicts, the relative differential effect is maintained even in the presence of the weighting, rejecting that the industrial district specializes only in low-quality patents. However, in this case, the primacy of industrial district as the most innovative local production system can be outpaced by other local production systems.

This chapter examines Italy as simultaneously a case of crisis of democracy, innovation and efficiency, to understand how a major Western economy turned into an economic laggard in only three decades and how to reverse the trend. The analysis interrogates Italy also as a laboratory of the decline of the West and of the European Union (EU), with its increasing inequality, decreasing social mobility and lack of innovation. The chapter analyses Italy in the years after World War II, when it emerged from the devastations of two decades of Fascist dictatorship, produced the “Italian economic miracle” of the reconstruction and the “industrial district” model, consolidated its democratic institutions and anchored itself into the Western sphere of international relations. Until the 1990s, with the collapse of Italy’s party system, the accentuated personalization of politics and a growing split within the electorate, shaking Italy’s institutional structure and putting a break on growth that started a trend of loss of human capital fleeing abroad. Multiple top-down attempts at reforms have failed to aggregate and incorporate knowledge holders’ inputs, while currently populist movements even question innovation-driven changes. The chapter empirically shows how a twenty-first-century “renaissance” reversing these trends is likely to be based on innovation-driven change originating from the grass roots, Italy’s networks of model cities, unions of municipalities and town associations. In closing, the chapter argues that to succeed such strategy prospect needs to be framed by national and EU policies.

The hermeneutic approach to a proper understanding of the processes of knowledge creation that is proposed by the editors of this book is indubitably a cognitive turn in the economic literature on innovation, and it may be a first step in the construction of a new scientific paradigm. What is more interesting for a regional scientist is the new interpretation of the generative role of space that the hermeneutic approach proposes. This interpretation, which is mainly presented in the general introduction and in the contributions of the two editors, builds and accumulates new fruitful perspectives on the achievements of the neo-Marshallian school (Becattini, Rivista di economia e politica industriale, 1, 35, 1979; Becattini, Industrial districts and inter-firm cooperation in Italy. International Institute for Labour Studies, 1990; Garofoli, Economic Notes, 19(1), 37–54, 1989; Vazquez-Barquero, Endogenous development: Networking, innovation, institutions and cities. Routledge, 2002; Boix & Trullen, Papers in Regional Science, 84(4), 551–574, 2007) and of the ‘evolutionary regional economics’ research programme carried forward by the GREMI network with the concept of innovative milieu as a relational space and an operator for the reduction of dynamic uncertainty in innovation processes (Aydalot, Milieux innovateurs en Europe. GREMI, 1986; Camagni, Innovation networks: Spatial perspectives. London: Belhaven-Pinter, 1991; Camagni & Maillat, Milieux innovateurs. Theories et politiques, Economica, 2006).

The purpose of this chapter is the analysis of behaviours of operators in the regulated competition market. The subject of study is the public transport market, which is organized by KZK GOP (Municipal Transport Union of the Upper Silesian Industrial District) in Katowice. This chapter contains analyses of: concentration of bus transportation market, results of tendering proceedings and action strategies of operators. This chapter in particular tackles the issue of the process of merging entities into consortia. The main conclusions of the performed analysis concern three issues. Firstly, municipal carriers have the dominant position in the market and usually do not compete with each other. Secondly, there is large pressure from private carriers. Thirdly, the phenomenon of coopetition occurs frequently; depending on the situation, carriers either compete or cooperate in the field of winning transportation orders. Cooperation manifests itself mainly in the process of establishing consortia, which allows the involved entities to meet the requirements specified in the terms of reference.

In this chapter Pal explains the economic and technological context of Stalinist industrialization in Hungary. He concentrates on the First Five Year Plan in Hungary, and points out the environmental aspect of that rapid economic and industrial program. Pal focuses on local impacts of Stalinist industrialization and he analyses the economic, technological, and environmental changes in Hungary’s primate industrial district built by the communists in the Borsod Basin, Northeast Hungary. He analyses the dynamics of water shortage and water pollution in the Borsod Basin. At the end of this chapter Pal analyzes the communists’ economic and technological measures to curtail pollution issues by focusing on the Lenin Metallurgical Plan in Diosgyőr, one of Hungary’s largest steel mills.

Sweden’s continued position as a major European military power during the early seventeenth century demanded an indigenous weapons manufacturing capacity. To that effect Dutch and other industrialists, as told in Chap. 2, were invited to set up shop in Sweden. With time Norrkoping on the river Motala Strom developed into a major industrial city of Sweden, second in size only to Stockholm. While Norrkoping of today has gone through a long period of industrial stagnation and lost the large part of its industrial backbone, in the mid-1950s, mostly textiles, little in the form of new industrial formation occurred thereafter. Neighboring Linkoping, on the other hand, at the peak of Norrkoping’s industrial performance, was primarily the site of the regional bishop, the royal governor, the regional government tax collector, and other religious and political industry inhibiting authorities. Since the establishment of military aircraft manufacturer Saab in 1937, Linkoping has however evolved, as Norrkoping did three centuries before, into a modern industrial city, and a high-technology industrial district, that has left Norrkoping in its local backwaters. Again this new industrial formation, as once Norrkoping, has a military and weapons manufacturing origin.

The city of Prato is now a social microcosm, emblematic of Italy’s main immigration problems and of market globalization. This chapter investigates the organization of the Chinese fast fashion sector, and the factors contributing to its growth. I also investigate whether the presence of Chinese entrepreneurs causes a disadvantage for the local textile entrepreneurs and workers. Alternatively, did the Chinese fast fashion sector grow as a parallel district that shares few relationships with textile production? I address these issues through ethnographic tools such as open interviews with key informants and field research in the Macrolotto 1 industrial district (an industrial area in Prato occupied chiefly by Chinese fast fashion firms). The first part of the chapter analyzes the local Chinese entrepreneurs involved in fast fashion. The second part focuses on the connections between the Chinese entrepreneurs and the local economic players. Finally, the third part of the chapter examines the reactions of the local population toward the presence of Chinese immigrants (and particularly their businesses).

The theories of outsidership and insidership, and of foreignness, create contested discourse about the globalization of businesses, large and small. This chapter reviews the relationships between businesses, Chinese migrants, and mobile telecommunications based on available published research and on two small constructivist studies undertaken in Prato, Italy in December 2015 and May 2016. The studies generated two fresh datasets that are analyzed in the chapter. Prior studies of Prato’s industrial district have been undertaken by economists, sociologists, political scientists, geographers, anthropologists, linguists, and media scholars (among others). This chapter focuses on overturning the usual representation of outsidership and foreignness in Prato. The chapter argues that many Wenzhounese outsiders (numerous hardworking micro businesspeople) insert their own portable insider networks and tight-knit practices in Prato. They thus marginalize the local textile manufacturers into the role of outsiders in their own territory. Many of the migrants from Wenzhou, China, along with their family businesses and self-selected virtual networks, tend to act independently with the assistance of smartphones. The trading conditions that they experience in Prato are similar to those in Wenzhou.

This chapter considers the implications of main theoretical frameworks on regional science in terms of regional policy design. First are presented works supporting the hypothesis that economic dynamics will, in the long term, lead to a situation of balanced growth between territories, and thus that public-policy interventions have to stay limited as far as possible. Second we take a look at policies settled in order to respond to the challenges associated with polarization phenomena and the unbalanced nature of growth across territories. Thirdly, we focus on regional policies—today broadly dominant—that seek to stimulate innovation, considered as the primary driver of growth. Then follow an exploration of how the implementation of these policies is organized, initially via observations that show that increasing use is being made of approaches linked to decentralized public intervention, and subsequently with a view to examining the rise of territorial governance processes as means of expressing demands and desires and involving stakeholders and local populations in the definition of local regulations.

In many cities in Poland and worldwide, systems of electronic collection of fares for the use of public urban transport are implemented ever more widely. The most common starting point for assessing the efficiency of such systems is the comparison of costs of the currently functioning system with those of a system using electronic cards. Using the example of the Silesian Public Services Card project, implemented in the central part of the Provence of Silesia, by municipalities that form the Municipal Transport Union of the Upper Silesian Industrial District an attempt has been made to compare the costs of existing system of sale and distribution of paper tickets, and the system of electronic fare collection based on the electronic Silesian Card of Public Services (ŚKUP). Attention should be paid to the fact that modern systems, which are based on electronic tickets, give much wider possibilities of efficient management of process and transport service offer, hence they are related to obtaining greater external advantages, which is of much importance for investments financed using public funds.