Search Results (4)

Since the middle of the last century, especially since the seventies, processes have been generated and consolidated that have changed the image of certain rural environments in Spain, especially coastal, with new forms of organization and territorialities that break the traditional model. The Cantabrian territory, like other areas of the Spanish coast, has seen its territories and landscapes altered in terms of its demographic, economic, and urban structures. The variation over the easternmost area of the Autonomous Community of Cantabria is significant, affected by various growth processes of both cities in the region, as well as others adjacent and connected, such as the urban agglomeration of Bilbao, influencing this space that we call Marina Oriental de Cantabria. The justification and objectives are to know how the coastal geographical situation, good communications, and proximity to Bilbao have configured this space to become a functional part of the metropolitan agglomeration that is generated around this city. An investigation focused on the analysis of the intensification and the effects of the urbanization process of a rural and rururban area, from an integrative, transversal, and multiscale approach, supported by inductive and hybrid methodology, with quantitative and qualitative methods. Through this study, the evolution and problems of these spaces will be known, to analyze the processes that have occurred and continue to occur and, thus, propose measures to reduce the negative effects. The main results and conclusions of the research are manifested in transformations on a legacy space, which has been productively redefined, being one of the most changed since the middle of the last century. Full article

In the middle of the 20th century, economic theories predicted an evolution towards development that involved the tertiarization of the productive structure, with industry losing weight to the benefit of commerce and services. This model justified the deindustrialization of countries when, promoting globalization, large companies relocated production phases to third countries to take advantage of lower labor costs. Since the Great Recession and aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic and other economic factors, globalization seems to be entering a new phase in the third decade of the 21st century, in which Global Value Chains are changing to become even more regional and reshoring is a strategy increasingly employed by large European and North American companies. In the medium term, this global change will have a considerable impact on land systems on a global scale in what could be a new reindustrialization of the old continent. The article presents an investigation carried out on the impact of reshoring in leading European companies in six different industrial branches. The results of the research show how the relocation of the industry in the most developed countries is an incipient trend practiced by the leading European companies. Full article

In this paper, we aim to describe and explain the regional disparities in economic resilience in Slovakia in the period 1997–2017. We focus on the effects of economic structure in combination with the vertical (potential accessibility) and horizontal geographical location. Since the early 1990s, Slovak (non-)metropolitan regions exhibited deep changes in the sectoral structure of the economy that were followed by sharp unemployment increases. Due to the FDI-fueled economic growth in the last two decades, however, considerable progress in regional economic growth and reduction in unemployment was recorded. Therefore, Slovak non-metropolitan regions provide valuable lessons for the analysis of regional economic resilience in a long-term period. We ask if, and to what extent were, the prospects of regional renewal after economic crises associated with the geographical location, economic diversity, firm size and sectoral structure of the economy. We employed spatial regression models to test the effects of the potential accessibility, horizontal geographical location and industrial diversity, and sectoral (agriculture, manufacturing) and firm size structure. The dependent variable, Economic Resilience, was measured by the Regional Development Index, combining the indicators of demographic ageing, net migration, income per capita and registered unemployment rate. Potential accessibility and horizontal geographical location were the key predictors of regional economic resilience. Districts with tertiarized and diversified industrial and firm size structures scored, on average, higher in RDI than specialized districts with large firms and/or a high share of agriculture/manufacturing in total employment. Full article

Rapid urbanization has seen a concurrent growth of informal economies, which play an important role in alleviating urban unemployment and poverty. Following international efforts to integrate divergent theories on informality, this paper examines the causes of urban informal economies in China by deploying a panel data regression model that considers multiple explanatory factors informed by these theories. Our estimation based on the latest China Population Census shows that the size of urban informal employment in China reached 215 million and 22% of gross domestic product (GDP) output share was from urban informal economies. Our model reveals that the causes of urban informal economies in China are mainly associated with the stages of economic development, tertiarization of industries, unemployment, rural-to-urban migration, and globalization of urban economies. This paper adds evidence from the Chinese context to the emerging argument that informal economies cannot be fully explained by each mainstream informality theory, suggesting that these theories should be seen as complementary rather than opposing alternatives. The paper concludes with policy implications for urbanization in China. Full article