PLAN30060

Since the late 1980s, economic geography and regional development studies have been reshaped by a resurgence of interest in the region as a scale of economic organization and political intervention, considering regional economies the fundamental unit of social life and policy making. This is based on a range of observations, including the shift away from large multi-plant corporations to flexible and localised post-fordist production systems, the increased emphasis on institutional and socio-cultural factors for economic development, and the localised nature of knowledge creation, diffusion, and innovation. Relational and evolutionary perspectives of economic and socio-political development, along with an expansion of regional growth models, has resulted in various concepts that emphasize the role of the region and networking, such as innovative milieux, industrial districts, regional innovation systems, and clusters. More recently, regional economies, which are jurisdictions that exhibit shared characteristics and practices, as well as somewhat socio-economic autonomy, along with directed linkages to other regions, have become a prominent unit of socio-economic analysis. One of the central preoccupations of the module is to gain an understanding of the fundamental spatial scales that shape advanced knowledge-based economies, standard and advanced measures/indicators of technological change and economic growth, and established as well as novel concepts in this stream of inquiry.