Regional development and agency: Unfinished business

Agency and regional development has attracted growing attention. The origins of much thought in this area lie in evolutionary economic geography, sometimes with a nod in the direction of geographical political economy. In recent literature, there has been a stress on agency in general and local entrepreneurship in particular. Stress is laid on good governance, involving an appropriate mix of stakeholders, and more particularly the involvement of local leaders/entrepreneurs and their communities. However, in this article, I want to argue that, firstly, a focus on local entrepreneurship is too limiting; and secondly, following on from the first point, the concept of agency at a local level is at best undercooked.

Automotive regions in transition: Preparing for connected and automated vehicles

The advent of ‘connected and automated vehicles’ (C/AV) is posing substantial transformation challenges for traditional automotive regions across the world. This article seeks to examine both conceptually and empirically how automotive regions reconfigure their industrial and support structures to promote new path development in the C/AV field. Drawing on recent conceptual advances at the intersection of evolutionary economic geography and innovation system studies, we develop an analytical framework that casts light on how regional preconditions provide platforms for asset modification that underpin different routes of transformation. We distinguish between a reorientation route and an upgrading route. The framework is applied to a comparative analysis of industrial path development and system reconfiguration towards C/AV in two automotive regions, namely Ontario (Canada) and the Austrian automotive triangle.

Rethinking cluster evolution: Actors, institutional configurations, and new path development

Despite a flourishing evolutionary economic geography, the cluster evolution literature has been somewhat left behind, and remains somewhat simplistic and deterministic. This article seeks to form a synthesis from recent conceptual advancements in the evolutionary and institutional economic geographies, in pursuit of expanding the cluster evolution literature. In the process it produces a novel way of exploring cluster evolution, through the concept of cluster institutional configurations, which focuses on the ability of different actors to navigate potential lock-ins and to drive cluster evolution, and connects it to broader debates in economic geography.