So far, the growing body of research on polycentric urban structures has paid relatively little attention to spatial patterns of service consumption. There have been suggestions that the conventional central place model can no longer adequately describe and explain the patterns in contemporary polycentric urban areas and regions, and that it should be replaced by a new ‘network’ model. Though the network model is still in need of elaboration, several of its key notions are recognisable in this case study on cinema-going in the city-region of Rotterdam. However, this study also makes clear that the current ‘prototype’ of the network model needs to be enhanced by attention to the broad issue why people choose to visit certain service venues, including considerations regarding spatial factors but non-spatial factors like qualities of service venues, before it can serve as a valid model for future study.

Research about the consequences of air transport liberalisation in the European Union is already substantial in amount and scope. Nevertheless, spatial implications of this liberalisation have not been fully addressed yet. By analysing information from the OAG database, this paper measures the geographic concentration of air routes and seating offers supplied under competition conditions among European airports. Our analysis demonstrates that competition is mainly restricted to European World Cities, the ones which concentrate high-rank functions in the capitalist world-economy.

Exploring the links between urban sprawl and social segregation is an important theme in urban research. Although many studies are available, conclusions are still mixed. This paper contributes to our existing understanding of the impact of sprawl on social segregation, looking at the case of Beijing. The results of the analysis show that sprawling development, characterised by scattered gated communities, low-density luxury villas, informal development and uneven distributions of public services and transport infrastructures in the peri-urban regions, have increased residential segregation between low-income and high-income residents and between local residents and migrants. Planning policies designed to control urban sprawl and encourage a compact city could have a positive role in reducing social segregation. However, the role of spatial planning is limited as there are still other institutional factors influencing social segregation in China's cities, two of the most relevant here being the remaining hukou system and dual land system.

Multinational corporations have established research and development centres in India to take advantage of low-cost labour and sophisticated science and technology facilities. India is becoming a global competitor in innovation, and its knowledge-intensive firms increasingly need skilled workers. This article investigates talent acquisition in the information technology (IT) industry in Bangalore, also known as India's Silicon Valley. In particular, the paper studies the local supply and demand of human capital, which is critical for innovation and competition in the global knowledge economy. The author argues for a multi-level study to better understand labour needs in emerging economies. In conclusion, the article addresses local and national institutional obstacles to talent acquisition and discusses future labour challenges in India's IT industry.

The housing of low-income groups in Greater Cairo has always been difficult. However, the general shortage in housing supply is contrasting with the low occupancy rate of newly constructed public housing units. In contrast, despite their bad living conditions, informal settlements have a high occupancy rate. In order to analyse the reasons behind this contradiction, the paper compares four neighbourhoods ranging from formal and semi-informal to informal housing production and including one rehabilitation project. The livelihood conditions in each settlement are unravelled with the concept of modes of economic integration from Polanyi. For this purpose, semi-structured interviews were conducted and analysed with correspondence analysis. The findings indicate a preference among low-income groups for informal settlements because of three reasons: the advantages of geographical location, the nature of social networks and the strength of private redistribution systems, thus enabling an easier access to means of existence. The results and recommendations are further discussed in the paper.

Based on panel regression analysis and interviews of 70 foreign-invested enterprises (FIEs) in 2009, this paper compares the spatial dynamics and redistribution of foreign direct investment (FDI) from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan and the US in Guangdong province. We found that FDI in Guangdong tends to favour cities closer to Hong Kong, with lower wage rates, better market potential and more preferential policies, and to follow the agglomeration of FDI from the same origin. The diverse home-based characteristics have resulted into the varied pathways of spatial redistribution of FDI. Hong Kong FIEs have been searching for lower-cost regions given the rise of production cost and tightened environmental regulation. In contrast, the redistribution of FIEs from Japan and Taiwan are more sensitive to their home-based business linkages, whereas Japanese and the US FIEs tend to value access to domestic market and to expand in large cities outside Guangdong.

In the past decade international competitiveness has become the top priority of national, regional and urban governments in the advanced capitalist economy. Attracting and retaining creative and high-educated talent as well as creative and knowledge-intensive firms are considered essential ingredients of urban and city-regional ‘recipes for success’. Amsterdam and Dublin have, at both city- and city-regional level, been very active in preparing and implementing competitiveness strategies in which fostering and stimulating creativity, knowledge and innovation play a leading role. The crisis since 2008 has made a reconsideration of these strategies necessary. Is ‘creative knowledge’ still the preferred road ahead, and if it is, can existing competitiveness strategies be continued or should new strategies be developed?

German geopolitics emerged from the early 1920s. It was noticed in the Netherlands but not broadly embraced. In public discourse the term ‘geopolitics’ was hardly ever used between the First and Second World Wars but it became a bit more common with the looming threat of a second war and during the German occupation. Meanwhile Dutch geographers took note of the efforts of Haushofer and his circle. Around 1930, their initial reaction to this project took various forms – constructive criticism, co-operation and indignant dismissal – but the attention waned over the decade. During the occupation Nazi-friendly geographers discussed the launching of a new geopolitics. The generally shared Dutch preference for aloofness, neutrality and recourse to international law as the way to approach international relations precluded the formation of a large, responsive public for German geopolitics. The high status of German academia provided an initial audience of Dutch academic geographers.

Research on polycentricity has focused increasingly on the multi-scalar functional organisation of polycentric urban systems. These studies have shown that the degree of functional polycentricity varies considerably across different spatial scales. Moreover, functional polycentricity is linked to two distinct concepts: spatial integration and the balanced distribution of flows. The aim of this paper is to clarify the relation between these two concepts and to highlight the implications of this conceptual distinction for empirical research across different scales. The paper examines the connectivity field method developed to measure spatial interaction in polycentric urban systems. Using detailed commuting data, the feasibility of the method in measuring both spatial integration and the balanced distribution of flows across different scales is tested in a case study from southern Finland.

The aim of this paper is to discuss the relationship between the difficult economic situation in Mexico over recent years and the increasing disadvantages in irregular settlements that are found on the periphery of the Federal District. The focus is on informal settlements in the Magdalena Contreras Delegation, a peripheral municipality where the research team applied 719 questionnaires to the inhabitants. The results offer an up-to-date socio-economic analysis of the population. We are also in a position to suggest answers to the following questions: to what extent communal lands with a high ecological value act as territorial reserves for irregular settlements?; how do poverty levels in these settlements affect the consolidation process in terms of housing quality and access to public services?; how much heterogeneity is there inside irregular settlements and what is the level of poverty in these settlements and how grave is the situation?

This paper explores the idea that spatial planning-triggered satellite industrial platform-type concentrations may, over time, automatically gain the capacity to generate substantial agglomeration economies and ultimately transform into entities capable of stimulating self-perpetuating growth. Applying the lexicon of agglomeration theory, the idea is explored in the context of the spatial dynamics of the pharmaceutical industry in Ireland. Spatial concentration indices indicate a particularly high level of spatial concentration in one of the industry's sub-sectors, namely, drug substance production. Based on interview data and secondary sources, a detailed investigation of the spatial dynamics of the Irish concentrations suggests that, while some agglomeration advantages have emerged, they remain relatively limited and have played only a minor role in shaping local industrial concentration. They are mainly of the urbanisation type, relating particularly to the pooled market for workers. The evidence serves to show that the kind of spatial planning-triggered satellite industrial platforms in late-developing economies do not automatically start generating substantial agglomeration economies and crucial technological spillovers, not even after, as in the case of the Cork pharmaceuticals concentration, nearly 40 years of existence.

In recent decades, urbanisation in Europe has been characterised by the development and expansion of functionally integrated urban regions. Areas around Copenhagen, Denmark, have also experienced continuous urbanisation and a considerable in-migration, which has contributed to the development of a wider metropolitan region. Most recently, however, a shift of migration towards the urban centre has occurred. Was the emergence of the urban-rural region just an ephemeral phenomenon? Migration patterns are used to analyse urban-rural relationships. Generally, in-migration was concentrated in areas located at medium to long-distances from the city centre from 1996–2005, while in the years since 2006, this trend has been reversed. However, a differentiated view on migration shows a very diverse and non-linear development. We focus on three migration types, Ex-urbanisation, Displaced urbanisation and Anti-urbanisation and compare their development since 1986 in three time periods. Each type shows a different behaviour, partially unstable over time.

Moroccans are the largest group of immigrants in Spain. Once they arrive at the new place, one of their first necessities is to access shelter. Focusing on the south-eastern region of Murcia in Spain and combining quantitative and qualitative data, I explore the process of housing market integration of Moroccan migrants. Special attention is paid to the dynamics of this process and the role that the interaction between the supply side and the foreign demand of accommodation plays. Thereby, I will emphasise how an unfavourable structure of the housing market, along with behaviour of local private landlords on the supply side leads to considerable problems concerning the housing market integration of migrants in Spain. Thus, this paper aims to give a more accurate interpretation of the dynamics influencing the housing outcomes of migrants in the studied area.

This paper focuses on the side activities of non-farmers in rural areas in the Netherlands and more specifically on their impact on rural development. Empirical evidence from 36 Dutch municipalities on three key aspects was examined: economy, social and physical environment. The findings indicate that although side activities do not have a large direct impact on the local economy and employment, their contribution in terms of local collaboration and promoting rural tourism is highly valued. Furthermore, side activities have an important role in building and strengthening social capital in rural communities. Where their impacts on physical environment is concerned, side activities are not perceived to damage or alter rural morphology but are considered a reinforcement of the character of rural areas.

The objective of this paper is to analyse the influence of individual variables and some spatial mobility characteristics of regional labour markets on overeducation in Spain. To achieve this aim, we use microdata from the Spanish Budget Household Survey to estimate a probit model for the probability of overeducation while accounting for sample selection and the presence of data at different levels (individuals and territory). The obtained results permit us to conclude that the sizes of local labour markets and the possibility of extending the job search to other labour markets by commuting are relevant factors in explaining overeducation in the Spanish labour market. In spite of differences in labour market institutions, our results are very similar to those obtained for other countries, particularly when working with more recent data.

Using county-level employment data, we analyse how the spatial concentration of jobs has changed in China's Pearl River Delta (PRD) between 1990 and 2005. Despite unique Chinese policies that exhibit strong influence on the economic landscape, we detect key parallels with the patterns found in classic theories and empirical studies in Western contexts. Total employment has become increasingly concentrated. This aggregate picture hides important sectoral variations though: manufacturing employment has spread out to suburban areas; producer service jobs have increasingly concentrated in metropolitan centres; and consumer and public services have clustered in areas with high aggregate population. We argue that the major forces that are shaping the economic landscape in PRD are the market institutions and development path-dependency. Under the circumstances of an increasingly liberalised market and decentralised government, policy now may function as a dynamic tool to magnify local spatial-economic and historical advantages and to balance uneven regional development.

Real estate factors, such as property ownership, size and age, are generally not accounted for in research on revealed relocation decisions of firms. This is remarkable, as entrepreneurs often suggest that real estate characteristics at the property level provide an explanation for firm relocation behaviour in addition to more-frequently tested drivers of firm relocation. We assess the role of real estate determinants, focusing on firms in urban residential neighbourhoods, differentiating between firms located in residential and commercial properties. We find that property ownership is negatively related to relocation likelihood, while being located in property with multiple users is positively related to relocation likelihood. For firms in residential properties high property age and large property size limits firm relocation. Our findings confirm that real estate characteristics are important determinants for relocation likelihood of firms, suggesting that the structure of neighbourhood housing stocks can be linked to the mobility pattern of local firms.

In this paper we study how neighbourhood-related spillovers affect location choices of manufacturing firms at a local level. A spatial Dirichlet-multinomial regression model is applied to 90,000 new establishments of the Spanish Mediterranean Axis. Empirical findings show that spatial spillovers play an important role, together with traditional explanatory factors, in driving decisions of companies. Their size and scope depends on two main issues, the specific characteristics of the manufacturing industry the firm belongs to, and the accessibility of the urban environment where the firm is located.

The goal of this paper is to study empirically the determinants of foreign firms' location in Polish regions with a special focus on the role of firm size. To derive testable hypotheses on the firm location choice an analytical framework that combines the firm heterogeneity and the new economic geography literatures is used. In this framework, agglomeration economies, technical infrastructure, and labour market characteristics may affect location decisions of foreign investors. The hypotheses derived from the theory are validated empirically using the regional dataset at NUTS 2 level of spatial aggregation for the period 1999–2010. The empirical evidence confirms the existence of firm heterogeneity with respect to the determinants of firm location choice.

This paper considers the estimation of the geographical scope of industrial location determinants. While previous studies impose strong assumptions on the weighting scheme of the spatial neighbour matrix, we propose a flexible parametrisation that allows for different (distance-based) definitions of neighbourhood and different weights to the neighbours. In particular, we estimate how far can reach indirect marginal effects and discuss how to report them. We also show that the use of smooth transition functions provides tools for policy analysis that are not available in the traditional threshold modelling.

Knowledge-intensive services (KIS) are important activities for regional growth and considered to be located at the top of urban and regional hierarchies. However, the widespread use of information and communication technologies (ICT) may lead to a higher degree of decentralisation. This paper presents a detailed analysis of the geographical distribution of KIS across European regions, highlighting some important patterns. Our results confirm that the location of KIS remains linked to regions with a high international profile but, contrary to what some previous studies have suggested, the relative concentration of KIS is rather low. However, important differences exist depending on the type of KIS, the country analysed and the comparative statistical level. Recent trends also present uneven results, but show a higher concentration of business services-related KIS. The importance of tacit knowledge may play a role in explaining this result.

Many European countries use mixed housing policies to decrease the spatial concentration of low-income households. Also in the Netherlands, social housing in deprived neighbourhoods is demolished and replaced by more expensive dwellings. The idea is that these new dwellings attract higher-income groups to urban restructuring neighbourhoods. At the same time, however large numbers of relatively expensive dwellings have been built on greenfield locations. This leads to a dilemma: will higher-income households choose housing in deprived neighbourhoods, while attractive new housing on greenfield locations is available? This study shows that urban restructuring attracts higher-income households to mixed tenure developments in deprived neighbourhoods, even when competing with greenfield development. Nevertheless, another process is also taking place: especially in urban regions with extensive greenfield development; there is a significant outflow of higher-income households from deprived neighbourhoods. The net result is an increasing concentration of low-income households in deprived neighbourhoods.

This contribution focuses on the borderscape of a flat area situated at the southernmost tip of Gibraltar, at the edge of the European Continent, which is illustratively and interestingly named Europa Point. We will argue that, as an evoking geographical belvedere of cultural and continental interrelationships, Europa Point directs attention to the inherent sociospatial ambiguities of EUrope. Embodying a crucial topo within the European sociospatial b/ordering process, this borderscape stimulates to observe Europe's limits through a non-binary lens. The text aims at providing an unfrozen alternative visualisation of the symbolic and territorial margins of the EU. Echoing De Rougemont's conceptualisation of Europe's existence through its search for the infinite, it depicts Europa Point as a springboard and platform to the perpetual commencement of the European adventure.