Economic Urban Transitions
The Economic Urban Transitions (EUT) programme aims at understanding the spatial evolution of economic activities in contexts characterised by growing urbanisation and global interdependences (e.g. trade integration, migration).
The programme investigates the dynamics of the private sector, such as entrepreneurs, firms, industries and their networks, but also the dynamics of technological development and land uses, and how they affect the resilience, sustainability and innovative capacity of urban regions. In addition, it studies how these processes can be shaped by changing institutional and governance structures. These dynamics are studied not only in the context of OECD countries, but also globally, with a focus on the role of multinational corporations, global production networks and migration flows in Asia, Latin America and Africa.
The EUT programme is rooted in the evolutionary economic geography framework, which has been widely influential in the field of economic geography, and has been complemented and widened by theoretical approaches from the fields of sustainable transition, science and technology studies, network theory, urban governance and land policy. The programme focuses on topics such as: Urban Economic Resilience; Network and Flows in and between Urban Regions; Economic Impacts of Transnational Mobilities; Economic Urban Transitions and Smart Urban Governance. Research in EUT takes places in two research themes.
Evolutionary Economic Geography
This research theme investigates the spatial distribution of economic activities and how it changes overtime.
Governance of Urban Transitions
We bring together knowledge from different fields in planning and governance research in order to understand sustainable urban change in cities.