Contributions à un colloque interdisciplinaire sur les districts industriels organisé dans le cadre d'un programme international de recherche sur les dynamiques territoriales de l'industrialisation en Europe. Présente des études sur les systèmes productifs localisés, leurs rapports avec les territoire sur lesquels ils sont implantés, le rôle des entreprises dans leur développement, etc.
To the surprise of many, regionally embedded clusters of small to medium sized businesses have continued to exist in spite of industrialisation and mass production. While scholars have discovered that the advantages of embeddedness in terms of industrialisation were situated in interfirm cooperation and conflict resolving mechanisms, it is far less clear how changing historical circumstances on the world market, i.e. globalisation, affected such systems. Taking a look inside Leipzig, a capital of the global fur industry between 1870 and 1939 with its numerous highly specialised businesses, both in production as well as trade, World Market Transformation examines the robustness of district firms within the highly volatile international fur business. This book examines how firm embeddedness not only served to overcome challenges related to industrialisation, but also strengthened the abilities of cluster firms to deal with changing world market circumstances. World Market Transformation integrates the "interior-biased" research tradition on local business systems and industrial districts into the "exterior" fields of global and transnational history. It is demonstrated that the local business district not only emerged because of the expansion of international trade, but that district processes of interfirm cooperation also gave shape to the spatial distribution, conventions and structures of the very same world market. The analysis of embedded communities thus offers an important instrument to examine phenomena of economic globalisation, but also how such macro-economic developments have been shaped and actively constructed by local actors.
This Open Access book presents a pioneering research on brownfield redevelopment in mountain regions, and specifically in the European Alps. The origins and causes, the actual conditions as well as the future challenges and potentials of mountain brownfields are investigated from an interdisciplinary yet landscape-centered perspective. Through the reasoned combination of research-by-design methods and case-study analysis, the book explores the infrastructural relevance of these sites for the specific mountain territory, while advancing an innovative structuralist-systemic approach for their physical and functional transformation. The book includes, among others, a first transnational geo-mapping of Alpine brownfields, whose impressive outcomes in terms of site numbers and distribution can only confirm the urgency of this research. About the Author Dr. Marcello Modica, urban planner (Polytechnic University of Milan, 2012), was associate researcher at the Technical University of Munich, Department of Architecture until 2021.
This book arises from an international conference held at Sapienza University in Rome, Italy, in May 2015, and it includes papers by important Italian scholars of fashion. It is dedicated to one of the main indicators of social change, fashion, analysed within different scientific fields, historical periods, and geographical areas. This volume deals with issues of economy and fashion, copyright, industrial designs, trademarks, trade secrets, and patents, as well as new communication devices and strategies in the era of increasing globalization and market integration. Contributions analyze fashion blogs, fashion communication strategies, relations between fashion and technology, social media, grass-roots communication, social and cultural aspects of digital technologies, mobile fashion applications, and the dynamic fashion system in the virtual world. Visual identification symbols of fashion details, such as the Catalan hat or the Basque beret, the concept of “Made in Italy” and its success in the world, and new materials and technological innovations are also explored.
Stretching 1,200 kilometres across six countries, the colossal mountains of the Alps dominate Europe, geographically and historically. Enlightenment thinkers felt the sublime and magisterial peaks were the very embodiment of nature, Romantic poets looked to them for divine inspiration, and Victorian explorers tested their ingenuity and courage against them. Located at the crossroads between powerful states, the Alps have played a crucial role in the formation of European history, a place of intense cultural fusion as well as fierce conflict between warring nations. A diverse range of flora and fauna have made themselves at home in this harsh environment, which today welcomes over 100 million tourists a year. Leading Alpine scholar Jon Mathieu tells the story of the people who have lived in and been inspired by these mountains and valleys, from the ancient peasants of the Neolithic to the cyclists of the Tour de France. Far from being a remote and backward corner of Europe, the Alps are shown by Mathieu to have been a crucible of new ideas and technologies at the heart of the European story.
This book presents and critically evaluates the results of a European territorial cooperation project addressing the planning challenge of brownfield transformation in fragile territories. Set against the backdrop of the current scenario of deindustrialisation in the European Alps, the book describes how to read and interpret the spatial condition of industrial brownfields in peripheral mountain areas as complex transformation sites. Through key theoretical references, well-documented experiences and field activities, the book explores and advances an innovative methodology of design-based participatory planning conceived specifically for fragile socioeconomic and environmental contexts. The empirical basis for such a methodological exploration is provided by four pilot sites distributed between Austria, Italy, France and Slovenia, identified in the cooperation project as highly representative and recurring situations. The book includes a comparative review of the work carried out for the pilot sites, as well as the planning outcomes generated, providing a clear and operative reference for scholars, professionals and public officers called to face similar experiences.
'A Handbook of Industrial Districts is a very well-organized and structured collection of scientific works on the theory of industrial districts.' - Roberta Capello, Regional Studies In this comprehensive original reference work, the editors have brought together an unrivalled group of distinguished scholars and practitioners to comment on the historical and contemporary role of industrial districts.
Local Agri-food Systems in a Global World: Market, Social and Environmental Challenges is an important new collection of essays making a landmark contribution to the ongoing debate on local agri-food systems, local development in rural areas and new patterns of agri-food systems. There is a new awareness of the links between local and global strategies of food production and processing, and these have become an increasingly important topic of research worldwide. Effective analysis of the spatial dynamics of agri-food systems requires an interdisciplinary approach involving economics, geography, sociology, demographics and agronomy. Chapters cover areas such as: current spatial dynamics in agri-food systems; the socio-environmental impact of agri-food systems on rural development; the role of local resources in agri-food systems; the governance and public policies of local agri-food systems; and, last but not least, new methodological approaches to spatial dynamics of agri-food systems. The book provides an essential tool for researchers and academics in rural economics, sociology, geography and social sciences as well as policy makers.
This book focuses on the development of four key issues in the development of modern Spain; knowledge, manufacturing, energy and telecommunications, and public works. If technology transfer from advanced nations to less developed systems always worked, then the whole world would now be rich. That this is not the case is so obvious, we might well expect that the history of the processes, successes and failures of technology transfer across nations would be a very well-established field of enquiry. In fact, the theme is still a developing one, and the present Special Issue centres on the case of Spain as exemplary in many respects. The collected essays focus upon the four major themes of knowledge, manufacturing, energy, and telecommunications and public works. Essays range in time from the 18th century to the present time, from studies of espionage and early links between craftsmen and savants, to the institutions of technology (from training systems, to private enterprise activity, or patents), to case-studies of silk manufacture, shipbuilding, mining, paper-making, and pharmaceuticals. Each essay offers a broad variety of material to bring to bear on a major problem of world development, past, present, and future.
There is a peculiar dissonance in innovation research. On the one hand, the label innovation is applied to almost everything: new products, processes, services, methods, techniques. Even the diffusion of innovations to all spheres of society is called innovation. On the other hand, we find that the main focus of innovation research is still on bringing technology to market. This dissonance provoked the central questions discussed at the 2nd International Conference on Indicators and Concepts of Innovation (ICICI 2008) on «Non-technological and non-economic innovations and their impact on economy» hosted by the Competence Centre for Management at the Berne School of Business and Administration: What forms and dimensions of non-technological and non-economic innovations can nonetheless be found both theoretically and empirically? What impact do these innovations have on the economy? Are there actually innovations without a non-technological and non-economic dimension, viz. purely technological or economic innovations? Consisting of selected answers to these questions, this volume presents international scholarly approaches beyond the «technology goes economic market» mainstream of innovation research. They are integrated in a theoretical framework for the analysis of socially robust innovations, i.e. innovations that succeed on more than one market and are therefore both more sustainable and more profitable. The 2nd International Conference on Indicators and Concepts of Innovation (ICICI 2008) has been supported by the SCOPES programme of the Swiss National Science Foundation.
