The notion of proximity is increasing in popularity in economic and geographic literature, and is now commonly used by scholars in regional science and spatial economics.

This Handbook is a state-of-the-art analysis of proximity relations, offering insights into its history alongside up-to-date scientific advances and emerging questions. Its broad scope – from industrial and innovation approaches through to society issues of living and working at a distance, territorial development and environmental topics – will ensure an in-depth focus point for researchers in economics as well as geography, organizational studies, planning and sociology.

Bringing together a wide range of empirical studies from around the world (Sweden, Norway, Austria, Germany, France, UK, Israel, Russia, China, Taiwan, Argentina, Canada), framed in related contemporary theoretical frameworks, this book examines the question of the significance of proximate vs. more distant relationships for economic agents' performance and local economic development. While this question has been the subject of intense debates in recent years, it is obvious that proximity and distance are not explanatory factors as such. The book argues for the need to understand the aims of economic relationships, the nature of the regional environment in which they originate, and the scale at which they operate. The book suggests that the notions of diversity, innovativeness, maturity and multiple scales should be incorporated into the debates on the significance of proximity for economic performance.

Regional economics – an established discipline for several decades – has undergone a period of rapid change in the last ten years resulting in the emergence of several new perspectives. At the same time the methodology of regional economics has also experienced some surprising developments. This fully revised and updated Handbook brings together contributions looking at new pathways in regional economics, written by many well-known international scholars. The aim is to present the most cutting-edge theories explaining regional growth and local development. The authors highlight the recent advances in theories, the normative potentialities of these theories and the cross-fertilization of ideas between regional and mainstream economists. It will be an essential source of reference and information for both scholars and students in the field.

Bringing together a wide range of empirical studies from around the world (Sweden, Norway, Austria, Germany, France, UK, Israel, Russia, China, Taiwan, Argentina, Canada), framed in related contemporary theoretical frameworks, this book examines the question of the significance of proximate vs. more distant relationships for economic agents' performance and local economic development. While this question has been the subject of intense debates in recent years, it is obvious that proximity and distance are not explanatory factors as such. The book argues for the need to understand the aims of economic relationships, the nature of the regional environment in which they originate, and the scale at which they operate. The book suggests that the notions of diversity, innovativeness, maturity and multiple scales should be incorporated into the debates on the significance of proximity for economic performance.

The countryside has often been marginalised in discussions of economic and societal development, in favour of the urban. This book aims to stimulate a debate and a re-evaluation of how the concepts of the rural, peripheral and marginal are treated in academia and policy. Approaching this theme from geographic, demographic and economic perspectives, Peter de Souza makes a compelling case for giving the periphery a prominent role as an integral part of a holistic and balanced society. The book carefully deconstructs the concept of the urban, and critiques the idea of urban-rural or centre-periphery comparisons, and presents an alternative approach to spark future discussions. Winner of the Regional Studies Association Best Book Award 2020, The Rural and Peripheral in Regional Development will be of interest to those studying and researching in the areas of rural economics, sustainability and development, as well as those involved in rural policymaking.

This book offers a comprehensive overview of contemporary issues of regional development. It places particular emphasis on its socio-economic and socio-political determinants which accompany the problem of existing and ever-widening differences in the level of regional development in various parts of Europe. In order to diagnose the scale of those differences and to indicate the main forces behind the divergence of development, the authors propose an original systematisation of regional development factors, drawing attention to the need to consider them within the framework of present-day socio-economic megatrends. The proposed approach to the development factors is also used for the author's operationalisation of the concept of territorial capital, which is at the centre of regional place-based policy. The wide spatial aspect of the analysis (national and local) and its extensive temporal scope (2004-2019) yields unique results and creates an important element of added value for this book, which shows the regularities of the process of regional development in Europe at three spatial levels - pan-European, national and intra-regional. Furthermore, it indicates the challenges faced by regionalists who attempt to carry out research on different territorial levels with a diverse number of units (205 EU regions, 16 Polish voivodeships, 2,478 Polish local units) and extended observation periods (2004-2017). The solutions proposed by the authors, who show the potential of overcoming the barriers resulting from limited access to complete and comparable statistical data series, should be inspiring for many researchers. The unique results of direct research carried out on a large sample of respondents and entrepreneurs via diverse field research techniques constitute a valuable source of information on local conditions that impact contemporary development processes in less developed regions. Their value is even greater because they were carried out in a unique laboratory created by the authors for testing the regularity of formation and impact of socio-economic development factors in various locally determined conditions of this process. It consists of purposefully selected test units (LAU2). Located in a less developed region, they represent all growth types and functional test units identified in the course of the research. Consequently, the results obtained may be generalised and applied to other areas showing similar features of territorial capital. The monograph is addressed primarily to a wide group of regionalists connected with economic and social sciences as well as to practitioners involved in the implementation of development policies at various levels.