The paper discusses the concept of "traditional knowledge": its definition, economic significance and role in shaping regional development trajectories. After outlining a conceptual framework for the analysis of traditional knowledge, the paper examines the changing position of traditional...

Geography is widely viewed as the important determinant of city location. This paper empirically disentangles the different roles of geography in shaping the European city system. We present a new database that covers all actual cities as well as potential city locations over the period when the...

This Paper examines city formation in a country whose urban population is growing steadily over time, with new cities required to accommodate this growth. In contrast to most of the literature there is immobility of housing and urban infrastructure, and investment in these assets is taken on the...

The paper argues that the way in which social scientists and policy-makers have conceptualised the Italian territory has significantly changed since the 1950s as a consequence of methodological shifts and attempts to capture the changing territorial organisation of the economy brought about by...

In order to determine the degree of similarity among 'local development trajectories' the paper conducts a preliminary comparative analysis of the development trajectories of the major local systems in the Marche Region in the period 1951-2001. It shows that there have been marked differences...

This chapter describes how the spatial distribution of economic activity changes as economies develop and grow. We start with the relation between development and rural-urban migration. Moving beyond the coarse rural-urban distinction, we then focus on the continuum of locations in an economy...

This work introduces a method aimed at the identification of metropolitan sub-centres. Instead of using traditional and static methodologies based on morphological approaches (e.g. employment density), interaction measures have been employed, based on the Central Place theoretical tradition. In...

Large cities produce more output per capita than small cities. This may occur because more talented individuals sort into large cities, because large cities select more productive entrepreneurs and firms, or because of agglomeration economies. We develop a model of systems of cities that...

[ITALIANO] Lo scopo di questo lavoro Š di riaprire il dibattito sulle modalita' di regionalizzazione funzionale con la proposta di una procedura analitica di identificazione dei sistemi locali. Come Š noto, l'esito della regionalizzazione funzionale in Italia si sostanzia nei Sistemi (o...

[ITALIANO] La necessita' di riaprire il dibattito sull'individuazione delle aree funzionali (i Sistemi o Mercati Locali del Lavoro in Italia - SLL) e di rivederne l'architettura operativa viene oramai sostenuta da numerosi studiosi. Un'operazione preliminare rispetto a tale finalita' Š quella...