Ewa Bojar (p), Matylda Bojar (p)

The concept of clusters represents an important step towards explaining the reasons for unequal spatial distribution of economic activities and the resultant disparities in economic development between various regions. The clusters generate numerous benefits for networking enterprises as well as industrial and service sectors they operate in. They also produce positive effects in the local environment. Modern clusters encourage innovation in enterprises and contribute to the development of conditions conducive to the dissemination of innovation.
Many observations of existing clusters and cluster-like structures have shown that they can be an important drivers of regional development and through the external effects they also have a great influence on the other sectors of local and regional economies.
The studies of existing economic clusters clearly demonstrate that they should not be merely perceived as a tool to increase innovation and the competitiveness of enterprises, but they are also contributing significantly to the development of innovation and international competitiveness of national economies as a whole. These observations have laid the foundations for developing in 2015 a new Polish cluster-based development policy along with support schemes for both existing and emerging clusters.
This paper is discussing the role of Poland’s clusters in the context of new political and economic shifts.

Alisa Timoshina (p)

The modern city is a place of increased concentration of economic and social activities and the hub of global processes in which some economic structures are replaced by others. The present stage of socio-economic development is marked by the growing importance of the "new (postindustrial) economy", which is characterized by the prevailing importance of the services sector and of "knowledge economy".

Nowadays it is important to explore the impact of the "new economy" in the city transformation. This process makes the city meet the changes in the dynamics of global development and form new flexible structures that can be consistent to those changes.

Numerous urban environment transformation projects have taken place since the 1990-ies. The history of these projects reflects the transition from an industrial to a post-industrial city. Industrial urban territories gradually became urban multifunctional hybrid structures that generated research and development.

The significance and prospects of my research consist in the fact that I study contemporary city changes in Western countries and relate the collected data to St. Petersburg. This work is about differences of economic development and economic cycles of cities located in the Western Europe and the post-Soviet space. The main question is whether St. Petersburg is able to follow the trends that already exist in western European cities and whether it will thus create a new form. Another question is whether this new form will be indicative of a global city and a new economy. These questions are of prime importance for our city.

Hiroshi Sakamoto (p)

Japan has administrative organizations of 47 prefectures under the central government. Furthermore, there are municipalities called "Shi (city)", "Cho (town)", "Son (village)" as the administrative organization under it. There are cities with a population of 100,000 or less in Japan, but many of them are relatively populous. Cities that have relatively large population of 500,000 or more and which the central government considers important are positioned as "government designated city" and are given authority in terms of finance and so on.
This study investigates the role of cities in the Japanese economy, which is said to be "government designated city" in such regional structure. Although these cities do not have the population size of Tokyo, which is the capital of Japan and representative large cities, it is generally located throughout the country. Therefore, it has a central role in considering the local economy. However, due to the character of being a city, if the population gathers from the surrounding area, the surrounding area may naturally become depopulated. While the population of Japan is beginning to decline, concentration of such population will lead to the collapse of the surrounding regional economy. Therefore, regional allocation of population will be an important problem.
In this study, we will construct economic growth models of multiple regions, set some scenarios about the regional distribution of the population, and measure the economic effect of each scenario. As regional structure, we suppose 17 regions with Tokyo and the rest of Japan added to 15 designated cities. The model is based on the neoclassical economic growth model, produces one regional goods using capital and labor in each region, and uses it for consumption and investment in the next period. For next period's production, we will use capital increased by investment and labor that is increased or decreased based on population movements. After repeating this activity for several periods, we evaluate the economic growth of each region and the economic growth of the entire Japanese economy.
If policy authorities think only economic growth, it is better for the population to concentrate in regions with high productivity. However, if they want a balanced regional economy, policies by non-market governments and others are necessary. In that case, we will discuss what kind of policy effect is expected through the model.

Marjolaine Gros-Balthazard (p)

In recent decades all developed countries have had to cope with a process of deindustrialization. The substantial drop in the number of jobs in industry is not only due to industrial production being transferred to countries with lower labour costs (Saeger, 1997). On the contrary there are numerous other causes, many of which are linked to shifts in patterns of production and consumption. Geographically speaking this has resulted in substantial regional disparities (Martin et al., 2016; Moretti, 2012). These disparities don’t result from a uniform deployment of deindustrialization but they are the consequences of a confrontation between local and global mechanisms. Indeed, in line with the territorial economy approach (Colletis-Wahl et al., 2006), we consider territory not as a support of economic activities, but as both active and context (Courlet & Pecqueur, 2013).
A lot of research in regional science focuses on metropolitan areas which concentrate high added value manufacturing activities and became the real centre of growth for many nations (Halbert, 2015; Krugman, 1991; Veltz, 1997). But, in France, despite the recomposition of productive geography, small and middle towns, even when they are located in rural areas, are still playing a key role in manufacturing activities (GREP, 2016). In this paper, we propose to question how territories can sustain manufacturing dynamics including new forms (taking into account recent industrial mutations). Wondering about sources of these dynamics, we revisit the role of innovation as motor of territorial dynamics including GREMI literature and evolutionary economic geography (Boschma & Martin, 2010; Ratti, Bramanti, & Gordon, 1997).
To answer these questions, we should consider trajectories of industrial territories not only from a sectorial point of view. The coexistence of several mechanisms, from the most endogenous to the most exogenous, would reveal all the complexity of economic change in industrial territories. That’s why we mobilize a mixed methodology combining a quantitative and a qualitative analysis. We define industrial territories by means of location quotient, in 1975 and 2012, which permits us to build a typology (with 3 types of industrial territories). This typology is used to study trajectories and their mechanisms. We illustrate them with 3 cases studies in France : Annonay, Romans and Bressuire.