Soyoung Lee (p), Yeong Kim , Jaewon Shin

It has been long since local small and medium cities in Korea lost their vitality due to the progress of aging, economic decline in urban areas, the lack of new growth engines, and the declining population. In addition, since the implementation of the local self-governing system, the creation of new urban areas and the transfer of the administrative institutions to the outskirts of a city have accelerated the decline of old downtown. Rather, local small and medium cities would have a problem to make urban regeneration impossible. Under the recognition of such problems, individual self-governing entities have come up with numerous policies and implemented various policies for the revitalization of local small and medium cities, but it is a condition that the effect of their efforts falls short of expectations. It is because that they focus on the improvement in the physical environment, such as the space of the similar style, which has been widespread in developed countries, simple restoration, and a few structural changes.
In this regard, the part to be realized anew is to enhance the attractiveness of small and medium cities. However, is not possible to raise the overall attractiveness in a short time in reality. Therefore, it is necessary to develop the attractiveness in one or two specialized fields, unique in local small and medium cities. To create a harmony between the historic and cultural context and the revitalization plan, a critical factor to be considered in the analysis process is the collective memory of each city.
In the same way, the purpose of this study is to verify the factors that can determine a detailed plan needed for sustainable urban regeneration in Jinju City through the elements of a collective memory that have been studied in various fields such as history, science and society. To select local assets to be utilized in urban regeneration, it is judged that gathering opinions of local residents is more important than any other thing. Accordingly, this study intends to present positive outcome for the purpose of the revitalization of local small and medium cities by finding the factors which can remind us of the collective memory of Jinju city and selecting the critical factors to determine a detailed project plan from the perspective of urban regeneration and restoration by means of the multiple regression model.

Maria Markatou (p)

The economic crisis that started in 2008 has negatively affected the majority of countries. Nearly all OECD countries have suffered a fall in GDP and trade flows and an increase in unemployment. The global economic crisis has also limited entrepreneurship and underpinned innovation, while the recorded severe drop in demand may have negative implications for long-term economic growth. The crisis has revealed weaknesses (and strengths) which pre-existed, across countries, sectors and firms. Business innovation and R&D activities couldn’t stay untouched. International figures show that business enterprise R&D activities and expenditures as well as patent filings were hit by the crisis. However, large firms have recovered quickly, as confirmed by their growth rates in R&D investments and sales of top corporate R&D investors. Large medium-tech manufacturers have been hit strongly. Generally, more destruction could be seen than creation.

In this context the paper studies the effects of the international crisis on the regional and local production of innovation for the Greek case based on patent records. The paper describes the existing situation (after the start of the crisis) and compares it with the previous one (before the crisis) in relation to features, such as those of patent stocks and growth, ownership, technological content and economic direction. Results show that the international crisis and the Greek ‘bankruptcy’ with the IMF’s involvement have affected the production of innovation, but with a delay. In fact the fall in patents can be seen only after 2011. The basic characteristics of the Greek innovation behavior remain rather stable, at least in relation to the parameters of ownership and geography. However, the analysis reveals differences on the content of technological and economic direction: ‘Fabricated metal products’ and ‘pharmaceuticals’ keep their shares, while being slightly affected by the crisis. On the contrary, sectors like those of ‘energy machinery’, ‘electric motors, generators, transformers’, ‘other electrical equipment’ ‘and measuring instruments’ have mainly emerged after crisis. Results, therefore, show that there has been much destruction as well as much creation. Greek innovation has passed a shock, but there are signs that there is an increasing number of new innovators which choose to exploit this ‘crisis’ opportunity.

Filipe Batista E Silva, Nicola Pontarollo, Pilar Vizcai, Carolina Serpieri (p), Carlo Lavalle, Ricardo Barranco (p)

Long-term socioeconomic projections at country level are produced by European Commission services to assess the economic and budgetary implications of population ageing (The 2018 Ageing Report). To enable further applications, we have developed an approach that disaggregates country-level projections of GDP, employment and population to NUTS-3 regions in an integrated and recursive manner, supported by an explanatory framework for regional growth that includes the following drivers and conditions: convergence forces, human capital, economic structure, agglomeration effects. The estimation of the regional growth equation is based on socioeconomic data spanning 2000-2015, using a switching-regression model with spatial effects to capture 1) variability of elasticities between countries with different levels of development and, 2) spatial spillovers of regional growth. This framework can be used to generate a baseline scenario or alternative ones by assuming shocks to model variables or parameters.
The results of the baseline scenario show that the geography of regional development is not likely to change radically until 2030, but the convergence process will bring East European regions closer to the EU average in terms of GDP per capita. Ireland, Eastern capitals, Lisbon and a few other regions will further lift above the EU average, while growth in northern Italy, Austria, parts of Germany, Netherlands and the UK will slow down thereby getting closer to the EU average. Lagging regions in Greece and Southern Italy are expected to continue diverging. Population and employment are set to decrease, particularly in Eastern Europe, but with less pronounced losses in capital regions.

Claudia Ionescu (p)

Large differences in prosperity levels exist both between and within EU countries. The most prosperous regions in terms of GDP per capita (the standard measure of well being) are all urban – London, Brussels and Hamburg.

The Bucharest-Ilfov region - with a surface of 1821 square kilometers, out of which 13.1% represents the administrative territory of the Municipality of Bucharest and 86.9% of Ilfov County - is located in the southern part of the country, in the central part of the Câmpia Română region.

The Romanian cities, starting from the smallest up to the capital of the country namely Bucharest, face problems related to the degradation of the buildings, the quality of life which is not always in accordance with the standards and expectations of most of the citizens and problems related to the quality of the environment.
In order to solve some of these problems, since 2007. Regional Operational Programme - REGIO – have been heving at its disposal Axis to support the sustainable development of cities – urban growth polesand urban centers.

The direct allocation for the local public administrations (LPAs) through REGIO represented 80% of the total budget and 20% for NGOs, universities, religious institutions and SMEs.
Thus, the accomplishments obtained through the projects which were developed by the LPAs have as a final beneficiary, and in many cases as active participanst, the citizens from the community where the project was implemented, taking into account that most of these projects are addressed to them. Finnaly, the paper is going to present the results of REGIO in BIR and future investments in Bucharest as study case.