Oana Mihaescu (p), Kristina Nyström (p)

Ricardo Firetti

In the European understanding, the concept of brownfield land refers to any previously developed land area that is not currently in use, whether contaminated or not. Many of these sites have nevertheless great potential for redevelopment and could become sustainable solutions to counteract urban sprawl; on the contrary, if left unutilized, they might instead negatively impact the surrounding environment. In our paper we investigate how exits of large businesses that result in brownfield land (both with and without pollution issues) impact the economy of the exit and the neighboring areas and to what extent cleanup and redevelopment have the power to induce a positive trend in these regions.

To answer these questions, we use as natural experiment the exit of large businesses (with and without pollution issues) from the Swedish market and apply a difference-in-difference (DiD) regression model to compare the levels of firm performance within the exit regions after exit with the levels before exit, and with the levels of firm performance in carefully chosen control regions that have not experienced any large closures, while we control for space and time-related heterogeneity. We divide the analysis in three stages: the effects of all large closures; the effects of closures with pollution problems; and the effects of closures with pollution problems where cleanup/redevelopment actions are ongoing or completed.

The estimated coefficients indicate that large closures have a negative and statistically significant effect on the real revenues of incumbent firms in the exit area. Robustness checks show that the trends in the ‘exit’ and ‘control’ areas are parallel before the year of the large closure, and negative and significant in the years following the large closure. The effects on employment are similar to the effects on the real revenues, indicating that many firms move out of the area due to a weakening in the ‘clustering’ effect. The difference in the estimated coefficients for our treatment variable in the three stages of our analysis offers an indication about the size and significance of the effects of all business closures (regardless pollution issues) versus effects of large exits with pollution issues, an, most important, versus the effects of large closures where the pollution issues are dealt with through cleanup and redevelopment.

This methodology allows us to highlight how closures of large businesses that result in brownfield land impact the economy of the exit regions and identify the role of cleanup and redevelopment.

Susana Suárez (p), Verónica del Rocío Zúñiga

Oana Mihaescu

Globalization today articulates different places based on the comparative and competitive advantages they present; it fragments the space because in each place there are peculiar logics from which to articulate to globalism. In fact, we are witnessing accelerated processes of resource concentration, diversification, differentiation and exclusion, both globally and within countries and regions, in other words, we are observing the spatial expression of social and even territorial inequality.
Phenomenon that leads to analyze and understand the processes of social and territorial differentiation that globalization is causing in specific territories, in other words, the forms and degrees in which the territories participate in the new economic dynamics and its effects on their levels of social development and territorial articulation. Hence our interest in studying these processes of social and territorial inequality that occur in the state of Guanajuato, Mexico, particularly based on the relocation of transnational companies in the automotive sector in this geographic space, which is the purpose of this work. The proceeding analysis will consider that these processes occur within the framework of deregulation, opening and economic liberalization implemented by the government, as well as the interaction of globalization with the territories according to their conditions, resources, productive activities, knowledge and capacities of local actors.
The method we use is the review of the scientific literature, data collection and statistical analysis to quantify the intensity of the linear relationship by calculating the covariance, the mean and the standard deviation of the variables related to the automotive sector such as number, type and size of companies, their spatial distribution, the number, conditions and type of jobs that these companies generate, in addition to socioeconomic variables such as poverty and marginalization rates recorded by the municipalities where these companies are based, which allows establishing the correlation that exists between the selection of the spatial anchorage of transnational corporations and the economic and social disparities that they foster.

Nastasya Winckel (p)

Susana Suárez

See extended abstract

Territorial revitalization is an underconceptualized term. However, academic fields using or mentioning it are numerous. This statement is the result of interdisciplinary research in ORTEP, a project structured around the notion of revitalization. The purpose of conceptualizing revitalization is to characterize actions and instruments aiming at renewing dynamics at a local scale and to understand its underlying operation. This new concept depends on five principles, among which a drastic system change and a change of trajectory for the local territory.
To develop and test this theoretical framework, we propose an application on Belfort industrial area from 2019 to nowadays. This period is characterized by a crisis opened through the local industry leader’s own difficulties, General Electric. Our research shows that production and employment arrangements in the local industry are changing through restructuring of the already existing energy sectors, especially through the development of a local hydrogen sector. However, development action plans that involves buying out and diversifying activities are not engaging revitalization dynamics for the local territory as it doesn’t tackle important aspect of the local crisis such as employment issues, social exclusion, or ecological problems. In that context, the covid-19 might have been a stronger barrier on alternative projects structured during social mobilizations than on already engaged and long-term projects that were more institutionalized and already funded.

Ricardo Firetti (p), Patricia Turco, Eder Pinatti, Maria Bonacelli

Nastasya Winckel

The State of São Paulo is the largest producer of fresh fruits and vegetables in Brazil and the main food export platform. In addition, it is the main consumer market in South America. This work identified and located agglomerations of food production, important for the localities and for the total product class, providing information on the concentration and economic specialization of 65 products in 40 microregions. of the State of São Paulo. The value of agricultural production (VAP) was used as the main variable in the analysis using data from 2015, calculating the locational gini (LG) and locational quotient (LQ) indices that are used in the international literature. In this work, the LQ corresponds to the relationship between the share of the value of the production of a given product in a given micro-region in the total VAP of the region; and the participation of the region's VAP in the total Value of Agricultural Production in the State of São Paulo. To make it possible to compare the results of LQ, a numerical variable was created based on the coefficient of variation obtained for each of the 65 products and then hierarchized and classified into three types (high, medium and low specialization). The coefficient of variation (CV) is a measure used to compare variables that have different standard deviations and means. The results showed an average LG of 0.79 and showed a small spatial concentration of the value of agricultural production only for four products (LG<0.5): Sugarcane; Beef; Chilled milk and corn. These products were classified as “widely distributed”. The other products were considered spatially concentrated because they obtained LG>0.5. For 33 products, the LG result was greater than 0.81 and they were classified as “locally specialized”. Another 28 products had LG between 0.51 and 0.80 and were classified as “concentrated in a set of microregions”. The results obtained from the coefficient of variation of the LQ indicated that four products were considered of high specialization: Barley; fig for table; Annatto; Quail eggs and persimmon. Another 21 products were classified as having medium specialization, such as: Fish; Onion; Pineapple; Rice; Oat; Banana; among others. A further 33 products were classified as having low specialization. The set of results obtained indicate the possibility of promoting development policies, endogenous or exogenous, in micro-regions specialized in the production of certain foods that stimulate gains in competitiveness through joint actions and increased collective efficiency.