Miklós Lukovics, Nikoletta Nadas (p)

Tamás Egedy

Autonomous vehicles (AV) will bring about a tremendous change in the everyday life and routine of everyone participating in traffic – be it a driver, a cyclist or a pedestrian – in the civilized world. This change may not only result in the disappearance of the steering wheel in cars: the system of self-driving vehicles opens a new perspective affecting almost all aspects of our lives: new daily routine, new travel habits, new business models, new connection networks, new urban structures etc. Although the overwhelming majority of research AVs is technological and natural-scientific in nature, more and more social-scientific researches are conducted. These researches, however, are designed with a narrow focus and are mostly centered on technology acceptance. Few researches point to the crucial role of cities in establishing the infrastructural, land-use, legal and regulatory conditions needed for the technology’s safe operation. The critical mass and spatial concentration of autonomous vehicles will emerge in urban areas, and it raises a complex issue which requires the outmost planning and preparation. At city level, the real change will not the autonomous technology itself, but its integration into different vehicle uses and people’s lifestyles. All of this predicts a large-scale change that ¬ by its nature ¬ bring about a number of uncertainties, concerns, open questions, ethical problems, and often fears in society that hinder deployment. The responsible innovation approach provides an excellent opportunity to address these concerns.

Present paper aims to highlight that AV development is not only a technological issue but it also requires an integrated study of the receiving environment (individuals and cities). We are handling the AV-readiness levels (individual, territorial unit) and its factors (technology, infrastructure, regulation, consumer acceptance) in an integrated way and are examining a complex system using the logic of socio-technical integration, from a responsible innovation perspective. However, this requires careful planning, development and preparation on part of cities and on the part of individuals, economic and social actors,and in this process the flexibility and willingness to change is essential. Our research will bring results on the urban level of the receiving environment, with the help of which AVs can fit into our everyday lives with the biggest possible advantage and the smallest disadvantage possible.

Marcin Baron (p), Krzysztof Gwosdz, Marcin Budka, Katarzyna Hetmańczyk, Mariusz Hetmańczyk, Agnieszka Sobala-Gwosdz, Robert Szczepanek

Nikoletta Nadas

The proposed paper refers to the digitalisation of industry (Industry 4.0). It is seen as a phenomenon that will substantially transform the global economic landscape (Kagermann et al. 2013, Schwab 2016, Isaksen et al 2020). This profound transition in the manufacturing industry, which affects the work environment and the number of workplaces (Bailey & de Propris, 2019), may imply profound changes in the development of industrial regions, both in developed countries and in the ‘emerging economies’ positioned as a semi-periphery in the international division of work. Strong transformative power is attributed especially to the so-called ‘digital entrepreneurs’, i.e. the providers of digital solutions for manufacturing sectors. Aiming at answering the contextual question of whether the digital entrepreneurs constitute a viable mechanism for the new path creation for industrial regions in the integrated semi-peripheries, we scrutinise the mechanism of strategic coupling of the digital entrepreneurs and manufacturing companies in different regional contexts. The paper presents the mid-term findings, mainly related to understanding the co-location of automotive companies and IT (Industry 4.0) companies, compared to other industrial specialisations. The empirical part refers to Poland (Polish regions and provinces). We expect to raise discussion on the specifics of the regional industry’s absorption capacity for the Industry 4.0 solutions, as well as the factors and mechanisms behind them.

Tamás Egedy (p)

Marcin Baron

In the post-industrial age, the transformation of urban networks and urban regions was fundamentally influenced by the rapid spread of infocommunication technologies (ICT) and the Internet. People share information in their daily lives with the help of various ICT devices and ultimately generate georeferenced data that could obtain important information about people’s use of space, spatial movement and social connections. The main aim of the study is to explore the urban geographical and spatial impacts of ICT and social media networks in Hungarian cities. We focus on drawing territorial and settlement hierarchical patterns and clusters based on the mobile communication and online social network relationship data of Hungarian cities. The paper highlights the relationship between the intensity of mobile communication and the density and expansion of intercity social relations and the settlements’ level of economic development, respectively. The methodology is based on mobile phone call detail record (CDR) analysis and intercity network analysis of social media activities. Our findings suggest that different communication networks follow divergent spatial patterns in Hungary. The traditional East–West dichotomy of the Hungarian spatial divide is still reflected in mobile communication, but intercity clusters based on social media activities are usually aligned to the borders of administrative structures. In several cases, we were able to identify strong intercity links between settlements with a similar level of economic development of the mesolevel spatial structure that traverses over different counties and regional borders. Results on social and demographic issues suggest that ‘generation Z’ could play a key role in dampening the social and economic tensions created by the digital divide in the long run. Using a multidimensional explanatory model, we could demonstrate the growing interconnectedness between digital networks and economic development.