New professional sports stadia have been widely advanced as flagship developments that can generate jobs and wealth, support place branding and culture-led strategies, and host mega-events. Public funding for new stadia has been secured on these bases but also challenged as stadia costs are under-estimated and the benefits, particularly for lower income communities, exaggerated. Emerging in this context

In this article it is argued that long-term economic growth can be secured by the continual re-invention of the technological and consequential economic bases of local economies. Starting from the perspective of evolutionary path dependence in the development histories of new technologies, the roles of innovators in the creation of new technological pathways are theorised. Historical case study evidence

Knowledge about connections within a local economic system holds implication for understanding the ways in which individuals and categories of entrepreneurs access the system itself and resources provided within. While scholars have recently found complex divisions of networks within local entrepreneurship ecosystems, we still have a limited understanding about why these chasms exist. We present a

The growth of mobile workforces to support diversified resource extraction activities, compared to historically single-industry towns, represents a key change in rural and remote resource landscapes that has accelerated since the 1980s. Mobile workforces can present many opportunities to rural communities and economies. However, the capacity, viability and competitiveness of rural-based businesses

A growing body of literature recognises the crucial role played by immigrant entrepreneurs. However, certain socio-cultural barriers adversely affect their businesses in rural areas. Thus, this article examines the socio-cultural barriers facing immigrant entrepreneurs in Lincolnshire. Eleven semi-structured interviews were held with businesses owned by immigrants from diverse ethnic backgrounds. The

We investigate the urban transformation strategies of major developers and other key actors in the context of neoliberalism and its influence on politics, including urban development governance. Drawing primarily on interviews with corporate developers operating in the downtown areas of Oslo, Norway, we show how these influential actors with little formal political responsibility not only shape the

Many nations have committed to midcentury net zero carbon emissions targets in line with the 2015 Paris Agreement. These require systemic transition in how people live and do business in different local areas and regions within nations. Indeed, in recognition of the climate challenge, many regional and city authorities have set their own net zero targets. What is missing is a grounded principles framework

For decades El Salvador has been reliant on migration, mainly to the US, to provide remittances and an outlet for widespread underemployment. The deportation of tens of thousands of migrants annually by the United States, however, threatens to exacerbate problems of joblessness, poverty, and informality in local economies, calling into question the suitability of prevailing economic development strategies

Regional resilience is a topic of growing academic and policymaker interest. This article empirically examines this concept by scrutinising the impact of Brexit on Scottish small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Given their crucial importance for the Scottish economy, SMEs are a good ‘unit of analysis’ and a powerful barometer for measuring regional resilience. The research adopted a novel mixed

Second-order cities are generally seen as disadvantaged places in the literature on globalisation, but in recent years they have staged a revival in several countries. This article uses two data sources to examine the employment change recorded by Britain’s Core Cities between 2012 and 2017, breaking it down by type of worker, occupation and industry. It aims, firstly, to identify which elements of

There has been an age old assertion that once public policies are formulated, the policies will automatically be implemented to achieve their stated objectives. To unravel this, the article through comparative empirical analysis discussed the dynamics that influenced local economic development implementation in Ghana. It emerged that four key dynamics: politics, leadership commitment and will, land

Community participation is critical in enhancing rural sustainability in terms of managing indigenous water harvesting structures. The long-standing illusion that the water crisis can only be tackled through a top down strategy design has been shattered by a successful community engagement model using the social, financial, and human capital of the community in the semi-arid village Laporiya of Rajasthan

This paper examines how far patterns of external ownership affect benefits from industry geographical proximity. The case explores investments in energy and electricity supply in Wales. Geographically related benefits are examined through a Smart Specialisation lens, in the areas of innovation; firm-to-firm interaction; the labour market and public sector intervention. We find evidence that the ownership

Current transport strategy in the UK is strongly urban-focused, with assumptions that technological advances in mobility will simply trickle down into rural areas. This article challenges such a view and instead draws on rural development thinking aligned to a “Smart Countryside” which emphasises the need for place-based approaches. Survey and interview methods are employed to develop a framework of

This article discusses the contribution of innovation centres in nearby neighbourhoods based on primary data. This paper involves the study of the case of Ruta N in Medellín to expose the relationship between a consolidated neighbourhood and new innovation facilities. Ruta N was founded after the implementation of a city-level policy for innovation intended to secure the economic growth of a former

In her 2016 Birmingham speech in the campaign for the Conservative Party’s leadership, Theresa May stated that she wanted to see a ‘proper industrial strategy to get the whole economy firing’. Her enthusiasm reflected a renewed international interest in industrial strategies following the 2008 global economic crisis, despite the perceived policy failures of strategies to ‘pick winners’ in the 1960s

Regional economies are shaped by their economic histories and existing endowments. This paper explores the question: how do a region’s economic history and institutional endowments affect its success and trajectory in an emerging industry? Our case, electric vehicle development and production, is an industry which combines more traditional skilled manufacturing with knowledge-driven innovation activities

Will the UK Industrial Strategy deliver anything substantial to the North of England? This article examines the faltering steps taken to develop Local Industrial Strategies by Local Enterprise Partnerships and Mayoral Combined Authorities and argues Place Leadership and Industrial Strategy will both need to be substantially re-galvanised after COVID 19. It is also still not clear if a significant step

Entrepreneurial ecosystems are the focus of government economic policies around the world for their potential to generate entrepreneur-led economic development. The paper identifies key research questions and challenges to building effective public policy: (i) the limitations of existing data sources, (ii) the need to balance findings from quantitative and qualitative studies, (iii) the danger that

The UK Government’s Industrial Strategy White Paper, published in November 2017, focuses on several key technologies of the future, in order to promote innovation and future economic performance. Universities play a key role in the delivery of the strategy, marking the culmination of nearly two decades of policy reviews that have continually promoted ‘third stream’ activities of commercial engagement

Although rebalancing the UK economy has long been a focus of UK governments, this has recently used the rhetoric of ‘levelling up’. Amongst other policy instruments, the UK’s Modern Industrial Strategy has been an indicator of the core economic priority areas, with selected local areas also invited to produce their own local industrial strategies to provide a more nuanced delivery of those goals. This

Academics and policy makers have increasingly recognised the importance of mundane economic activities – variously termed foundational or everyday. The foundational or everyday economy is now featuring in local industrial strategy and economic action plans, because the desirable high-tech sectors on the ‘frontier’ cannot diffuse prosperity within and between regions. This article aims to distinguish

Although clean growth has been identified as one of the grand challenges of the UK Industrial Strategy, public policy paid little attention to the configuration of business support towards enhancing clean growth potential of small and medium-sized enterprises. The dominant approach of policymakers to the design of enterprise support interventions appears to be ‘place-blind’ and downplays the challenges

Government policy in the UK, as in many countries, sees investment in infrastructure projects - particularly large ones - as a key means of supporting the national economy. But where does this leave local economic interests in the loci of these projects? And how does the regulation of such projects handle these interests? These are the questions addressed by this paper in the context of renewable energy

In various case studies across Europe the vital role of rural place leadership in enabling a place-based approach to local and regional development has been highlighted, although not always explicitly addressed as such. This paper aims to do so by reviewing the findings from a selection of earlier research projects within a framework of the role of rural leadership in place-based development. Building