Programme & tracks

The final programme of the conference: Click to download

The book of abstracts: Click to download

The conference tracks:

• General Themes,
• Special Sessions,
• Young Scientists Session.

General Themes:

• A. Contemporary and future challenges for cities and regions: Are we ready for them?
• B. Cities and regions facing the economic crisis and global epidemic,
• C. Cities and regions in climate change,
• D. Circular economy for resilient cities,
• E. Uncertainty in local and regional policies,
• F. Urban and regional development,
• G. Demography, migration and social inequalities,
• H. Innovation, entrepreneurship and regional competitiveness,
• I. Spatial planning, sustainable development and ecological transition,
• J. Rural regions and their development,
• K. Culture, tourism, health and education in an uncertain time,
• L. Land use, transport, mobility and accessibility,
• M. Perspectives on shrinking cities development,
• N. Regional finance, fiscal issues, investment and capital markets,
• O. The digital world, digital region and digital society,
• P. Methods and models in regional science and urban economics,
• Q. Ukraine and CEE countries in the face of war.

Special sessions:

• SA. Societies and borders – cooperation in the turbulent environment
  Description: The integration and disintegration processes in Europe and the world significantly determine the development of territories, nations, states, and their institutions. Administrative borders, including state borders, play an essential role in these processes. Borders are both a philosophical category and fundamentally social, economic, and political phenomena. Throughout history, the functions and roles of borders have been continuously changing. Borders can be understood in their context, shaped as they are by history and power and cultural and social issues. The issues of the functioning of borders are of interest to representatives of many scientific disciplines. There is an increase in the popularity of border studies. Many problems related to the "society-border" relationship remain unresolved. State borders play dual roles. On the one hand, they are barriers to development; on the other hand, they stimulate territorial cooperation in cross-border, transnational and interregional dimensions. We see a need to analyse the effectiveness of the existing territorial cooperation instruments and search for new concepts that would take into account contemporary challenges. There are new threats related to the dynamically changing geopolitical situation. The issues of the development of ethnic and ethnic minorities, be it located within one state, divided by a state border or dispersed worldwide, remain unresolved. Migration processes are intensifying resulting in the search for new concepts to prevent the processes of exclusion. During our special session, we want to animate a discussion on the broadly understood relations between societies and borders, analyse critical phenomena and processes and indicate the important challenges as well as the best solutions. We cordially invite you to participate in our initiative and encourage you to submit your paper proposals and present them during our special session within CERS 2022 conference.
  Organisers: Tomasz Studzieniecki, Gdynia Maritime University, Gdynia, Poland; Joanna Kurowska-Pysz, WSB University, Dąbrowa Górnicza, Poland. Special session organised in cooperation with IGCOORD (igcoord.eu)

  

• SB. Smart, sustainable, resilient regions in time of multiple and overlapping crises
  Description: The Covid-19 crisis has led to unprecedented disruptions to the health systems, the economy and the society and has revealed the systemic fragility of our world. More recently, the war in Ukraine has been seen as a return of tragedy, causing a massive humanitarian crisis and threatening the world’s recovery. The effects of geopolitical tensions propagated worldwide and countries all over the globe face further disruptions due to rising food and energy prices, inflationary pressures, disrupted supply chains, financial turbulence etc. There are serious concerns that the climate change plans and ambitions will be slowed or even abandoned in some parts of the planet. In relation to this background, there is an evident need to reflect on the spatial dimension of simultaneous transformations towards smart, sustainable and resilient regions and the significance for regional development policy and practice. Based on a starting point that acknowledges the diversity of regional challenges and the role played by the contextual factors, this special session addresses, but is not restricted to, the following questions: How do the multiple crises impact on the regional development agendas? How do smartness, sustainability and resilience relate to each other in time of crises? What are the synergies and the trade-offs that should be further addressed? Submissions covering conceptual, empirical and methodological contributions to the topic are welcome.
  Organiser: Daniela-Luminita Constantin, Bucharest University of Economic Studies, Cristina Serbanica, "Constantin Brancoveanu" University of Pitesti, Romania. Special Session proposed by the Romanian Regional Science Association (rrsa.ro)

  




• SC. Autonomous Vehicle Readiness of Cities
  Description: Autonomous vehicles 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 on autonomous vehicles (AV) 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 the acceptance of technology. 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. It is less known, thus highly significant, to emphasize that a perfectly constructed self-driving vehicle cannot run safely in today’s cities; road markings, signs, traffic lights and other infrastructural, legal, regulatory and technological developments are required. 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. Present Special Session aims to highlight that autonomous vehicle development is not only a technical-technological-IT related issue but it also requires an integrated study of the receiving environment from regional science aspect, thereby increasing AV readiness.
  Organiser: Miklos Lukovics, University of Szeged, Hungary




• SD. The relationship between innovation ecosystem and creative industry in the development of regional centers
  Description: Knowledge, innovation and creativity, key areas to be explored in themes related to urban and economic development. In addition to the social and economic environment of cities, the cultural milieu is increasingly becoming installation factor. Since the change of regime, but also after the millennium, the development of knowledge-based economic sectors has become a key theme in national, regional and international economic strategies. Spatial differences in creative and knowledge-intensive sectors within the urban network show a significant pattern. The impacts on urban development will be analysed from the perspective of the creative economy, as well as their spatial patterns within the city and the effects of urban development policies. The secondary objective of the session is to examine the new forms of work related to the digitalisation of the economy in case study locations. Outside the capital cities, these spatial scales are also centres of the emergence of the creative economy, Industry 4.0 solutions and innovative start-ups, reflected in the new generation of innovation policies. Epidemiological measures have brought new insights into new working spaces, which have been accompanied by the definition of new development and action directions. The epidemic, which swept through the country with incredible speed, has caused serious problems in all sectors and industries, with a few exceptions. Its effects were felt differently in the big cities and in rural areas, and to varying degrees in the different urban areas. We look forward to case studies from Central- and Eastern-Europe countries second-tier cities and small towns.
  Organisers: Réka Horeczki, Centre for Economic and Regional Research, Hungary; Stefan Bilasco, Babeş-Bolyai University, Romania




• SE. The Role of Social Entrepreneurs in Building Resilient Rural Regions
  Description: Social entrepreneurs emerge in the face of state and market failures and although these failures are more prevalent in rural areas, the role of social entrepreneurs in rural regions remains under researched. With the uncertainties facing regions throughout Europe, it is an important time to study the role that social entrepreneurs can play and the contribution they can make in building resilient rural regions. It is important to study the resilience of rural regions for a number of reasons. Firstly, rural regions tend to be impacted more severely than urban regions during recessionary times (Capello, Caragliu, and Fratesi, 2015). Secondly, rural municipalities are underfunded and the budgets are likely to be reduced further, furthering potential state withdrawal and neoliberal policies in rural regions (Bock, 2016). Finally, unprecedented events, such as conflicts and wars, e.g. ongoing war in Ukraine, are causing large numbers of migrants to relocate, with rural areas taking a particular hit. Resilient rural regions do not solely rely on exogenous resources but instead have capacity through endogenous resources to absorb potential crises. Social entrepreneurs emerge in the face of such crises to provide necessary goods/services for local communities using a combination of exogenous and endogenous resources. This Special Session welcomes proposals that examine the role that social entrepreneurs can have in building resilient rural regions.
  Organisers: Barraí Hennebry, Munster Technological University, Ireland; Marina Novikova, Leibniz Institute for Ecological Urban and Regional Development – IOER, Germany




• SF. Resilient Development as Driving Force of Urban-regional Transformation
  Description: Climate change, economic crises or hostile aggressions are impacting the paths of urban and regional development in a more or less strong way. Such impacts in terms of intensity, length or geographic-structural extension remain unclear and often unpredictable with very often unknown or uncertain consequences of vulnerability and for recovery or transformation of their respective social and technical infrastructure systems. In this work session we will regard urban and regional resilience as a dynamic concept considering its circular cumulative character according to the adaptive cycle of disasters for respective technical and social infrastructures. This cycle is determined through the main components of robustness, adaptability and transformability. (ENSURE, 2010, p.52) Each component is influenced through distinct factors which become important in the respective period named impact, response, recovery and preparedness. In a structural perspective Davoudi (2012) emphasizes that preparedness is the most decisive feature in front of unknown potential impacts and any kind of policy has to cope with this uncertainty in urban transformation process. Because of this challenge to decrease uncertainty of impacts and vulnerability on the one hand and to increase preparedness through adaptation and transformation on the other hand, policies strengthening of resilient development need a multidimensional as well as a process orientated dynamic understanding. Beside analytical research with focus on the three main components, transdisciplinary research strengthening the resilient path is needed. For example, we expect scientific contributions:
  - Interdependences between the three main components robustness, adaptability and transformability,
  - Assessing performance deficits and risks of vulnerability of distinct technical and social infrastructure systems,
  - Meaning of social/technical innovations and of learning capacities as crucial drivers of transformation.
  In total, all papers should contribute to a better understanding of urban-regional resilience and to corresponding paths strengthening urban-regional transformation in an effective way.
  Organisers: Rudolf Giffinger, Institute of Spatial Planning, Centre of Urban and Regional Research, TU Wien, Austria; Solomiia Tkach, Institute of Regional Research, Department of Spatial Development National Academy of Science in Lviv, Ukraine




• SG. Digital Entrepreneurs on the Pathways of Regional Development
  Description: The session brings together three theoretical perspectives: evolutionary economic geography (the path dependence and path creation), relational geography (studies on regional innovation systems) and global value chains – by offering insights into the role of the digital entrepreneurs in regional development. The digital entrepreneurs are companies that provide software and hardware solutions classified as Industry 4.0 for industrial clients. Both in the academic literature and regional economic policy, they are regarded as innovation-driven entrepreneurial activity of high-local-value-added. Moreover, strong transformative power is attributed to their presence and interactions within the value chains. Presenters are invited to share research results answering the contextual question of whether the digital entrepreneurs truly constitute a viable mechanism for the new path creation for industrial regions. The mechanisms of strategic coupling of the digital entrepreneurs and manufacturing companies in different regional contexts are also expected to be revealed within the session.
  Organisers: Krzysztof Gwosdz, Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland, Marcin Baron, University of Economics in Katowice, Poland




• SH. Migration within and out of VISEGRAD regions
  Description: After the EU enlargement in 2004, the New Member States (NMS) got the freedom to move and subsequent access to the EU 15 labour markets. This led to an outflow of people from these countries but also to intense cross border commuting. The language ability of migrants is very important for a good fit at the destination labour market. However, we observe that migrants from the NMS partly work overqualified in their destination countries. The language barrier is lower within the NMS and therefore, migration within these countries might lead to good matches at the labour market. This section aims to bring together colleagues working in the field of migration with a specific focus on migration within and outside the NMS. We encourage submissions raising questions such as:
  - The characteristics of NMS migrants and their performance,
  - Migrant groups: Students, human capital and skills, etc.,
  - Young Migrants - future perspective,
  - NMS migration flows within and between the NMS, and their reasons,
  - NMS migration flows to EU 15 countries, and their reasons,
  - Cross border commuting between NMS borders but also EU 15 countries,
  - Economic and social aspects of the home and destination regions due to migration,
  - Barriers and opportunities to migrate,
  - Any other NMS migration related aspects,
  - Advantages and disadvantages of migration,
  - Migration and urban resilience,
  - Can migration boost multidimensional changes?,
  - Migration as an innovation engine,
  - Actors and stakeholders in policy making for integration of migrants in social and economic life of European Society.
  Organisers: Stephan Brunow, University of Applied Labour Studies, Campus Schwerin, Germany; Katarzyna Miszczak, Aleksandra Wrona, Wroclaw University of Economics and Business, Poland

  

Young scientists session

For PhD students and early career researchers, the 8th CERS Conference offers a special occasion to meet leading European researchers of regional science. We are organizing a special session for Young Scientists, in order to give our young colleagues the opportunity to both present and discuss their scientific achievements and obtain high quality feedback from senior colleagues who deal with the same or similar issues.

We welcome papers from young colleagues (up to 34 years old by 31.12.2022) from the field of regional science.