Post by Steve Millington

Here are my notes from Regional Studies Association conference opening panel. Simona Iammarino drew attention to the fading interest in regional development, a situation brought about by the major crises shaping the EU strategic policy from the Eurozone and migration crisis, Brexit, global pandemic, Russian aggression against Ukraine and the current situation in the Middle East. A changing global order, climate change, AI, ageing population, economic polarisation, and threats to democracy are creating structural challenges, require places to create new processes and capabilities to achieve fairer development. We should not assume market economics will resolve spatial differences without development policy. The paradox is that while new populism exploits left-behind places for political gain, it is also sceptical of the EU, the key mechanism to address inequality. Dominique Foray discussed the future of regional development, revealing a framework for setting up what national and regional governments should do. * Scale and indivisibilities: industrial sectors requiring large-scale investment, infrastructure and critical mass of specialist knowledge are best managed at a national scale. * The influence of place: how regional differences influence the conditions and nature of innovation, implying sectors such as agriculture or tourism, fall within a regional purview. * Public good: while defence is a national matter, environmental resilience can be global, national and regional. Innovation must move beyond generic economic development by recognising how the type of innovation and the capacity to innovate are shaped by specific locations. Cecilia Malmström shifted the unit of analysis to the supranational to reflect the new ‘New World Disorder’ and the reformation of global mega-trading blocks, notably the challenge of a exentded BRICS network. In a Euro context, a strategic reorientation is necessary: the implications of the pivot to defence and security, and negotiations with blocks outside the EU Zone signal Europe’s increasingly precarious relationship with an unstable USA. In this context, strengthening trading links also strengthens defence by recruiting allies with a mutual interest in stability and peace. Isolated, vulnerable and at risk, by sitting outside the key drivers of a new rules-based system of global trade, raises deep questions about the UK’s national capability to affect strategic and economic decisions. Kirstin Smette Gulbrandsen argued, despite societal turbulence, regions are pliable and durable structures. She calls more creative and prefigurative regional visions e.g. league of Celtic regions or my personal call for a more expansive Northwest England called Granadaland, in short, allowing everyday voices to also shape the region. This is healthy as it challenges the parochialism underlying regional separatism by considering networked and relational places.