Innovation, Proximities and Regional Development

The organization and localization of economic activities and, consequently, the evolution of regional disparities, are deeply affected by the development of the knowledgebased economy. Some argue that it would lead to dampen down the role of physical distances (the global village figure), others assert that the local dimension of interactions are more than ever important (the district figure), other ones maintain that it would lead to the emergence of trans-territorial economic networks (the archipelago figure). In this paper, we propose to examine these interpretations with a spatialized evolutionary model of competition. We distinguish between a classic spatialization where local and global diffusion of knowledge are opposed, and a proximity spatialization, assuming that the diffusion of knowledge follows network structures with both local and non-local ties. It appears that in both cases regional development is more or less uneven depending on firstly the nature of knowledge and, then, on how knowledge diffuses through space. Moreover, the proximity spatialization shows that, in the more relevant cases, the competition between firms leads to the formation of connected or independent clusters