Technological change, knowledge diffusion and the growth of cities and regions: analytical, empirical and policy-making challenges

In this paper we examine how spatial economic analysis has considered questions of knowledge generation and knowledge diffusion in urban and regional settings over recent decades. The aim here is to explain how these issues were understood and analysed in different periods and then to examine how these earlier approaches gave rise to our current understandings and research investigations. More recently, a new generation of empirical approaches is reshaping our understanding of how knowledge generation and diffusion relate to cities and regions. These new understandings also increasingly influence the framing of regional policy approaches in which knowledge generation and diffusion increasingly play a central role.