Evolutionary Economic Geography

Evolutionary Economic Geography (EEG) has become a central perspective within contemporary Economic Geography by explaining how regions, cities, industries, firms, technologies, and institutions evolve over historical time. This chapter introduces EEG’s intellectual foundations in evolutionary economics, Schumpeterian ideas of innovation and creative destruction, and geographical debates on uneven development, path dependence, and regional transformation. It reviews the field’s core conceptual contributions around history, novelty, complexity, emergence, and adaptability, and shows how these ideas have informed empirical research on related variety, regional branching, technological knowledge spaces, networks, resilience, path development, institutions, and policy. The chapter argues that EEG is best understood not as a closed paradigm, but as an evolving and plural research programme. Its future relevance depends on explaining not only how inherited capabilities shape regional trajectories, but also how capabilities, relatedness, and path dependence are produced, activated, selected, contested, and transformed. In doing so, EEG offers a powerful framework for understanding how economic landscapes inherit the past, generate novelty, and confront uncertain spatial, technological, social, and ecological futures.