Modules
Courses / Modules / GGES3017 Evolutionary Economic Geography

Evolutionary Economic Geography

When you'll study it
Semester 1
CATS points
15
ECTS points
7.5
Level
Level 6
Module lead
Peter Sunley
Academic year
2025-26

Module overview

There has been growing interest in the past few years in how cities and regions respond and adapt to rapid, and often turbulent, economic change, and why some cities and regions appear much more successful than others in coping with and taking advantage of such change. The aim of this module is

to examine a new evolutionary economic geography which explores how ideas and concepts from a number of sciences concerned with the evolution of complex systems can be used to explain regional change and adaptability. The course considers how the economic structures and activities of cities and regions economies are shaped by rapidly changing global market conditions and competition, technological change, and shifts in public policy and modes of political–economic governance. How relevant are the ideas of emergence, self-organisation, path creation, adaptive cycles, robustness and resilience to the study of city and regional economies? Using a range of examples from different types of economy, it examines how processes of creative destruction produce the rise of new industries and the decline of others. It compares different types of regional innovation systems and their knowledge networks. It outlines some of the recent dynamics of global production networks, and it reviews the consequences of these processes for different economic regions. It considers some of the ways in which economic processes are set within variegated and differentiated regulatory contexts and how these result in varied experiences.