This book discusses the future and present regional challenges of southern Europe, adopting a multidisciplinary perspective concerning planning, regional development, the role of innovation and sustainability of cities. It offers as such an insight into the current status quo of regional development and territorial dynamics of a region of growing world-interest.Southern Europe has significantly changed over the last decades. At a regional level, key issues such as local and regional governance, sustainability, and preservation of heritage have presided as prime directives within the umbrella of the European Union. The recession had devastating consequences on the perception and the economies of southern Europe. However, the resilience and capacity of southern Europe to reinvent itself have been shown over the last decade. Southern Europe has since antiquity been a cradle of invention, innovation, and regional development, that under adequate and visionary governance may bring a growing engine towards sustainability.

Autorentext

Eric Vaz is a tenured professor at Ryerson University, Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, Canada. Prior to joining Ryerson he was Group Leader for Geographical Information Science at the University of Heidelberg, Germany. He is currently serving as President of the Canadian Regional Science Association. His research chiefly focuses on the interaction of regional science with geographic analysis in the Anthropocene. His recent edited book for Springer, entitled Regional Intelligence deals with the spatial and regional interactions of dynamics of change and future paradigms of livability, spatial decision support systems, and novel paradigms of sustainability.

  Teresa Noronha is Full Professor of Economics of Innovation and Regional Development at the University of Algarve (Portugal) and director of the Ph.D. program in Innovation and Land Use Management. Also, she is President of the Consulting Commission of the Research Centre for Spatial and Organizational Dynamics, after having been President for the past years of that same organization. In the last two decades, she was invited professor at the University of Paris I - Sorbonne, University of Gent, University of Bologna and the University of Toronto. She is an expert in regional economics and related public policies, in particular, the use of instruments to implement innovation in lagging areas. Among her most significant works, there is the three-book series: The New European Rurality, Traditional Food Production and Rural Sustainable Development, and Towns in a Rural World, published by Ashgate.

Inhalt
Introduction.- Chapter 1. Diversity and country performance.- Chapter 2. Regional opportunities in southern Europe.- Chapter 3. Landscape and Heritage in southern Europe.- Chapter 4. Analytical tools from a socioeconomic point of view.- Chapter 5. Mapping Behavioral patterns.- Chapter 6. Modeling Regional Innovation Patterns.- Chapter 7. "Using percolation models to assess urbanisation in agricultural regions: The effects of coast".- Chapter 8. Spatial association of agricultural land loss in southern Europe.