RSA International Hour

Regions, cities and territories are crucial contexts of transitions. They are locational agencies of change as well as transformed spaces by global forces related, for instance, to environmental sustainability, socio-economic disparities and digitalization.

This International Hour launched by the ROREP and the RSA will address regional development theories, policies and practices at stake in Switzerland in regard to spatial and place-based transition challenges. It will be organized in partnership with regiosuisse and broadcasted live from the “regiosuisse scientific forum 2021” that will take place the 13^th and 14^th of September 2021 in Andermat, Uri-Switzerland.

Christian Binz, EAWAG, Switzerland

Christian Binz is group leader in the cluster Sustainable Transitions and Business Innovations (CIRUS) at the Department of Environmental Social Sciences at Eawag, and an Associate Post-Doctoral Researcher at CIRCLE, Lund University, Sweden.

He received his PhD in Economic Geography from the University of Bern in 2012. Christian is a recipient of the Giorgio Ruffolo Post-doctoral Research Fellowship in Sustainability Science (2015) at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and has worked as a post-doctoral Research Fellow at Lund University (Sweden), UC Berkeley (USA), Tsinghua University (China) and Eawag.

His main research interests are centered on the potential for transformative innovation in the water and energy sectors. By combining recent insights from transition studies, economic geography and institutional sociology, he aims to explore how multi-scalar institutional arrangements hinder or support radical innovation in clean-tech industries and sustainability transitions in key infrastructure sectors.

Discussant: Tina Haisch, board member of ROREP, University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Switzerland

Tina Haisch is a professor and lecturer in Innovation and Space at the School of Business, University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Basel. She is a networker and links the scientific community to the private economy and public authorities. Attracting third party funding (SNSF, Innosuisse, ESPON, Interreg, ESF etc.), managing national and international projects are core responsibilities of her daily work. Tina cultivates the contacts to foreign universities, she is e.g. member of the affiliate network of the Microeconomics of Competitiveness network at Harvard Business School, Boston, MA. Her research is in local and regional economic development with a particular focus on clusters, dynamics of innovation, firms and entrepreneurship, value creation processes, creativity and sustainability. Tina completed her Ph.D. in Human Geography at the University of Basel. She has published articles in the field of economic geography and urban planning in scientific journals, including the Journal of Urban Affairs, Papers in Regional Sciences, Geographica Helvetica, Die Volkswirtschaft etc.

Chair: Daniel Baumgartner, board member of  the ROREP

Daniel Baumgartner (born 1981) studied economic geography at the University of Zurich and did his doctorate on entrepreneurship and its impact on regional development the ETH Zurich and the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL. After his studies, he worked as a Post Doc at the University of Bern and later as a consultant at the private enterprise EBP Schweiz AG on regional development projects. Since 2015 he works at the Federal Office for Agriculture on cross-sectional themes of sustainable development in rural areas.

Registration is free and open to all.

• 13.00 BST
• 14.00 CEST

The research study has the following objectives:

• To assess the impact of COVID-19 and the associated lockdowns on the livelihood and economic status of the households living in slums based on rapid telephonic survey conducted in select cities
• To understand its impact on health and access to health care (especially in events of COVID-19 infection), food security, education, and social wellbeing of the slum dwellers
• To understand the coping mechanism of the households
• To understand the impact of various social protection schemes in mitigating the problem
• To understand the inter-city variations of the impact of COVID-19 and the associated lockdown

Speaker: Debolina Kundu, National Institute for Urban Affairs, India

Debolina Kundu is a Professor at the National Institute of Urban Affairs, India and has over 20 years of professional experience in the field of development studies. She has worked as consultant with, ADB, LSE, IIDS, UNDP, UNFPA, UNICEF, UNESCAP, KfW, GIZ, Urban Institute, Washington and East-West Centre Honolulu on issues of urbanization, migration, urban development policies, municipal finance, governance and exclusion. She is currently the HUDCO Chair and editor of journals Environment and Urbanisation, Asia (SAGE) and Urban India (NIUA). She is the Country Investigator – India for the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) Centre for Sustainable Healthy and Learning Cities and Neighbourhoods (SHLC), which is supported by UK Research and Innovation.

Chair: Remy Sietchiping, UN-Habitat, Kenya

Dr. Remy Sietchiping is the Chief of Policy, Legislation and Governance Section within the Urban Practices Branch of UN-Habitat.   He oversees the development of strategic programmes of UN-Habitat including National Urban Policy, legislation, governance, urban-rural linkages, smart cities, metropolitan development and the International Guidelines on Urban and Territorial Planning.  He has coordinated global, regional and country projects and programmes for UN-Habitat in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Dr. Sietchiping has over 25 years working experience in the UN system, academia, private and public sector and NGOs in Australia, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Jamaica and worldwide. He holds a Ph.D in Geography from the University of Melbourne, Australia. He is fluent in English and French.

Registration is free and open to all.

• 10.30 BST
• 15.00 IST

The webinar will be devoted to the results of Cohesion Policy in Poland in the period 2007-2020. The presentation will be organised around two major issues related to both regional and local scales of analyses:

1. divergence – convergence processes induced by the Cohesion Policy;
2. demand-side (“civilisational”) – supply-side (“development”) influence of Cohesion Policy.

The presentations will relate to macroeconomic modelling (B.Rokicki), econometric analyses (M. Smętkowski) and the sociologial surveys of local governments (G. Gorzelak).

Organised in partnership with the RSA’s Polish Section www.regionalstudies.org/network/poland/

Speaker: Grzegorz Gorzelak, Centre for European Regional and Local Studies (EUROREG), University of Warsaw, Poland

Grzegorz Gorzelak is a professor of economics, specialising in regional and local development, regional policies and strategy building. Until 2016, he has been the director of the Centre for European Regional and Local Studies (EUROREG) at the University of Warsaw. He has coordinated several national and international research projects; the most recent ones are the ESPON TERCO project on territorial cooperation and the FP7 project “Growth – Innovation – Competitiveness: Fostering Cohesion in Central and Eastern Europe” (GRINCOH).

He has collaborated with the World Bank, OECD, DG Regio of the European Commission, and several agencies of Polish and Ukrainian governments, as well as regional and local authorities.

G. Gorzelak has published (as author and editor) over 50 books (several of them in English) and 260 articles. He is Editor-in Chief of a quarterly scientific journal “Studia Regionalne i Lokalne” and former president of the Polish Section of the Regional Studies Association.

Chair: Agnieszka Olechnicka, University of Warsaw, Poland

Agnieszka Olechnicka is assistant professor at the Centre for European Regional and Local Studies (EUROREG),  University of Warsaw. Director of the Centre for European Regional and Local Studies (EUROREG). Her professional experience regards research in the field of regional and local development with particular attention given to the knowledge economy issues and innovation-driven development problems. She took active part is several European projects (within EU Framework Programmes, ESPON and Interreg) and many national research and consultancy projects in this areas, also as coordinator. She conducted research in Great Britain, Ukraine and Canada. She has implemented projects commissioned by the Ministry of Regional Development, the Ministry of Science and High Education, the Polish Agency of Business Development (PARP) as well as regional and local bodies. Agnieszka Olechnicka is highly experienced in the analysis of the linkages between science and business using both quantitative (among them rarely used bibliometric data) and qualitative data. Recently she published the result of her habilitation project in the book “Science potential and innovativeness of regions” (2012, in Polish). She is co-editor of the Routledge publication “Universities, Cities and Regions. Loci for Knowledge and Innovation Creation” (2012, in English) embraces the finest papers of the international conference she organised in 2011 together with Network of Universities from the Capitals of Europe UNICA.

Registration is free and open to all.

• 10.30 GMT
• 11.30 CET

This session will discuss the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the northern region of Mexico, one of the most dynamic in the country but also one of the most affected by the closure of economic activities. This region is at the border with the United States, with whom it maintains strong productive ties. The paralysis of the sectors considered non-essential activities generated a pessimistic scenario in the economic performance of cities and states at this border and on the cross-border production chains. The closure of activities generated urgent questions about the impact of the pandemic and the public policy responses. In particular, the effect of the pandemic on companies and sectors of the border states is analyzed.

Miriam Valdes, Autonomous University of Coahuila, Mexico

She is a professor in regional economics at the Centre for socioeconomic research, Autonomous University of Coahuila. Her main research topics include economic growth and regional-sectoral economic analysis based on non-parametric techniques and deterministic models, including: data envelope analysis, input-output models and social accounting matrices. She has collaborated in research and consulting activities for various public and private institutions. She currently teaches the subjects of Regional Economics and Efficiency and Productivity Analysis.

Jorge Carrillo, El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, Mexico

He is a professor at El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, Department of Social Studies, and Emeritus member of the National Researchers System. His lines of research include: Labor markets and innovation; Global Value Chains; Multinational Companies and Spin-offs. He is currently collaborating in the project “Impacts of Covid-19 in Baja California companies”, GIDI, Inter-Institutional Research Group; as well as in the project “Social Innovation Process in and around Multinational Companies”, Loughborough University, UK.

Alfredo Hualde, El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, Mexico

He is a professor at El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, Department of Social Studies. He is a member of the International Sociological Association and the Mexican Association for Labor Studies. He is currently collaborating in the projects: “Training and Scaling of Mexican Knowledge-Intensive SMEs in the Border Region of Mexico and the United States”, “Migratory, labour and educational trajectories of international return migrants in Mexico”.

Chair: Alejandra Trejo, El Colegio de Mexico, Mexico

Alejandra Trejo is an economist and a professor at the Center for Demographic, Urban and Environmental Studies, El Colegio de Mexico in Mexico City. She is the chair of the RSA Latin American division and an ambassador to Mexico of the Regional Studies Association. Her research agenda reflects significant interdisciplinary concerns about the issues of urbanization, urban and regional economic development, governance and policy.

Registration is free and open to all.

• 09.00 CDT
• 15.00 GMT