The Rise of Artificial Intelligence: The Diffusion and Adoption of an Emerging Enabling Technology and its Regional Development Implications
AI is increasingly understood as an emerging enabling technology with potentially far-reaching implications for regional development. As both an industry in its own right and a technology increasingly integrated across incumbent sectors, AI has the potential to reshape production systems, innovation dynamics, regional governance, and the organisation of economic activity across space. Its growth, therefore, raises important questions not only about technological change but also about the spatial organisation of new industries, the evolving practices of regional development, and the transformation of existing sectors.
AI may also be understood as a technology that influences how knowledge is produced, legitimised, and acted upon. In this sense, its significance extends beyond industrial transformation alone: AI may also affect how regions are governed and planned. This perspective resonates with long-standing debates in Regional Studies on technological change, digitalisation, and place-based adaptation, where innovation has been shown to reshape both regional economic trajectories and the institutional capacities through which development is pursued.
There is a growing and welcome interest in Regional Studies in identifying the regional implications of new technologies, such as the impacts of AI as a platform technology integrated across incumbent industries (Martin, 2021). Recent Regional Studies scholarship has begun to engage some of these issues, including its role in green technology specialisation (Cicerone et al., 2022), global innovation systems and industrial rise (Yu et al., 2021), new path creation (Doloreux & Turkina, 2021) and the role of system-building agency in these new path creations (Gherhes et al., 2021). Yet these discussions remain fragmented across literatures, empirical domains, and scales of analysis. What remains missing is a more coherent research agenda that examines AI simultaneously as an emerging industry, as a tool and infrastructure of regional development governance, and as an enabling technology whose diffusion may alter the spatial organisation of existing sectors. This Special Issue seeks to advance that agenda.
Potential applications of AI are widely reported to be vast. In the context of regional development, AI raises a series of discrete yet complex questions. More specifically, the Special Issue is organised around three interconnected sets of issues, addressing, without being limited to, the following related questions:
First, the economic geography of the AI industry raises a set of questions: what is the economic geography of the of AI industry, and what does it mean for regions? In other words, what is the spatial organisation of AI production? Does it follow the spatial logics of existing technology sectors, or does it exhibit an emerging, independent pattern of agglomeration and dispersion? What are the factors that determine the spatial organisation of the AI industry? Do some factors matter more than others (skills, capital, infrastructure, energy, regulatory regimes)?
Second, AI and the governance of regional development, leading to the following questions: what is the impact of artificial intelligence on the administration and management of regional development? Does AI change decision-making processes or outcomes? Does AI introduce new expectations or new criteria to regional development and planning practices? If so, which domains within regional development and planning are affected by AI (e.g., citizen engagement, public administration, systems optimisation, and transportation)?
Third, AI diffusion and the restructuring of incumbent industries raise the following questions: how does the adoption and diffusion of AI alter the regional geography of incumbent industries? Does AI change the spatial logics of other sectors? Is there a significant substitution effect with other technologies or processes with geographic implications? Does the integration of AI into incumbent industries introduce new patterns of concentration or dispersion? Are there analogues from previous enabling technologies?
The Call for Papers (CFP) invites conceptually robust, empirically grounded, and methodologically rigorous contributions that examine the regional development implications of AI as an emerging enabling technology. Contributions may address the economic geography of the AI industry, the effects of AI on the governance, administration, and planning of regional development, and the ways in which the diffusion and adoption of AI across incumbent sectors may reshape patterns of agglomeration, dispersion, and regional economic change.
References:
Cicerone, G., Faggian, A., Montresor, S., & Rentocchini, F. (2022). Regional artificial intelligence and the geography of environmental technologies: does local AI knowledge help regional green-tech specialization? Regional Studies, 57(2), 330–343.
Yu, Z., Liang, Z., & Xue, L. (2021). A data-driven global innovation system approach and the rise of China’s artificial intelligence industry. Regional Studies, 56(4), 619–629.
Doloreux, D., & Turkina, E. (2021). New path creation in the artificial intelligence industry: regional preconditions, new actors and their collective actions, and policies. Regional Studies, 55(10–11), 1751–1763.
Gherhes, C., Vorley, T., Vallance, P., & Brooks, C. (2021). The role of system-building agency in regional path creation: insights from the emergence of artificial intelligence in Montreal. Regional Studies, 56(4), 563–578. https://doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2021.1886273
Martin, R., 2021. Rebuilding the economy from the Covid crisis: time to rethink regional studies?. Regional Studies, Regional Science, 8(1), pp.143-161.
Submission Instructions
Authors should submit an extended abstract (max 500 words) to the guest editors by the 16th of October 2026. Authors are also encouraged to consider whether their manuscript may be suitable for inclusion in the special issue as a Policy Debates or Urban and Regional Horizons paper and, where appropriate, indicate this during submission.
Successful authors will be invited to submit their full papers for peer review by the 1st of December 2026. When completing the online submission form, authors should select the title of the special issue from the relevant drop-down menu.
All manuscripts will undergo a rigorous double-blind peer-review process. Submissions must not have been published previously and must not be under consideration for publication elsewhere.
Papers should clearly articulate their theoretical contribution to debates in Regional Studies and draw broader lessons that extend beyond the focal region or empirical context.
Questions concerning the Special Issue may be addressed to the Guest Editors:
Mariachiara Barzotto: mb2602@bath.ac.uk
Jennifer Clark: clark.3550@osu.edu
Read the Instructions for Authors on Regional Studies
Submit an article to Regional Studies