ABSTRACT
Over the past two decades or so, a new evolutionary perspective has developed within the discipline of economic geography to become a notable paradigm of theoretical and empirical research. This paradigm has demonstrated that many of the processes of evolution in the economy – from path creation and dependence, to innovation and the creation of new variety, to adaptation and transformation, and to resilience – are, at least in part, geographically constituted, that is shaped by the spatial contexts within which these processes unfold. This chapter explains how the paradigm has made considerable advances in analysing the changing geographies of industrial structures and dynamics and technological change and innovation, but it would now benefit from a significant broadening of its empirical scope. It proposes that evolutionary economic geography should be more closely integrated with other perspectives, such as geographical political economy, relational economic geography, and institutionalist economic geography, so as to further develop their overlaps and complementarities. The paradigm also needs to develop its own policy thinking and move to a greater engagement with the numerous challenges confronting spatial economic policy. Evolutionary economists, who have to date all but ignored the spatiality of economic evolution, could gain much from interacting with the work of evolutionary economic geographers. The latter, at the same time, need to widen the empirical remit of their work to address the big economic, technological, and environmental challenges of our times, to pursue greater theoretical coherence, and to enhance the spatial policy implications of an evolutionary perspective.
