Regional Insights: A selection of articles providing a fresh take on regional studies

Intersectoral Mobility and Regional Adaptation in Europe’s Knowledge Economy

By Cristina Lincaru, Adriana Grigorescu and Speranța Pîrciog, INCSMPS – National Scientific Research Institute for Labour and Social Protection, Bucharest, Romania. Corresponding author: cristina.lincaru@incsmps.ro Intersectoral reallocation—the changing distribution of employment across activities—is a central mechanism of structural transformation, but its regional geography within the knowledge economy remains uneven. This study uses annual changes in NUTS […]

From Experimentation to Cumulative Capacity: Uneven Skills Governance in Regional Wine Economies

By Miriana Bucalossi, Regione Toscana, Direzione Istruzione Formazione Ricerca e Lavoro, Siena, Italy (miriana.bucalossi@regione.toscana.it). This article examines how territorial skills-governance configurations condition the capacity of specialised wine economies to transform local experimentation into institutional learning and, over time, cumulative capacity. It compares the Siena wine-producing area in Tuscany, central Italy, with the Trentino wine-producing area […]

Migrants, Money, and the Making of Uneven Regions: Lessons from Guangdong Province, China

By Xingrong Li, University of Cambridge, UK This article is based on Xingrong Li’s dissertation research for the MPhil in Planning, Growth and Regeneration at the University of Cambridge. Introduction For four decades, Guangdong (Figure 1) has been one of China’s clearest examples of two mobile factors—migrant labour and foreign capital—concentrating in the same place […]

Mind the Gap: The Spatial Paradox of Europe’s Artificial Intelligence Economy

By Bernardo Buarque, Pablo Casas, Enrique Fernández-Macías, Ignacio González-Vázquez, Ryan Hynes, Dieter F. Kogler, and Simone Salotti Reference to the original article published in Regional Studies: Buarque, B., Casas, P., Fernández-Macías, E., González-Vázquez, I., Hynes, R., Kogler, D. F., & Salotti, S. (2026). The geography of artificial intelligence in European regions: innovation, exposure and use. […]

Immigration and Regional Attitudes in Belgium: Lessons from the Early 2000s

By Rania El Ghalbzouri, Master of Business Administration, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium* *This article was written by Rania El Ghalbzouri. It is a novel summary of a quantitative research project developed by Rania El Ghalbzouri**, Weiwei Wang, Firdaous Akhloufi, Saskia Greczko, Riki Mala Sari, and Morgeane Hammadi as part of the MBA Bridging Programme at […]

Governing Success in a Saturated Cluster: Lessons from the Île-de-France Hospitality Sector

By Fleur Gontie, Ilyas Benchaqroudi, Khaska Said, Luca Mortier and Prof Dr Pablo Collazzo, Business & Tourism Unit, Thomas More University of Applied Sciences, Belgium*. The “Parisian brand” is one of the most recognisable place brands in the world, synonymous with cultural prestige and elite hospitality. Yet behind the postcard, the Île-de-France hospitality cluster is […]

Failed futures? Unmaterialised visions and their ambivalence in regional development

Failed futures? Unmaterialised visions and their ambivalence in regional development By Maximilian Benner, Department of Geography and Regional Research, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria Many regions have witnessed grandiose visions of their future, but the future that eventually unfolded proved less glamorous and, when measured against the high ambitions articulated by policymakers, rather disappointing. Still, […]