Sieve or Shield? High Tech Firms and Entrepreneurs and the Impacts of COVID 19 on North American Border Regions

This study examines the role of international borders in the era of the Covid-19 pandemic, which led to unprecedented national decisions to close borders in order to contain the domestic contagion. The idea that borders act as shields conflicts with the needs of cross-border regions, as they rely on networks straddling the borders for goods and services’ provisions. This paper explores different approaches at individual, local, and regional policy levels used to counterbalance such impacts. As evidenced by North American border closures to most non-citizens seeking entry (shield effects), it is important to understand how professionals, firms, and their networks exercised various forms of agency (sieve effects) to negotiate the border and its policies during this most unusual time. Drawing from a comparative study between two North American border regions distinguished for their thriving innovative business ecosystems–Cascadia (Seattle-Vancouver) along the Canada-U.S. border and Calibaja (San Diego-Tijuana) along the Mexico-U.S. border–we seek to understand how COVID-19 measures have influenced cross-border economies through unprecedented responses to crisis management

The Cascadia Innovation Corridor: Advancing a Cross-Border Economy

The Cascadia Innovation Corridor (CIC) is a regional public-private effort to better integrate the innovation economy, transportation connectivity, and communities along the Western side of the Cascade Mountains from Vancouver, British Columbia to Portland, Oregon. The goal of the CIC is to position this cross-border region to be stronger together and compete on a global stage. This Border Policy Brief provides an analysis of stakeholder’s perspectives on the drivers and hindrances related to expanding business activities across the border in the CIC, which are key elements to the viability of the effort. The Brief also highlights the critical role of the border to the success of the CIC, and for cross-border innovation corridors more broadly

Transit Oriented Development & Social Equity: From Mixed Use to Mixed Framework

This paper aims at evaluating Transit Oriented Development's performance related to social equity. We are going through the topic starting by the definition of Transit oriented Development, understanding its benefits (economic and environmental), its unintended consequences (related to social equity) and new strategies to avoid the latter ones. Finally we will compare two study cases, one in Rome (Italy) and one in Oakland, CA (USA) in order to figure out whether or not unintended social consequences are likely to be expected. We will adopt an evaluation design scheme, discovering that the best way to guarantee social equity is by using a "mixed framework" approac

Cross Border Regional Planning: Insights from Cascadia

This analysis focuses on different levels of Cross-Border Regional Planning (CBRP) processes in the Cascadia borderland. The region is home to the business-led initiative ‘Cascadia Innovation Corridor’ (CIC), designed to foster cross-border economic integration. The CIC strives to build a global innovation ecosystem in Cascadia, including a new high-speed train to connect Seattle and Vancouver. This paper focuses on the scope of the CIC as a CBRP case. The authors evaluate engagement of city governments and coherency between different planning scales to determine whether the CIC has been addressing the major challenges that may prevent tighter economicintegration in Cascadia. The analysis deploys secondary data as well as primary data collected through surveys and interviews. The results shed light on a discrepancy between supra-regional ‘soft planning’ and the urban planning level. The authors offer an evidence-based proposal to broaden the scope of the CIC from a CBRP standpoint

Cross Border Innovation Economies: The Cascadia Innovation Corridor Case

In the recent literature on economic geography, cross-border regions have been highly heralded as potential sources for reaping the benefits of innovation (OECD, 2013). In fact, those regions have gained a reputation as being endowed with comparative advantages to compete in global markets (Vance, 2012). However, the types of processes that are occurring in the region, which act as hindrances (or barriers) to cross-border knowledge flows, have remained a significant but understudied topic in the academic literature. The same lack of understanding is widespread among the policy makers engaged in cross-border issues, specifically in terms of improved Cross Border Cooperation (CBC) management. This research project addresses this timely topic by evaluating the effects of the international border between Washington State, U.S. and British Columbia, Canada. This cross-border region, also known as “Cascadia,” possesses a unique combination of assets, including human capital, universities, investments, and financial capital, that enable the cross-border region’s innovation economy to compete globally (Andersen & Wenstrup, 2016). These assets have been supported by local public and private actors (Brunet-Jailly, 2008) and targeted innovation policies aimed at promoting the region as a world-class innovation hub. The object of this study is the Cascadia Innovation Corridor, a current innovation initiative in the region. I adopt a multidisciplinary approach to this case study, combining an economic geography perspective (different forms of proximity have been evaluated in the region), the border policy standpoint (governance implemented in the region) and a regional planning viewpoint (legacy of the Corridor and improvements to the overall strategy to strengthen the collaboration across the border). The research focuses on how tech economies are driving local economic development in Cascadia. This in-depth analysis pursues two goals, both of which are timely contributions to regional efforts: first, identifying the main drivers and hindrances affecting cross-border innovation linkages in the region; and second, developing policy recommendations that will support tighter cross-border economic cooperation. This project is based on primary data collected through a survey and interviews as well as secondary data gathered by official documents (e.g. Memorandum of Understanding further recalled), local newspapers and organizations’ reports. The work empirically gauges the ongoing degree of economic interactions in Cascadia on both sides of the border, examining the networks that exist between organizations and actors involved in the cross-border ecosystem, as well as the missing links that impede stronger collaboration. The final part of the analysis digs into the regional planning practices in the cross-border context and establishes a set of policy recommendations targeted at the cross-border cooperation process in Cascadia. This analysis confirms that the Cascadia innovation ecosystem possesses the key assets needed to ensure long-term growth. Moreover, it sheds light on the role of multinational companies which play a pivotal role in the Cascadia innovation ecosystem, which in turn still appears very ii fragmented. The analysis of the hindrances confirms that transportation infrastructure represents a shortcoming for regional development. From a policy standpoint, the federal-level U.S. political climate does create a burden impacting the economic linkages across the border in Cascadia. Finally, the analysis suggests that the role of local (city) governments is advocated to be more efficient in creating “horizontal” relationships across the border

The Mission-Oriented Approach for (Cross-Border) Regional Development

During the times of the COVID-19 pandemic, nations have issued unprecedented border closures around the world, yielding abrupt impacts on the movement of goods and people. This has heavily affected the quality of life in border regions, which are often found to be at a disadvantage when compared to other regions in terms of employment, accessibility, social services and economic growth. Based upon developing threads in the literature concerning the untapped potential for development in border regions, we argue that the Mission-Oriented Approach (MOA) can fit well with the ambitious goal to revitalize those territories in the aftermath of the pandemic. Despite the surge of MOA in discourses on innovation policy, we seek to implement it in a regional development perspective, pursuing both economic and social policy objectives. The authors unravel the policy concept of MOA into three main aspects: (I) address a sound societal challenge; (II) Research & Development (R&D) regional agenda embedded in a cross-border regional development vision; (III) mobilizing multiple cross-sectorial projects. Through a desk study analysis, the authors draw insights from selected case studies where these aspects have been implemented to inspire policy intervention in the aftermath of COVID-19. This paper presents the MOA theoretical model, which has potential explanatory power in other cross-border regions

Transitional Approach for Enhancing Place-based and Collaborative Policies, towards an Evolutionary Dimension of Cohesion Policy

The paper proposes a new perspective in the design process of tailored development policies via the innovation boost. Stemming from the current debates on regional diversification together with the emerging role of the city in pursuing local innovation ecosystem, the aim is to explore new development policy configuration in which the evolutionary framework prompts the response of different territories to continuous shocks. The relevance lies in bridging Resilience, as an ongoing process of change rather than a recovery to a (pre-existing or new) stable equilibrium state, with Diversification, as a leverage of regional resilience to absorb shocks, and Evolutionary Theory based on “continuing and progressive change”. In this perspective, the innovative aspect stems from conceiving Transition Management (TM) as a keen strategical approach to translate the combination (Resilience, Diversification, Evolutionary Theory) into policy design and implementation. The paper is a place to present the TREnD project expected to construct a platform on the basis of capturing resilience and evolutionary path as policy design factors to push forward the state-of-the-art of approaches to innovation policy. This paper introduces the background and rationale of the TREnD project, analysing the academia’s discussions on the S3 implementation in EU regions to find the existing gaps in the current EU Cohesion Policy. It then presents the TREnD approach, discussing its objectives, methodology, conceptual framework, and implication. Finally, it draws a brief conclusion and offers suggestions for the upcoming research activities

Il confine internazionale tra Stati Uniti e Messico: identità transnazionali e impatti sui luoghi

Il Parlamento Europeo (2016) e l’OECD (2013) hanno riconosciuto un potenziale economico delle regioni di frontiera che si può esprimere nell’ambito del mercato globale. Tuttavia, recenti fenomeni sembrano negare l’esplicarsi di questo potenziale, come la recente Brexit e le tensioni separatiste emerse in Catalogna. La tendenza populista che questi fenomeni sottendono alimenta processi disgregativi sia sul piano sociale che politico. In Nord America il nuovo contesto politico, successivo alle elezioni del 2016, ha fortemente cambiato gli scenari al confine con il vicino e meno sviluppato Messico. Le crescenti tensioni si scontrano con l’identità dei luoghi e delle comunità transfrontaliere come accade nella regione bi-nazionale tra San Diego e Tijuana al confine californiano. Investigando gli aspetti legati all’identità transfrontaliera di questi territori, l’articolo adotta una prospettiva multi-livello per identificare: I) come i confini vengano percepiti quali elementi limitanti dell’interazione tra comunità (Sohn, 2014); II) la governance del territorio transfrontaliero, svelando un ruolo diverso rispetto al panorama europeo giocato dagli investitori privati e gli operatori del terzo settore; III) la costituzione di nuovi luoghi di raccordo oltre il confine attraverso due esempi: “Chicano Park” e “Dos Puertas”

Where innovation meets directionality: an index to measure regional readiness to deal with societal challenges

The growing interest in addressing societal challenges is changing research and innovation policy dynamics. However, a challenge-oriented approach requires specific public sector capacities to coordinate and provide directionality, while having an innovation ecosystem with sufficient scientific and technological capabilities to address the grand societal challenges effectively. From this perspective, a challenge-oriented policy is not a one-size-fits-all approach, and the literature has only recently started investigating the territorial differences. The current paper proposes a composite index to assess REgional Societal Challenges-Oriented REadiness (RE-SCORE). An exploratory experimental application is conducted to examine and compare Italian regions facing four selected societal challenges (SCs): bioeconomy, climate change, health and inclusive, innovative and reflective societies. The findings show that the Italian regional readiness to address SCs is highly heterogeneous, going beyond the ‘traditional’ North-South divide. The index allows us to benchmark regional capacities for comparative analysis and to identify possible interregional synergies around specific SCs. This approach could be used in other European countries and at the European level to assess the regional readiness to tackle SCs