Remote sensing technology in mapping socio-economic divergence of Europe

Marine and ocean coasts traditionally act as natural growth poles for the humankind. Recent studies conducted by scholars from both natural and social sciences suggest that coastal zones accumulate population, agglomerate industries, attract entrepreneurs, and pull investments. The coastalization effect remains to be one of the defining factors of regional development around the globe and is projected to strengthen within a quarter of a century. Deepening socio-economic inequality and polarization between countries and regions despite of efforts taken with the convergence policies puts the ‘marine factor’ on research agenda. The study holds a comparative evaluation of the coastalization processes across the regions of Europe using the remote sensing technology and the statistical multivariate analysis for testing the correlation level of the results obtained. The research is based on a dataset for 413 regions of Europe featuring indicators for population density and Gross Regional Product (GRP) in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) per sq.km. The regions are grouped into clusters depending on their socio-economic indicators and the intensity of nocturnal illumination. Results suggest that coastal and inland region types evenly distribute between clusters, with an average of 40% coastal. Observations over nocturnal illumination clearly indicate an extensive anthropogenic impact on European coasts, both northern and southern. However, their overall luminosity is inferior to inland territories. The study concludes with four patterns derived from a combined methodology of socio-economic indicators and remote sensing

DICHOTOMY IN THE DISTRIBUTION OF MARITIME ACTIVITY BETWEEN MARINE SUB-REGIONS OF EUROPE

Coastal settlements tend to have higher population density and economic clustering compared to inland territories. The tendency of an increasing socio-economic disbalance in favor of coastal spaces – the coastalization, has attracted the attention of the global academic community. Numerous assumptions are made on the cause of the coastalization phenomenon with the maritime activity and tourism being the primary ones. The aim of this study is to evaluate the role of the coast and tourist seaport infrastructure in the distribution of the population and tourist accommodations in cities across different sea basins of Europe. The research design implies verification of the two hypotheses: the area around the tourist seaport will ha ve H1. The highest population density and H2. The highest density of collective accommodation facilities (CAFs) in the coastal zone of the municipality, decreasing with distance. The methodology has a two-stage structure. Firstly, the quantitative evaluation is done to allocate the tourist seaports of 28 European countries using MarineTraffic database and measure the density of population and CAFs by territorial zones using statistics. Secondly, the qualitative assessment is done presenting highlights of case studies by four sea basins (Baltic Sea, Black and Azov Sea, Northeast Atlantic Ocean, Celtic Sea, and Mediterranean Sea) and six sub-basins. 43 seaports of Europe specialize on tourism (over 90% of inbound ships). Most tourist seaports belong to the Mediterranean basin (58.1%), followed by the basin of the Northeast Atlantic Ocean (25.6%), the Azov-Black (11.6%) and Baltic (4.7%) sea basins. Cities with the tourist seaports are represented by a variety population sizes: from under 50 thousand people to over a million. Despite the differences across sea basins, the general pattern suggests a decline of population density and CAFs with the distance from the tourist seaport. Tourist seaports act as the nuclei of coastalization in Europe. The spatial proximity to the seaport has a positive influence on the density of population – the highest in the territorial zone of 2-5 km distance from the seaport, and an even higher effect on the concentration of CAFs – the highest numbers up to 1 km of the tourist seaport. We should note that population structure and tourism activity of some smaller cities are skewed towards larger adjacent cities, with the agglomeration effect outbreaking the role of the seaport

Coastal Countryside Innovation Dynamics in North-Western Russia

Coastal regions are generally conceived as highly advanced in terms of socioeconomic and innovative development. Acting as international contact zones, coastal agglomerations are described as gateways for absorbing new knowledge, technologies, business cultures, etc. Yet, this perception is based on studies of large coastal cities and agglomerations. In our study, we focus on coastalization effects manifested in rural settlements and evaluate the innovation capability of the economies of coastal rural areas. The research scope covers 13 municipalities of the Leningrad region, including 134 rural settlements. The research methodology is structured into three main blocks: the evaluation of the human capital, assessment of the favorability of the entrepreneurial environment, and analysis of susceptibility of local economies to innovations. The list of analyzed innovation dynamics parameters includes the geospatial data for the distribution of population, companies and individual entrepreneurs, localization of specialized support and innovation infrastructure, sectoral analysis of the economic structure, digitalization aspects, et cetera. The data coverage period is 2010–2019 with variations depending on the availability of individual indicators. The research findings reveal particular features of the countryside as compared to urban settlements. Strong asymmetries are observed between the development of rural settlements cross-influenced by coastalization, near-metropolitan location, and national border proximity

Impact of Cross-Border Tourism on the Sustainable Development of Rural Areas in the Russian–Polish and Russian–Kazakh Borderlands

Rural areas and peripheral borderland territories are experiencing socio-economic marginalization featuring depopulation, population aging, and an increasing inequality gap in the quality of life compared to cities. Integrated rural tourism is argued to be ideal for supporting the well-being of rural communities, providing an additional income, decreasing unemployment, offering new and appealing jobs out of traditional rural activities, while preserving the conventional lifestyle. In this study, we discovered the tourism capacity of rural borderland territories affected by cross-border tourism using the data on the geography of cross-border movements, the distribution of tourist sights, and the density of tourist accommodation facilities. The geographical scope of the study covered two cross-border coastal regions—the Russian–Polish region on the Baltic Sea and the Russian–Kazakh region on the Caspian Sea. The statistical and geoinformation analysis were used to allocate areas of prospecting rural tourism integrated with cross-border movement. The research results on the development and distribution of tourist infrastructure suggest that: the rural territories of these regions feature tourist attractions and accommodation facilities at a different level of density and remoteness from the border crossing; each cross-border region is featuring different types of travel restrictions for tourists; and both border-land territories show asymmetry by the more active Russian tourists traveling abroad. Each of the regions under consideration is attractive for cross-border tourism while having different degrees of penetration of tourist flows into the interior territories and coverage of rural areas. The study resulted in a tourist flow model that allows integrating rural areas