Regional Industrial Systems and Networks
This project analyses the processes of successful industrial regeneration by complementing the analysis of existing academic studies into regeneration processes through the collection of additional data. It also identifies common structures, networks and aspects that lead to positive regeneration outcomes.
When redeveloping an industrial site for alternative industrial activity, housing, leisure or business – or even a combination of these – there are, typically, significant challenges ranging from the financial to the sociological to the environmental. But to what extent is it possible to generalise about the processes that underlie these developments and ensure that regeneration is successful? Are there sets (or sequences of) events or factors that determine successful versus unsuccessful regeneration outcomes?
This is a field that has attracted considerable studies in recent years, but despite this the academic literature on the topic remains very scattered. The starting point of this project is to ask whether we can identify generic development paths that can help explain successful industrial regeneration.
The identification and characterisation of such characteristic underlying patterns would aid policymakers, communities and businesses, by ensuring that enabling factors and events (as well as their optimal sequencing) can be considered during planning processes.
The Business School’s Sustainable Consumption Institute and Decision and Cognitive Sciences Research Centre are working together in this project. Their collaboration brings together strong expertise in process analysis and the study of industrial cluster regeneration, with extensive experience in the use (and development) of computational and data mining tools that can further support the extraction of relevant data and the identification of shared patterns.