The region is the economic unit of the global economy, the new growth center of the world. In this context, we can define regions not just as an ensemble of states, but as areas that represent development poles within different countries. Global economic development will inevitably lead to the withdrawal of the nation–state before the “region–state”, which has a main characteristic “the openness to the outside world,” the rest of the world being just a source of prosperity to it. We are therefore standing before an open economy where important economic decisions are made at a regional level.
One direction of the new regionalism involves new forms of governance at the urban level (metropolitan regionalism). The new micro–regional structures, which Ohmae calls “region–states”, fall in this perspective, being very competitive in the global market due to a combination of facilitator factors.
These regions represent centres of development for the states to which they belong to, engines that drive the economy of that country towards economic progress. Some regions coincide with the states themselves, while others represent development poles from the inside of a state or common areas of many countries.
Academic aims: knowledge of the regionalization and globalization processes; identification and classification of new regions according to their characteristics and variables
Learning objectives: the study of this discipline provides skills and competences specific to the specialist in regional development, searched on the employment market: the ability to understand and critically analyse the strategies and development policies applied by the region’s; the ability to identify the characteristics of a region; the ability to understand and measure the value and image of the regionally brand.
Course structure:
- Globalization versus regionalization
- Globalization and the economic frontiers
- The new regionalism
- Types of regions in nowadays world
- The region-state – characteristics and factors of growth
- The regional brand – tool for promotion and differentiation of the regions
- New regions inside and outside EU
Course support:
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