PROGRESS IN GEOGRAPHY ›› 2017, Vol. 36 ›› Issue (11): 1435-1444.doi: 10.18306/dlkxjz.2017.11.012

• Orginal Article • Previous Articles    

An international literature review of regional economic resilience: Theories and practices based on the evolutionary perspective

Mengyuan CHEN()   

  1. Department of Human Geography & Urban and Regional Planning, Utrecht University (UU), 3508TC Utrecht, the Netherlands
  • Online:2017-12-07 Published:2017-12-07
  • Supported by:
    National Natural Science Foundation of China, No.41471126

Abstract:

Regional resilience has become a trendy research branch. However, traditional Chinese research of resilience had been limited within the equilibrium-based epistemology. This article, based on a review of international literature, clarifies different definitions of economic resilience: engineering resilience, ecological resilience, and evolutionary resilience. The article rejects equilibrium-based epistemology of resilience and argues instead the evolutionary perspective. Then, it introduces the formation mechanism of economic resilience from macro and micro aspects; and introduces quantitative measurement of network analysis. This article concludes that resilience should be extended to the economic field and evolutionary-based perspective. Chinese researchers should notice connections between three research branches — namely evolutionary economic geography, innovation geography, and regional resilience. Future research should focus on case studies of urban and regional economies. They should also explore the existing open patent data source to establish the quantitative database of industry space.

Key words: regional resilience, evolutionary economic geography, tacit knowledge, network analysis