This paper discusses a number of issues centred around the evaluation of the benefits and costs of transport. It is argued that, for various reasons, transport cannot be treated as an ‘ordinary’ economic sector, and in the paper the policy implications of a number of the sector’s...

Innovation research has become an important topic in regional science analysis. Yet the modelling base of much innovation research is still feeble. This paper aims to map out the research potential of recent approaches in quantitative complexity analysis, in particular Neural Networks (NNs)...

As a country transitions from a lower order of development to a higher order of development, it undergoes a structural transformation. Accordingly, the spatial economy transforms from a system organized around smaller economic units distributed throughout the countryside, to one comprising...

This paper addresses the multifaceted relationships between culture and urban performance. It seeks to identify and examine evidence-based characteristics of urban success (or socio-economic performance) that are related to the cultural profile ("urban cultural value") of a city. Also, the...

Ups and downs in city life are dependent on the citizens' appreciation for their urban "home", in particular the neighbourhood liveability. Taking modern research on urban wellbeing and happiness as a point of departure, this study presents and tests a new methodology for assessing the...

Cultural diversity is a complex and multi-faceted concept. Commonly used quantitative measures of the spatial distribution of culturally-defined groups - such as segregation, isolation or concentration indexes - are often only capable of identifying just one aspect of this distribution. The...

Cultural diversity - in various forms - has in recent years turned into a prominent and relevant research and policy issue. There is an avalanche of studies across many disciplines that measure and analyse cultural diversity and its impacts. Based on different perspectives and features of the...

Immigration is a phenomenon of growing significance in many countries. Increasing social tensions are leading to political pressure to limit a further influx of foreign-born persons on the grounds that the absorption capacity of host countries has been exceeded and social cohesion threatened....

The increasing proportion of immigrants in the population of many countries has raised concerns about the 'absorption capacity' of the labour market, and fuelled extensive empirical research in countries that attract migrants. In previous papers we synthesized the conclusions of this empirical...