Sammendrag
In the innovation and regional development literature, regional areas that lie between
prosperous core regions and struggling peripheral
areas have been largely neglected, both theoretically
and empirically, in recent innovation and regional
research. In this paper, we analyse the role that small
cities play as agents in regional development in their
hinterland. Are they catalysts for growth, or do they
drain the surrounding cities and villages? One concept or analytical tool that deals with this issue more
explicitly is ‘sponge cities’, which refers to small and
medium-sized cities that appear to ‘soak up’ talent
and resources from the surrounding hinterland. By
adopting and expanding this largely unexplored concept, we analyse the role of regional cities in the Norwegian context. Building on the original concept, we
believe that adding commuting to migration patterns
provides a more nuanced and precise assessment of
whether small cities and regional centres are a blessing or a curse for their hinterlands. Using regional
data, we classify cities as ‘motors’ (those that positively afect the hinterland thanks to well-balanced
commuting and migration patterns at various spatial scales) or ‘sponges’ (those that soak up people
from surrounding areas through migration). Further
expanding our analysis, we label a third group of
municipalities as ‘local mobilizers’, as they seem to
have the potential to infuence positively the growth
of adjacent areas, and a fourth group as ‘moderate
attractors’, which show moderately positive external
commuting and migration fows.
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