This book offers a panoramic view of recent advances in spatial complexity, in order to enhance our understanding of complex spatial networks by simplicity in terms of both the basic driving forces of systemic impacts and the modelling of such systems. Simple models mapping out the evolution of complex networks are undoubtedly a key issue in spatial economic research. In exploring this untrodden ground, this volume pursues new interdisciplinary pathways for theoretical, methodological and empirical analysis in the complex interconnected space-economy. It highlights 'evolutionary' directions...

Our world is continuously changing as new technologies are developed, demographic patterns evolve and new social and political configurations emerge. However, most people would agree that, not unlike the time of the Industrial Revolution, the rate of change has accelerated over the last few decades. It is certainly the case of many economic activities, where the trend towards globalization, supported by a faster diffusion of knowledge and information, economies of scale, the opening of borders and improved transport networks, has induced a spatial redistribution of production and ownership....

One aspect of the new economy is a transition to a networked society, and the emergence of a highly interconnected, interdependent and complex system of networks to move people, goods and information. An example of this is the in creasing reliance of networked systems (e. g., air transportation networks, electric power grid, maritime transport, etc. ) on telecommunications and information in frastructure. Many of the networks that evolved today have an added complexity in that they have both a spatial structure - i. e., they are located in physical space but also an a spatial dimension...

For many decades scholars from various disciplines have been intrigued by the question whether there are unifying principles or models that have a validity in different disciplines. The building of such analytical frameworks bridging the gaps between scientific traditions is a very ambitious task and has not been very successful up till now. In the past - in a static context - several such principles have been defined and advocated at the edge of the natural sciences on the one hand and social sciences (in particular, economics and geography) on the other hand, mainly based on the paradigm of...