Design is central to every service or good produced, sold and consumed. Manufacturing and service companies located in high cost locations increasingly find it difficult to compete with producers located in countries such as India and China. Companies in high-cost locations either have to shift production abroad or create competitive advantage through design, innovation, brand and the geographic distribution of tasks rather than price.

Design Economies and the Changing World Economy provides the first comprehensive account of the relationship between innovation, design,...

This interdisciplinary volume provides a critical and multi-disciplinary review of current manufacturing processes, practices, and policies, and broadens our understanding of production and innovation in the world economy. Chapters highlight how firms and industries modify existing processes to produce for established and emerging markets through dynamic and design-driven strategies. This approach allows readers to view transformations in production systems and processes across sectors, technologies and industries. Contributors include scholars ranging from engineering to policy to economic...

Elgar Research Agendas outline the future of research in a given area. Leading scholars are given the space to explore their subject in provocative ways, and map out the potential directions of travel. They are relevant but also visionary. City-regions are regeneration economies, or in other words, places that are experiencing on-going processes of recovery, adaptation or transformation. This Research Agenda provides both a state-of-the-art review of existing research on city-regions, and expands on new research approaches. Expert contributors from across the globe explore key areas...

Elgar Research Agendas outline the future of research in a given area. Leading scholars are given the space to explore their subject in provocative ways, and map out the potential directions of travel. They are relevant but also visionary. City-regions are regeneration economies, or in other words, places that are experiencing on-going processes of recovery, adaptation or transformation. This Research Agenda provides both a state-of-the-art review of existing research on city-regions, and expands on new research approaches. Expert contributors from across the globe explore key areas...

This insightful book explores smaller towns and cities, places in which the majority of people live, highlighting that these more ordinary places have extraordinary geographies. It focuses on the development of an alternative approach to urban studies and theory that foregrounds smaller cities and towns rather than much larger cities and conurbations. Comparative case studies from Australia, Cambodia, India, Korea, the UK and US provide a rich collection of theoretically informed investigations into smaller urban centres that are connected in complex ways to regional, national and...

Providing an integrated and multi-level analysis of the impacts of COVID-19 on people, place, economies and policies, across the globe, this timely book explores how the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic combines failure with success. It focuses on exploring rapid adaptation and improvisation by individuals, organisations and governments as they attempted to minimise and mitigate the socio-economic and health impacts of the pandemic. Interdisciplinary chapters written by social policy, geography, planning, policy, sociology and public health experts explore the broader impacts of...