Central Eastern European cities within multi-level transnational company networks: cores, peripheries and diffusion of innovation

Natalia Zdanowska

doi:10.1177/2399808320977863

Abstract

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Central Eastern European cities (CEEc) integrated the globalised networks characterised by hierarchical interactions between cities. This article aims at revisiting the core-periphery and spatial diffusion of innovations paradigms among CEEc within multi-level interurban transnational company networks regardless of CEEc size in 2013. This article contributes to confirm that in spite of presenting less complex economic functions than the large urban centres, medium-sized and small cities, still involved in relations from the communist past, are bottom-up drivers of future innovations. These cities should be targeted by regional policies to reach the polycentric model of urban systems promoted by the European Union.

Highlights

Cores are associated with high wages, technology and profit inputs and outcomes
This drives to a conclusion upon an extreme division between cities of the Western and Eastern facades of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) in terms of their economic functions and a core-periphery effect within CEE itself
Ło d z and many small towns in Slovakia are in this situation. This division of economic functions of cities is a result of different stages of the process of diffusion of innovation (H€agerstrand, 1967), which affected Western capitals of CEE – Budapest, Prague, Bratislava and Warsaw – in the first place resulting from their geographical proximity with German, Austrian and Italian cities (Zdanowska et al, 2020)

Summary

Introduction

Cores are associated with high wages, technology and profit inputs and outcomes. Geographically, these processes have tended to concentrate and segregate, producing places with either core or peripheral domination processes (Fujita and Thisse, 2002). The theory of hierarchical diffusion of innovation (H€agerstrand, 1967; Pred, 1977) explains how new activities and social practices are captured first by large cities with the information level, financial support, productive structures and employment skills required to adopt them at an early stage of development. These innovations tend to percolate down the urban hierarchies, they provide slightly higher benefits in terms of economic returns and social capabilities to the cities that took initial advantage of the adaptation (Pumain et al, 2006; Zdanowska et al, 2020). The reduction of transportation costs, the development of new communication technologies and the dematerialisation of the economy make transnational networks of firms’ relevant research objects

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