BOOK REVIEW. Amnon Frenkel, Peter Nijkamp and Philip McCann (Eds.), Edward Elgar, 2012, Societies in Motion, Cheltenham, United Kingdom,

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1 BOOK REVIEW Motion, Cheltenham, United Kingdom, by Raluca Mariana Grosu, Bucharest University of Economic Studies In the last decades a high acceleration of the transitions in space has been noticed, determined by the unprecedented technological development. It is reflected by the new dimensions of regional development, in relation to technological innovation, its distribution in space and spatial mobility. The volume entitled Societies in Motion, edited by Amnon Frenkel, Peter Nijkamp and Philip McCann represents a successful attempt to analyse these phenomena, offering remarkable insights into their driving forces and consequences in the modern society. At the same time it is a tribute to an outstanding scholar of the regional science international community, Daniel Shefer. The contributors are regional scientists from many countries who have provided 15 exciting chapters organized into four parts, addressing the factors that influence regional development, the spatial distribution of industrial and technological innovation, human capital, migration and labour force and, last but not the least, spatial mobility. Chapter 1, written by Paavo Monkkonen and John M. Quigley deals with the spatial consequences of autarky in land use regulation, testing whether the spatial pattern of these regulations is determined by the spatial autocorrelation of the demographic characteristics or it is the expression of the interactions between various regulatory policies developed by city governments. The results indicate a high degree of similarity between the regulations over space, but also a high spatial correlation of the demographic characteristics. In Chapter 2 Daniel Felsenstein and Shlomie Hazam discuss the intra-urban mobility and changing density functions in Tel Aviv between 1995 and They demonstrate that many 103

2 processes of deconcentration are similar to those noticed in other cities but, in case of Tel Aviv, it has not resulted in the weakening of the central city. In Chapter 3 Masagus M. Ridhwan, Peter Nijkamp, Piet Rietveld and Henri L.F. de Groot offer an overview of the monetary and financial factors in regional development, aiming to evaluate the relevance of monetary policies and financial markets as support for regional growth. They demonstrate that monetary policy act as an incentive for regional development especially in emerging countries and bring new arguments for convergence processes. Chapter 4, written by Piet H. Pellenbarg and Joris Knoben addresses a series of issues related to the spatial mobility of firms, aiming to provide an overview of the firm, mainly focusing on firm relocation. The results of the paper, among others, reflect the fact that although firm migrations crossing state boundaries are relatively scarce, a series of prominent events such as the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 or the accession to the EU of East European countries led to an eastward shift of activities, concretized especially in offshoring and outsourcing. Developed by Dafna Schwartz, Gil Avnimelech and Raphael Bar-El, Chapter 5 approaches the location considerations of knowledge-intensive and high-tech sectors based on both theoretical aspects and on the empirical evidence from the case of Israel. The authors promote the idea according to which as the activity became more knowledge-intensive, the geographical distribution of the activity became more concentrated in metropolitan locations and prime cities (p. 115), this leading to regional gaps. Amnon Frenkel and Daniel Shefer debate in Chapter 6 various factors and programmes that foster or hider the rate of technology transfer between university and industry, mainly focusing on the case of universities in the USA and Israel. They found that all the investigated universities encourage and promote the collaboration between researchers from the academic environment and those active in industry or other commercial enterprises, even if the threat of emergence of a conflict of interest is well known. Also, by improving the collaboration between universities and industry, the society, in general, and the economy, in particular, can strongly benefit. In Chapter 7, Patricio Aroca, Geoffrey J.D. Hewings and Michael Sonis discuss the effect of asset and credit constraint on interregional labour migration, aiming to clarify the role of the mentioned factor in the decision to migrate, focusing on the realization time of movers. The 104

3 developed migration decision model for workers under different employment status revealed, among other aspect, that transport costs and the lack of information about the situation in other regions negatively impact the migration decision, that the migration mechanism is less effective in depressed regions, or that a great hiring probability in the destination region positively impacts the migration decision. Chapter 8, elaborated by Alessandra Faggian, Jonathan Corcoran and Philip McCann brings forward a series of issues related to the spatial shape and skewness of labour migration patterns, especially in the case of the interregional graduate migration flows in Great Britain. The mix of non-traditional circular statistics tools with more traditional econometric modelling contributed to a better understanding of the migratory dynamics and led to the idea according to which students with higher levels of human capital tend to be more migratory and to be more focused in their job search process post-graduation. In Chapter 9, Raphael Bar-El and Miki Malul investigate the complementarity between commuting and migration. Their empirical findings highlight the fact that spatial mismatch does not necessarily lead to labour market instability (p. 218) and that migration and commuting may be complementary. Chapter 10, written by Daniela Constantin, Zizi Goschin and Philip McCann approaches the globalisation and the European Policy, especially in the Central and Eastern European countries, being mainly focused on the issues raised by flows of foreign direct investment into the Central and Eastern European countries (p. 220). The authors outline the fact that the Central and Eastern European countries will face major challenges in order to proper respond to the reforms promoted by the 2009 Barca Report. However, a successful adaptation to the reforms will contribute to the improvement of the absorptive capacity of the Central and Eastern European countries, especially in terms of foreign direct investments inflows of capital. Roberto Patuelli, Daniel A. Griffith, Michael Tiefelsdorf and Peter Nijkamp aim to investigate in Chapter 11 spatial filtering methods for tracing space-time developments in an open regional system by offering an evaluation of the importance of the spatial effects in explaining unemployment levels in the particular case of Germany and outlining the consistency over time of these patterns. They demonstrate that in the shared boundaries and distance-based approaches, the spatial filters explain 60 to 80% of the total variance displayed by unemployment when utilized as 105

4 the sole regressors in a logistic regression model (pp ), while the economic flows approach, based on a journey-to-work flows matrix, fails to produce the same result (p. 261). In Chapter 12, David Boyce and Hillel Bar-Gera discuss the role of computing in urban travel forecasting by tracing a 50-year evolution of travel forecasting applications of computing, with focus on computer programme packages, batteries, or software systems. The computing technology experienced and experiences rapid development and developers keep up with it providing significant improvements in usability and productivity to users. Also, practitioners used this development in computing technology (hardware and software) in order to elaborate complex and sophisticated models. In Chapter 13, Yoram Shiftan and Daniel Shefer address the question of sustainable transportation development and travel behaviour, mainly aiming to outline the importance of understanding travel behaviour and the complexity of the relationships between various travel externalities on the elaboration of sustainable transport policies. They outline the fact that the improvement and acceleration of the transition towards a sustainable transportation planning and development represent one of the main challenges faced by policies. Also, travel behaviour is a key factor in the assessment process of transportation-related policies mainly developed for improving urban mobility, environmental quality, road safety, and social objectives. Chapter 14, authored by Moshe Givoni and David Banister, concentrates on aspects specific to the rail network, mainly focusing on its role in sustainable transportation. The key idea promoted by the authors refers to the fact that the rail network needs to be fully integrated with the rest of the transport network and it can contribute to a sustainable mobility if rail holds an important share on the transport market. The final chapter of the book, 15, developed by Haim Aviram and Daniel Shefer aims to proper answer the question Are urban transportation benefits absorbed fully by land values?, mainly by assessing the potential impact of urban transport improvement projects. Their results revealed the fact that, as urban development and changes in land uses show their effects over a long period of time, investment in large-scale transportation projects have a long lasting impact on a region. However, in the short term, the authors outline the fact that benefits derived from transportation improvements are not completely absorbed by land values (p. 358). 106

5 Considering all the novelty elements promoted by the editors and contributors, the volume brings useful and valuable information for all researchers and scholars involved in the investigation of the factors that influence regional development, of the spatial distribution of industrial and technological innovation, of human capital, migration and labour force, and of spatial mobility. Also, the volume represents an important guideline for policy makers in formulating sustainable policies able to contribute to a better, more sustainable future. The volume promotes innovative ideas and methodologies and provides valuable case studies that will surely stimulate further research in the investigated areas, implicitly in the regional science field. I express my sincere congratulations and acknowledgements to the editors and all contributors of the volume for their incredible work and for their extremely valuable contribution to the improvement and development of the research in this area of regional science. 107