The place has a space in the WWW: The regional-wide-web as a driving system for sustainable development of regions
Dipl.-Ing. Stefan Gärtner, Dipl. Kff. Judith Terstriep
Institute for Work and Technology, Gelsenkirchen, Germany
gaertner@iatge.de, terstriep@iatge.de
Abstract
It is no new insight, that economic and social development is seen under the paradigm of globalisation, but at the same time there is an increasing perception of the importance of the region with its special regional strength and the geographical proximity of the relevant players, “a revival of space as a category of social analysis is postulated” (Laepple 1999: 3). In other words: Globalisation and spatial re-embeddedness are not contradictory in general.
Our thesis is, that there is a similar process (from spatial disembeddedness to re-embeddedness) going on in the use of the Internet: The Internet does foster processes of re-gional disembedding through the world-wide availability of information and access to global markets (the death of distance). It seems that the economy and especially value chains and networks become less place-bound. But despite the fact that the Internet is the pacemaker of economical and cultural globalisation, we are noticing at the same time an increasing importance of geographical space and the region for economic transactions within the Internet. The importance of spatial embeddedness on the Internet is based on the need of trust, the importance of transaction-costs, the cluster-approach, new business concepts like supply chain management or collaborative commerce etc. There are lots of examples for this, but they exist as singular projects. In this paper we argue, that a holistic regional strategy, which links the different projects and helps e.g. to develop a competence cluster and promotes regional value added processes will induce increased positive effects for the region. In this context the question needs to be answered, if the development of such strategies and the linking up of different players in order to create new models for regional economic development lies in the responsibility (public-service) of local or rather regional government. We have a situation, where the Internet as a key technology is increasing the possibility for companies to use world-wide resources, e.g. capital, knowledge, goods, at a mouse click. Nonetheless, their ability to compete successfully often depends on a certain level of regional embeddedness. This should be supported through the conception of the regional wide web.
The recent research-landscape focuses quite often on the Internet as a technology which is changing the situation of single businesses. Also topics like e-government or the connection between globalisation and neo-regionalism are discussed. In our paper, we connect these questions and ask how to manage the complex process of economic development in a region with the help of web-based services. This paper brings together results and theoretical ideas from different research projects.
In the following chapter we present the processes death of distance and regionalism in economic development and the Internet from a theoretical, conceptual and abstract point of view. In the third chapter we discuss some examples of specific local or regional networks and projects on the Internet. The last section will point out the positive effects of a holistic strategy on a regional level and describe the requirements for such a concept.