LIBRI DI PETER NIJKAMP

A quarant’anni dalla fondazione dell’Associazione Italiana di Scienze Regionali (AISRe), quest’antologia in due volumi – utilizzabile anche a fini didattici – ne ricostruisce la storia attraverso un’analisi della Collana edita da FrancoAngeli. Questo secondo volume è dedicato ai modelli di interpretazione dei fenomeni urbani e ai metodi di pianificazione urbana. Non esaustivi dell’intera produzione di idee e temi trattati in quest’ambito dagli scienziati regionali, i lavori testimoniano l’importanza che la multidisciplinarietà ha giocato all’interno dell’Associazione nello sviluppare strumenti concettuali di interpretazione della dinamica dei sistemi urbani.

The evaluation of real estate assets is currently one of the main issues addressed by territorial marketing strategies with a view to developing competitive cities. Given the complexity of the real estate market, it’s hard to identify a priori the factors that constitute a city’s competitive capacity to attract investments to this market. In this paper we design an integrated complex evaluation model able to map out and encapsulate the multidimensional spectrum of factors that shape the attractiveness each investment destination. The methodological approach is then illustrated through application of the model to a real-world case of investment choice in the residential sector of the city of Naples.

Measuring the Performance of Italian Regions on Social and Economic Dimensions (by Miranda Cuffaro, Maria Francesca Cracolici, Peter Nijkamp) - ABSTRACT: This paper presents a new analytical framework for assessing spatial disparities among regions. On the premise that the analysis of a region’s performance cannot be limited solely to either economic or social aspects, the paper attempts to combine the material (i.e. economic) and immaterial (i.e. social) aspects of welfare and wellbeing in an integrated logical scheme. In this scheme the economic aspects of living standards are represented by various categories of consumption expenditure, whilst the social aspects are represented by appropriate indicators of health, education, labour market conditions, etc. The framework proposed is also appealing for convergence analyses over time. From a time perspective, introducing this joint socio-economic concept into the analysis of differences among countries allows one to disentangle the notion of convergence into its economic and social dimensions. An empirical analysis is conducted on the Italian regions for the period from 1980 to 2005. The empirical results obtained by Principal Component Analysis show that, on average, a high level of economic welfare may contrast with a high level of social well-being. Keywords: Socio-economic well-being, living standards, consumption

The development of Regional employment in Germany: Results from Neural Network Experiments (by Roberto Patuelli, Aura Reggiani, Peter Nijkamp) - ABSTRACT: This paper offers an overview of experimental results, based on neural networks (NNs) used to forecast regional employment variations in Germany. NNs are statistical optimization tools, whose main characteristics are non-linear data processing and the ability to find functional relationships within the data. We present the results – for a set of NN models – based on regional data concerning full-time employment in Germany. The database used in our experiments consists of two panels of 326 and 113 NUTS 3 districts, which represent West and East Germany, respectively. In order to forecast employment growth rates for the years 2004, 2005, and 2006, NN models – also embedding shift-share analysis components – were developed and evaluated for West and East Germany. The paper concludes with theoretical, methodological and empirical observations in the light of future research developments.