The Intra-urban Location Rationale(s) of Knowledge-creating Services: Two Italian Case-studies

Recently, a debate has developed within the economic geography about agglomeration
economies, which ensues from the transition from industrial to the knowledgedriven
economy and from a deterministic to an evolutionary approach. While it is recognized
that agglomeration economies are more important than location economies in
the new context, their nature is being still questioned, especially between New Economic
Geography and Evolutionary Economic Geography. This paper aims at contributing
to that debate through novel or barely explored epistemological and methodological
approaches. Our results, while confirming the importance of agglomeration economies,
shed new light on the role of location economies especially at the intra-urban scale.