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Whilst concurring with the new streams of literature in geography that highlight the importance of face-to-face and ‘buzz’ in the globalizing learning economy, we argue that this literature is misleading on three interrelated counts. Firstly, it conflates face-to-face and buzz; secondly, it fails to distinguish between the importance of face-to-face and buzz for industries drawing on different knowledge bases; and, thirdly, these conceptual inadequacies lead to an exaggeration of the importance of cities as sites for creativity and innovation, and hence regional competitiveness. By applying an industrial knowledge base approach, we seek to reconstruct an alternative framework that allows for a systematic differentiation between the importance of face-to-face and buzz for different industries. This provides a framework for developing a more nuanced understanding of the spatial implications of face-to-face communication and buzz for learning and innovation.

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Despite increased awareness of the urgency to respond to climate change and to promote sustainable development, there are few powerful initiatives that are decisively shifting urban development in a sustainable, resilient and low-carbon direction. This Special Volume of the Journal of Cleaner Production explores sustainable urban transformation focusing on structural transformation processes-multi-dimensional and radical change-that can effectively direct urban development towards ambitious sustainability goals. The 20 articles are based on 35 cases and over 130 surveyed examples of urban initiatives on sustainability in many countries. While cities in Europe dominate, there are also examples from North America, South America, Africa, Asia and Oceania. The combined articles in this Special Volume contribute to knowledge and understanding on sustainable urban transformation across a range of areas, including governance and planning, innovation and competitiveness, lifestyle and consumption, resource management and climate mitigation and adaptation, transport and accessibility, buildings, and the spatial environment and public space. Overall, this Special Volume documents and analyses real-life action in cities and communities around the world to respond to sustainability challenges and it provides critical insights into how to catalyse, intensify and accelerate sustainable urban transformation globally. A main finding of the articles is that governance and planning are the key leverage points for transformative change.

Where and how new industrial paths emerge are much debated questions in economic geography, especially in light of the recent evolutionary turn. This paper contributes to the ongoing debate on path creation with a new analytical framework that specifies the formation of 'generic resources' in embryonic industries. It suggests that path creation processes are not only conditioned by pre-existing regional capabilities and technological relatedness, but also by the way firm and non-firm actors mobilize and anchor key resources for industry formation. Our framework elaborates on the early industry development phase, extending the focus on regional knowledge spill-overs in evolutionary economic geography literature with recent insights on industry formation dynamics from innovation studies. It understands early path creation as conditioned by four systemic resource formation processes-knowledge creation, investment mobilization, market formation and technology legitimation-that can be mobilized both from inside or anchored from outside the region. The use and value of the analytical framework is illustrated by a case study on on-site water recycling technology, based on interviews with 40 experts in three Chinese city regions. The findings suggest that, despite possessing the least favourable initial conditions, a sizable on-site water recycling industry developed only in Beijing. This is explained based on the specific anchoring process of the four key resources in the early development stage of the industry. Our results imply that evolutionary economic geography would profit from incorporating a broader set of variables than knowledge-based relatedness in explanations of regional industrial path creation.