The variety of industrial towns in Slovenia: a typology of their economic performance

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to make a typology of industrial towns according to their economic performance and to establish place-specific local factors influencing the typology and their territorial distribution. We collected 15 indicators of economic performance for 23 small industrial towns in Slovenia, and with the method of Principle Component Analysis with k-means clustering made a typology of small industrial towns. The results show a great variety of small industrial towns, with many of them having a strong economic performance. In the discussion, we relate the findings to the overall transformation of industry in the post-socialist context, to re-industrialisation tendencies and to place-specific factors such as peripherality and specific historical events (polycentric policies). We conclude with the call to continue studying small industrial towns through the prism of opportunities and to address their weaknesses and maximise their place-specific strengths.

The selection of areas for case study research in socio-economic geography with the application of k-means clustering

“…When deciding which area to study, this method is likely to remain objective and not limited by measurability when supplemented by qualitative information concerning the local and regional spatial contexts. A practicable improvement to the analysis scheme described in this paper may concern the use of principal components instead of raw data for less correlated and more refined variables, similarly for instance to what Bole et al (2019) described. Future studies relating to the topic may also include further research as to what extent and under what conditions clusters obtained from different partitioning methods converge.…”

“…In contrast, some authors propose to derive the optimal number of clusters from hierarchical clustering (e.g. Bole et al, 2019;Šebová, 2013 as cited by Mikuš et al, 2016;Stukalo & Simakhova, 2018) or from the Akaike information criterion (AIC) method (Li et al, 2016). Not undermining any of these approaches, similarly to e.g.…”

Untitled

“…Несостоятельность применявшихся стратегий привела к формированию стихийной «низовой» практики выживания населения моногородов, не отраженной ни в одном стратегическом или отчетном официальном документе (Недосека, Карбаинов, 2020; Аникиева, 2020). В ряде работ как российских (Безвербный и др., 2020), так и зарубежных авторов (Bole et al, 2019;O'Hagan, Cecil, 2007) отмечается влияние на развитие моногородов градообразующей отрасли, что видится интересным, но недостаточным для формирования управленческих решений. Более информативным становится рассмотрение взаимосвязи экономики моногородов с деятельностью градообразующего предприятия и связи диверсификации городской экономики с диверсификацией деятельности градообразующего предприятия и градообразующего холдинга (Якушина, Шваков, 2020;Cortinovis et al, 2016).…”

A Research Agenda for Small and Medium-Sized Towns

“…Both population and industrial employment thresholds vary in different studies. The employment criterion is sometimes defined using the national average (Bolton and Hildreth, 2013) or statistical thresholds such as standard deviation to identify the most industrial SMSTs within the urban system (Bole et al, 2019).…”

“…Although post-industrial transitional theories shifted attention towards cities and towns with a new service-based economy and social dynamics, the lack of scholarly attention to industrial SMSTs does not mean that they are a thing of the past or somehow frozen in time. They have survived, evolved and are an important part of certain national (Berube and Murray, 2018;Bole et al, 2019) and regional urban systems (Krzysztofik et al, 2016).…”