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Urban and regional restructuring in Eastern Europe: the role of foreign investment

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Abstract

The annual conference of the Royal Geographical Society/Institute of British Geographers, held in Exeter in January 1997, offered wide coverage of issues relating to urban and regional restructuring in Eastern Europe. This paper attempts to summarise the main arguments to emerge from the seminars and to provide a coherent view of the discussions. In the urban context, there was consideration of ownership change and the growth of the tertiary sector, but with significant tension between planners and local residents. Enterprise in cities showed wide spatial variations according to the quality of the infrastructure and status in the urban hierarchy. Regional restructuring was also shown to be uneven, given the global scale of the competition for investment. But substantial progress was reported in some regions, despite a tendency to exaggerate the impact of foreign investment in the early years of the transition.

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Turnock, D. Urban and regional restructuring in Eastern Europe: the role of foreign investment. GeoJournal 42, 457–464 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1006800930821

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