Do technology clusters promote social cohesion and economic performance? A Tale of Two Cities

ROCHA HECTOR; ACOSTA, G

VIENA

Congreso; 38 th EGOS COLLOQUIUM; 2022

Social cohesion, defined as the level of social integration between heterogeneous groups in terms of their orientation towards a common good in a geographical area (cf. Kearns & Forrest, 2000; Novy, Swiatek, & Moulaert, 2012; Shiefer and Van der Noll, 2017), is central to regional development academics and policymakers, especially in a context of economic growth and rising inequality during the last ten years (Atkinson, Piketty, & Saez, 2011; Novy, Swiatek, & Moulaert, 2012; Stiglitz, 2012; Cobb, 2016; OECD, 2011; Piketty, 2014). For example, the European Union's cohesion policy to strengthen economic and social cohesion by reducing disparities in development between regions allocated 32.5 % of the EU budget or 351.8 billion to financial instruments that supported cohesion policy during 2014-2020 (EC, 2021)1. While clusters are often considered central to economic performance, their relationship to social cohesion is less clear. Recent research in regional studies has used dynamic approaches to capture the interaction between industrial sectors and territories (Fratesi, 2015), inform place-based policies (cf. Massard & Autant-Bernard, 2015; McCann & Argiles, 2015), and develop a theoretical dynamic model to understand the interactions between clusters, social cohesion, economic performance (Rocha, Kunc, and Audretsch, 2020). Although these studies contribute to our understanding of how the intertwined relationship between sectors and regions impact social cohesion, they remain theoretical