The analysis of the spatial distribution of the transportation and consumption of resources, goods, and services, and their effects on the landscape; ‘taking seriously the relations between economic and other social and bio-physical processes, rather than analyzing the economic as either separable from or foundational to such other processes’ (Sheppard in S. Bagchi-Sen and H. Lawton Smith 2006).

There are two distinct new economic geographies in the Anglo-American literature. The first uses sophisticated spatial modelling to explain uneven development and the emergence of industrial clusters—by considering centripetal and centrifugal forces, especially economies of scale and transport costs. See Krugman (1998) Oxford Review of Economic Policy 14, 2; for a critical review, see Martin (1999) Camb. J. Econ. 23.

The second approach also attempts to explain the emergence of industrial clusters, but emphasizes relational, social, and contextual aspects of economic behaviour, particularly the importance of knowledge and learning—which takes place most effectively through personal contacts at the local–regional level (Amin (1999) International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 23). This economic geography emphasizes aspects of economic behaviour that are considered intangible by the first; see Perrons (2004) Econ. Geog. 80, 1. See Gertler (2003) J. Econ. Geog. 3 on tacit knowledge and the economic geography of context.

Bathelt and Glückler (2003) J. Econ. Geog. 3 argue for a relational economic geography, wherein economic actors are situated in contexts of social and institutional relations, and economic processes are contingent in these agents’ strategies. Their key words are: organization, evolution, innovation, and interaction. Crevoisier (2004) Econ. Geog. 80, 4 in an innovative milieux approach to economic geography, holds that space—or, more precisely, territory—is the matrix of economic development, and that economic mechanisms transform space. N. Coe et al. (2007) is very favourably reviewed. For a review of the ‘institutional turn’ in economic geography see Peck (2005) Econ. Geog. 81.

Evolutionary economic geography

seeks to integrate growth and innovation theories, and looks at endogenous reasons for regional economic development. ‘Evolutionary Economic Geography explains the spatial evolution of firms, industries, networks, cities and regions from elementary processes of the entry, growth, exit and (re-)location of firms’ (Frenken and Boschma (2007) J. Econ. Geog. 7, 5). Lee and Saxenian (2008) J. Econ. Geog. 8, 2 claim that the ‘evolutionary turn’ in economic geography has led to increasing emphasis on coevolution among technologies, organizations, and territories. ‘The weakness of this approach, however, is a focus on broad coevolutionary pictures that pays little attention to coordination processes that guide interdependent actions on the ground’.

http://www.springer.com/economics/economic+theory/journal/191 Online Journal of Evolutionary Economics providing more about the aims and scope of this discipline.