Keynote at the Annual Congress of the European Regional Science Association (ERSA) on ‘Cities in a Post-Corona World’. Cities are a global magnet to talent, capital, and knowledge. The success of cities has been so spectacular that it has propelled a worrying spatial divide within almost every country. Cities are also the most resilient social systems that humans have ever created. They have dwarfed the longevity of countries and corporations, and have bounced back from pandemics, to natural disasters, to economic crises. Is this time different? Will the coronavirus crisis put a halt to the home-run of cities? Or will the societal transitions triggered by this crisis (particularly in the digital sector) be another leg to the success of cities in the 21st century? In this talk, Pierre-Alexandre Balland will build on research on complex systems and economic geography to offer an outlook for cities in a post-corona world (August 2020)
Panel discussion at the Research and Innovation Days of the European Commission: as Europe is facing deep societal, ecologic and economic challenges, a transformative R&I policy is needed to ensure a sustainable future. The panel, led by the ESIR high-level group of experts, will discuss how R&I can help to protect, prepare, and transform Europe in a post-COVID world and beyond. Following this Open Session, three additional breakout sessions will debate the implications of the societal, ecologic and economic challenges for “Universities and their adaptation strategies for the post-corona world”, “Cities, regions, and nations”, and “Protecting, preparing and transforming EU industry”.(September 2020)
Panel Discussion at the Annual Conference on the Geography of Innovation & Complexity (GIC) on the role of policy making for the innovation process, together with Ina Ganguli (Umass-Amherst), Balázs Lengyel (ANET Lab, Institute of Economics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences) and Cesar Hidalgo (Toulouse).
Keynote in Brussels at the Research and Innovation Days of the European Commission on Innovation Policy in a Complex and Inequal World. (September 2019)