Proximity and Co-ordination : How Spatial Economics Tries to Better Understand Spatial Agglomeration Activity ?

The purpose of the present contribution is to review spatial analysis through a literature survey in order to better understand spatial agglomeration of activity. Research by Traditional Location Theory dedicated to this subject is examined, taking into account the reformulation by the “New Economic Geography”. They still have difficulties for developing models that integrate trading costs, learning processes and strategic behaviours. Then, we show how cluster analysis is studied within several approaches which refer to the Marshallian tradition. We introduce the concept of National System of Innovation for combining learning process and institutional aspects in the spatial analysis. We investigate the claim that proximity is important for the analysis of localised co-ordination pursued in order to sustain regional competitive advantage.