Creative Path Of The Old Industiral Areas’Transformation Based On Evolutionary Economic Geography

Since the economic reforms in the late1970s, economic, social and environmental issues have been emerged in these old industrial areas:poor economic performance as a whole, low economic income of workers, innumerable ill-managed enterprises at the brink of bankruptcy, excessive job loss, worsening air pollution and ecological deterioration etc. Since the1980’s, the theoretical workers and policymakers have paid increasing number of attention on the problem of the old industrial areas’transformational path.This paper introduces the traditional paths of the old industrial areas’ transformation:economic transformation, ecological conversion and social reforming. These traditional paths own their unique existing problems:they focus on a particular aspect instead of Integration of economy, ecology and society. Hence, this paper draws out the concept of creative transformation. The development of creative industry can promote the economic structure adjustment and the transformation of the mode of economic development; then, because the creative industry itself is pollution-free industry and "smokeless industry", the creative industry can promote the improvement of the ecological environment; at the same time, the development of creative industry can stimulate employment, promote the cultural and ideological progress, promote social harmony and development, etc. In a word, Creative transformation can combine economic transformation, ecological transformation and social transformation.Recently, evolutionary economic geography attempts to contribute to the fall and (re)rise of the old industrial regions, and employed some concepts including path dependence, lock-in, path creation, related variety, co-evolution, sunk costs, cluster life cycles and the learning region. The existing old industrial regions literatures using the concepts such as path dependence and lock-in often argue that old industrial regions have litter opportunity to recover after stocks. But we believe that old industrial regions are resilient and have potential capability to adjust them and recreating new path after disturbance. Therefore, we originally propose the concept "path creation" to point out the way how to realize the transformation of old industrial areas. We here aim to improve that path creation is the suitable theoretical technique to interpret the realization of creative transformation. Path creation provides a policy guiding theory system which is urgently needs in this key period of economic and social transformation.Creative path of transformation and its realization not only can figure out the transformation problem of the old industrial areas, still can make contributions to the development of creative industry, evolution theory and economic geography.Taking Beijing Shijingshan District as a case, this paper analyzes the Creative path of transformation in the old industrial areas. It is composed of seven chapters. Chapter Ⅰ introduced the background, meaning, importance of this topic. Chapter Ⅱ reviewed the literature of the traditional path of the old industrial areas transformation, put forward the concept of creative transformation, and combed the path dependence, path creation in evolutionary economic geography. It reviewed the theories and thus set the tone for the following chapters. Chapter3reviewed the formation, development and basic points of evolutionary economic geography, then constructed the multi-scale analysis framework of Chinese old industrial areas’ creative transformation path. Chapter Ⅳ started from old industrial areas’ creative industry development experience abroad and then borrowed experience from the developed countries’creative transformation path. Chapter Ⅴ introduced Shijingshan District’s creative industry in terms of its formation and development process, analyzed how to further enhance creative industry development.