SUBJECT: Distributed Economies- a strategy for qualitative regional development
AUTHOR: Allan Johansson
DATE: 23rd April 2003

KEYWORDS: Sustainable development, local production, distributed economies, quality of life.

SUMMARY: The author discusses the Distributed Economies concept as a way to bridge the gap between enhanced economic development and reduced material consumption, promoting regional development and an improved quality of life.


In addition to its more immediate practical applications, environmental concern has functioned as a proxy for a more profound concern in society, relating to ethics and quality of life issues, loosely brought together under the notion of sustainable development. Sustainable development, however, contains the contradictory elements of; on the one hand, enhanced economic development largely based on improved production efficiency through technological advancement and, on the other, reduced material consumption. The first has translated into increased unemployment while the latter, in spite of efforts towards a new regime of eco-design (shift from products to services and intelligent products) has remained largely unfulfilled.

In an effort to bridge the gap, the Distributed Economies1 concept is proposed as a strategy where regional development, with improved quality of life is brought in as a guiding element. The concept uses as starting point the particular qualities of a region, geographic as well as cultural, and brings in new scientific knowledge to make better use of local skills and assets. It is primarily to be seen as a tool for bringing advanced scientific knowledge directly in contact with small and medium sized enterprises (SME) with the expressed aim of bringing about significant quality improvements in the local production scheme, through putting into practice new technology as well as synergies between local enterprises and the community as a whole. The regional focus also makes it possible to create innovative solutions making maximal use of natural resources without compromising quality of life issues, such as advanced product development based on local biological production systems, and high quality food production. The aim is to look for flexible solutions that can rapidly profit from modern scientific advancements as well as changing needs in the outside market. In the extension the various regions can obtain an economy of scale through networking rather than sheer production efficiency, with the entire regions as "products".

By having a "distributed economies" perspective it is believed that new business ideas and product concepts can emerge which effectively addresses the issues of life-cycle concern and material flows at a regional level. The regional base offers interesting strategic opportunities for identifying new internal synergies, building new capabilities, introducing change processes and re-defining dependencies (economic, social and technological) to the larger production system (global). Instead of pursuing a centralised and generic approach, the potential to open up new strategic possibilities for transforming industrial product systems based on specific needs and possibilities of regions.

A contribution by:

Allan Johansson
The International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics (IIIEE)
Lund University, Sweden
and the Technical Research Institute of Finland (VTT), Finland.


1 The Distributed Economies concept is an extension of a Strategic Environmental Development programme developed at IIIEE and successfully undertaken in several counties, including Sweden (Lindvallen), Poland (Tarnowskie Góry), Bulgaria (Albena), Czech Republic (Opava), Russia (Baltijsk), Lithuania (Palanga), and Greece (Island of Lesvos). Additionally, industrial audits have been conducted in several SMEs and municipalities, which represented the initial steps towards the study of 'distributed economies' principles.