Place leadership in the geography of opportunities: survival of small industrial localities when industrial giants fall

Abstract

This article focuses on place leadership in non-core localities struggling to renew their opportunity spaces when local industries giants fall. The research questions are as follows: What does it take in non-core localities to connect to the geography of opportunities? What role does place leadership play in this process? What is achieved by place leadership? The study analyses place leadership in two Finnish industrial subregions: Salo and Varkaus, and concludes that place leadership is a cause and a consequence of the local capacity to act in times of adversity, and therefore a central element of the local capacity to renew opportunity spaces.