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Chapter 10
Multilevel Analysis of Corporations Networks:
A Comparison Between Agro-Food and
Automobile Strategies for Urban Development
Charles Bohan and Bérengère Gautier
10.1
Introduction
The integration of territories is one of the major objectives of the convergence
policies that Europe encourages in order to stabilize its borders and make them safer.
In the Mediterranean region, as well as in Central and Eastern Europe, states use the
structural funds that they provide for development to support policies that make the
territories more attractive to multinational firms. By diffusing capital, information
and expertise on a worldwide scale, firms became the principal driving force of
development processes in the European Neighborhood Policies.
Most of the current studies on the economic integration of territories is based
on the scale of national economies. However, in the context of the international
division of labor and of the internationalization of the exchanges under the impulse
of the NTIC, companies develop networks based on complementary and localized
territorial competences, such as the local factors of attractivity and the faculty of
networking production processes. Then, the networks of multinational firms seek
locations that can enable them to achieve economies of scale and economies of
networks (
Doz, Santos, & Williamson
,
2001
;
Rozenblat
,
2004
;
Veltz
,
2000
). It is
necessary to integrate this reticular dimension of the integration of cities in global-
ization. On the transnational scale, the firms stimulate economies of agglomeration
(localization, urbanization and economies of scale) for cities and create original
developments within each of them, thus reinforcing their position within the system
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