A workshop was co-organised by the network of economic geographers and the Centre for Economic and Regional Studies ACORE team to discuss the multiplicity of trajectories of economic recovery in old industrial towns, to reveal agencies and social relations driving reindustrialization, and highlight social and environmental conflicts stemming from change. The three cases (Tatabánya, Dunaújváros, Martfű) presented at the workshop embody different paths of re/industrialization, yet all faced deep and subsequent structural crises that were responded by local agents by mobilizing endogenous resources, their relational assets and external capital. The change raised new dependencies, inequalities and risks that question the sustainability of new economic trajectories and make the new centrality of the discussed towns ambiguous.
The discussion of diverse local trajectories and their national and global/peripheral context supported unfolding the ACORE case studies and developing the analytical framework for the field work results – considering the multiplicity of agencies, dependencies, and centralities/peripheralities, challenging binary thinking.