Our workplace has lived through the decades of economic and institutional transformation that we study. From Sarriko, Bilbao, we introduce RESPLACES: a research agenda on resilience, path dependence and the uneven fortunes of places, rooted in the conviction that history matters.

We are part of the history we study

We are based in Sarriko, Bilbao, home to the Faculty of Economics and Business at the University of the Basque Country. Perhaps better known to some for its Bilbao Metro station, Sarriko takes its name from a former estate once owned by the Counts of Zubiría, a family closely connected to Bilbao’s industrial past.

For RESPLACES, Sarriko is more than the place where we work. Its history intersects with the industrial development, economic transformations and institutional changes at the heart of our research. We work within an institution shaped by the very historical processes we seek to understand.

The Faculty of Economics in Bilbao began its activities in the academic year 1955–56, initially under the University of Valladolid. Its inaugural academic ceremony took place on 7 October 1955, while teaching was conducted in premises provided by the School of Commerce on Elcano Street. These beginnings reflected the growing demand for higher education in a city shaped by industrial, commercial and financial expansion (García Crespo, 2005).

The faculty's subsequent establishment at Sarriko marked another stage in its institutional development. In June 1961, Bilbao City Council transferred the Sarriko estate to the Spanish state for the construction of a new faculty building, with part of the grounds designated for a public park. The estate included the former residence of the Zubiría family, subsequently known as El Chalet. A former private estate thus became a setting for university education and public use through decisions involving several public institutions (García Crespo, 2005).

The new faculty building, designed by architect Jesús de Basterrechea, was inaugurated on 10 October 1964. The University of Bilbao was established in 1968, incorporating the existing Faculty of Economics alongside the new faculties of Medicine and Sciences. In 1980, the institutional framework changed again with the establishment of the University of the Basque Country (García Crespo, 2005; De Pablo and Rubio Pobes, 2006).

These developments offer a concrete way into the RESPLACES framework. Earlier investments and decisions create resources that later generations can build on; institutions can acquire new functions; and cooperation between organisations can help establish new paths. Such connections are questions for historical investigation, rather than proof that every institutional change represents resilience. Our own workplace gives us good reason to take those questions seriously.

The photographs show that workplace across time: an undated historical view through the entrance gates, an aerial photograph from 1997 and the faculty entrance in 2015. We are part of these longer trajectories, which shape the possibilities of the present.

From RESREGIO to RESPLACES

RESPLACES builds on a research trajectory led by Full Professor Jesús M. Valdaliso. Its predecessor, RESREGIO — Path-Dependence, Resilience and Evolution of Old Industrial Regions: A Multi-Level and Multi-Agent Historical Perspective — examined how old industrial regions respond to crises and long-term economic change.

With Valdaliso as principal investigator, RESREGIO brought together economic history, evolutionary economic geography and institutional analysis. Its framework connected regional trajectories with the actions of firms, industries, associations, public authorities and other organisations. It asked how inherited specialisations, accumulated capabilities and institutional arrangements could support adaptation, while also making change difficult.

RESPLACES develops this agenda under the joint leadership of Jesús M. Valdaliso and Iker Saitua. Its full title — Resilience, Path Dependence and Lock-ins in Old Industrial Regions and Left-Behind Places — reflects both continuity and a wider field of inquiry. Alongside industrial resilience and regional renewal, it examines persistent decline in rural, mining and peripheral economies.

Why history matters

History is no mere decoration: it is essential to explaining why places prosper, decline or change.

Economic change unfolds through time. Investments in infrastructure and skills, patterns of ownership and earlier public policies shape what a place can do next. Douglass North’s institutional approach explains how inherited rules and organisations structure incentives and influence the direction of economic change (North, 1990). These legacies can create valuable capabilities, but can also sustain arrangements that make adjustment difficult.

Historical explanation requires more than observing that the past matters. James Mahoney’s analysis of path dependence directs attention to the sequences and causal mechanisms through which contingent events set processes in motion and subsequent developments reproduce or react to them (Mahoney, 2000). The task is to explain how particular outcomes emerged, rather than to assume that every continuity is evidence of path dependence.

Resilience also needs a historical perspective. Places differ in their ability to resist disruption, recover, reorient their economies and renew their development paths (Martin and Sunley, 2015). A short-term rebound may preserve an existing specialisation; a longer view can reveal whether new capabilities and activities have emerged, or whether recovery has reproduced earlier vulnerabilities.

As Henning (2019) and Martin and Sunley (2022) argue, taking history seriously requires deeper engagement with historical evidence and explanation. For RESPLACES, this means tracing how institutions, ownership, capabilities and decisions interacted across successive periods of growth, crisis and change.

Agency matters within these inherited conditions. Firms, workers, communities and governments can maintain existing arrangements, alter them gradually or pursue new paths. History conditions their choices without making the future inevitable. Their interests and resources differ, and the benefits and costs of change are unevenly distributed. A region’s recovery therefore raises further questions: recovery for whom, through which institutions, and with what consequences for the future?

Two connected lines of inquiry

One strand of RESPLACES investigates resilience, lock-in and path development in old industrial regions. A second examines left-behind places and peripheral economies, focusing on historical trajectories, external ownership, resource dependence, institutions and place-based policies. Comparative research connects Spanish cases with North America and the Middle East.

The purpose is to explain how different outcomes emerge. Historical comparison can identify mechanisms behind adaptation and persistent decline, examine the circumstances in which policies operated and clarify why a measure that worked in one place may produce a different result elsewhere.

A historical perspective on possible futures

The photographs of Sarriko offer a modest reminder of this approach: a place becomes more intelligible when we see it across time. Images alone cannot explain institutional or economic change, but they can prompt the questions that archives, historical data and comparison allow us to investigate.

RESPLACES brings that perspective to debates about territorial inequality and regional renewal. Understanding how present conditions were made helps us assess which constraints remain powerful, which capabilities can support change and whose decisions might open new possibilities. That is why history matters.

References

De Pablo, Santiago, and Coro Rubio Pobes. 2006. Historia de la UPV/EHU (1980–2005). Bilbao: EHU Press.

García Crespo, Milagros, ed. 2005. 50 años Sarriko. Bilbao: EHU Press.

Henning, Martin. 2019. “Time Should Tell (More): Evolutionary Economic Geography and the Challenge of History.” Regional Studies 53 (4): 602–613. https://doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2018.1515481.

Mahoney, James. 2000. “Path Dependence in Historical Sociology.” Theory and Society 29 (4): 507–548. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1007113830879.

Martin, Ron, and Peter Sunley. 2015. “On the Notion of Regional Economic Resilience: Conceptualization and Explanation.” Journal of Economic Geography 15 (1): 1–42. https://doi.org/10.1093/jeg/lbu015.

Martin, Ron, and Peter Sunley. 2022. “Making History Matter More in Evolutionary Economic Geography.” ZFW – Advances in Economic Geography 66 (2): 65–80. https://doi.org/10.1515/zfw-2022-0014.

North, Douglass C. 1990. Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Historical sources: García Crespo (2005), particularly pp. 10, 12, 117–119 and 161, for the foundation of the faculty, its institutional development and the inauguration of the Sarriko buildings; De Pablo and Rubio Pobes (2006), for the subsequent history of the University of the Basque Country; Ibarrekolandatarrak, “5.- Sarriko”, for additional local historical context and the archival photograph; and the RESREGIO scientific and technical proposal, for the preceding research agenda. Photograph dates follow the information supplied with the images, except for the undated historical photograph, whose approximate date is inferred.