The variety of industrial towns in Slovenia: a typology of their economic performance

The aim of this paper is to make a typology of industrial towns according to their economic performance and to establish place-specific local factors influencing the typology and their territorial distribution. We collected 15 indicators of economic performance for 23 small industrial towns in Slovenia, and with the method of Principle Component Analysis with k-means clustering made a typology of small industrial towns. The results show a great variety of small industrial towns, with many of them having a strong economic performance. In the discussion, we relate the findings to the overall transformation of industry in the post-socialist context, to re-industrialisation tendencies and to place-specific factors such as peripherality and specific historical events (polycentric policies). We conclude with the call to continue studying small industrial towns through the prism of opportunities and to address their weaknesses and maximise their place-specific strengths.