DESIGNATION OF COASTAL AREAS AND LOCALIZATION OF MAIN CROSS-BORDER MARITIME CLUSTERS OF EUROPE AND SOUTHEAST ASIA
Various approaches to the attribution of territories to the coastal areas are discussed in the paper, including such factors as distance from the coast, watershed boundaries, population distribution within the boundaries of administrative units, etc. Being developed in different countries, these approaches are usually based on different types of statistical data, which sometimes makes the results of the zoning not quite comparable. For instance, methodology of the US Department of Commerce takes into account the population of the coastal territories (all the districts located directly on the coast including the Great Lakes). The approach of isolating coastal zones is based on the cost factor of land transportation, which is reflected in their spatial zoning according to the principle of equal distances. In line with this methodology, the coastal zone may vary from 50 to 400 kilometers depending on the research preferences. An important feature of this attitude is a possibility to take into account the transport density of the territory that can be crucial for the countries with low population density like Russia. Eurostat uses another method where the main indicator of belonging to the coastal type of territories is the population itself: even areas that have no direct access to the sea but have settlement systems that gravitate towards the sea are defined as coastal. Another part of the research is dedicated to localization and characterization of welldeveloped cross-border clusters that exploit effectively the advantages of their coastal position. Considered examples are concentrated in Europe and Southeast Asia - two regions that develop this format of international economic cooperation in the most efficient way. The emergence of cross-border maritime cluster in South-East Asia has begun in the late 1970s with organizing the first four special economic zones of the PRC, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Nowadays cross-border maritime clusters play the main role in the economy of Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and in many ways China. European region has its own number of cross-border maritime clusters of global importance. Concentrated in welldeveloped countries like Sweden and Denmark, Netherlands and Belgium, Spain, France and Italy these clusters have a wide range of specializations.One of the core clusters is a Medicon valley between Denmark and Sweden that was organized in 1990s. Other hightechnology clusters like Amsterdam Alley, Louvain Technology Corridor, Flanders Language Valley are concentrated in Benelux and focus their work on different fields including for example language technologies.Undoubtedly, maritime cross-border clusters will rise their influence on trans-border cooperation and economic development of coastal areas in the nearest future.