This article follows two important interconnected aspects. On one hand, it investigates whether the political factors represented by the presence of ethnic minorities can be a catalyst for tourism development in cross-border regions, in addition to the development of transport infrastructure. On the other hand, it offers a comparative analysis and territorial diagnosis of the Bihor-Hajdú–Bihar and Maramureş–Zakarpattya cross border regions, analyzing the main tourist indicators and the advances made in the development of the transport infrastructure with a role in the development of tourism. The paper is based on desk and quantitative research involving national and regional statistic data. Research on the literature regarding Hungarian–Romanian and Romanian–Ukrainian borderland was also realized, in order to conduct comparative analysis useful to identify and evaluate the factors linked with tourism development. Using a multiscale approach, the objective is to determine if there is a correlation between the development of the transport network and the increase in tourist traffic. The results show that transport infrastructure plays a critical role in ensuring the connections of border regions. Although the two regions are contiguous, there is an obvious difference in cross-border traffic due to the presence of two different types of border. The transport network and tourism situation in Bihor has improved in the last years, especially under the impact of cross-border cooperation, but the accessibility remains relatively low. In Maramureş, the development of cross-border connections is based on cultural exchange, and less on economic relations. Transport accessibility is a strong point of the Hungarian–Romanian borderland and represents an obstacle for the development of tourism in the Romanian–Ukrainian borderland.

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Spatial networking is the 'new normality' of local innovation systems, featuring a heterogeneous set of inter-organizational ties and a constant circulation of information, knowledge, practices, and other intangible assets of actors engaged in the regional innovation milieu. Understanding the particularities of territorial communities formed clarify the socio-spatial dynamics and the development trajectory of the region, its competitiveness and innovative potential. The study explores the variety of factors that affect the patterns of these socio-economic interactions, such as the networking objectives, the stakeholders involved, the benefits projected, their spatial embeddedness, as to reduce the equivocality inherent to methodologies of delimitation and subsequent demarcation of spatial-network interactions. The study rests upon analysis of different types of relations formed between heterogeneous actors of regional socio-economic system, both at inter-firm and inter-organizational level. Providing a classification of major factors that determine the features and patterns of spatial networking, the paper proceeds with discussing the differences in their dynamic configurations using three scholarly conceptsindustrial district, business cluster, and global innovation network. The study revealed 20 individual typological characteristics in a group of four determining features of spatial-network interactionsthe stakeholders, the linkages, the network, and the context. The typology elaborated is irrelative to the types of spatial networking analyzed, thus, being equally applicable to the modeling of different configurations of entrepreneurial interactions within the regional milieu. Territorial capital assessment requires a holistic approach in determining the socio-spatial dynamics of the regional milieu. This necessitates defragmentation of local ties into value constellations of the single regional socio-economic and innovation system. The study contributes to the understanding of internal mechanisms of various forms of entrepreneurial networking, providing a set of criteria for integrated evaluation of spatial-network interactions.