Showing papers in "Environment and Planning A in 2006"

The new mobilities paradigm.

Abstract: It seems that a new paradigm is being formed within the social sciences, the ‘new mobilities’ paradigm. Some recent contributions to forming and stabilising this new paradigm include work from anthropology, cultural studies, geography, migration studies, science and technology studies, tourism and transport studies, and sociology. In this paper we draw out some characteristics, properties, and implications of this emergent paradigm, especially documenting some novel mobile theories and methods. We reflect on how far this paradigm has developed and thereby to extend and develop the ‘mobility turn’ within the social sciences.

Urban Development and the Politics of a Creative Class: Evidence from a Study of Artists:

Abstract: In this paper I critique the notion of ‘the creative class' and the fuzzy causal logic about its relationship to urban growth. I argue that in the creative class, occupations that exhibit distinctive spatial and political proclivities are bunched together, purely on the basis of educational attainment, and with little demonstrable relationship to creativity. I use a case study of artists, one element of the purported creative class, to probe this phenomenon, demonstrating that the formation, location, urban impact, and politics of this occupation are much more complex and distinctive than has been suggested previously. The spatial distribution of artists is a function of semiautonomous personal migration decisions, local nurturing of artists in dedicated spaces and organizations, and the locus of artist-employing firms. Artists have very high rates of self-employment, boosting regional growth by providing import-substituting consumption activities for residents and through direct export of their work. The...

Measuring Multiple Deprivation at the Small-Area Level

Abstract: Indices to measure deprivation at a small-area level have been used in the United Kingdom to target regeneration policy for over thirty years. The development of the Indices of Deprivation 2000 for England and comparable indices for Northern Ireland, Wales, and Scotland, involved a fundamental reappraisal and reconceptualisation of small-area level multiple deprivation and its measurement. Multiple deprivation is articulated as an accumulation of discrete dimensions or ‘domains’ of deprivation. This paper presents the key principles that were taken into consideration when constructing these four indices and the more recent English Indices of Deprivation 2004, and provides an account of the statistical techniques that were used to operationalise them.

Grounded Visualization: Integrating the Analysis of Qualitative and Quantitative Data through Grounded Theory and Visualization

Abstract: Our purpose in this paper is to conceptualize and demonstrate an integrated analytical method for using both qualitative and quantitative data through geographic information systems (GIS) and ethnography. We acknowledge that the use of both types of data has been possible in GIS for some time, particularly for representation purposes. However, a recursive integration of different forms of data at the analysis level has been less explored and minimally theorized. Drawing on recent work in critical GIS and feminist perspectives, we suggest that visualization offers a strong technique for this effort but we approach it from the analytical base of grounded theory. Thus, we present an example of how grounded theory and visualization might be used together to construct an integrated analysis strategy that is both iterative and reflexive, both contextual and conceptual. We use Knigge's work on community gardens in Buffalo, New York, to provide a substantive example of the proposed methods.

Migration and the Transnational Habitus: Evidence from Canada and the Philippines

Abstract: The experiences and decisions of migrants frequently confound scholarly expectations. In particular, the transnational linkages maintained by migrants transcend the social scales at which they are often assumed to live, and the spaces in which their integration or assimilation is usually studied—the neighbourhood, the urban labour market, the national society. Studies of transnationalism have shown that immigrants maintain multistranded connections to their places of origin and that these continue to influence the lifeworlds both of migrants and of those they leave behind significantly. In this paper we suggest that these multistranded connections—incorporating social, cultural, and economic ties—can be usefully considered using Pierre Bourdieu's notion of the habitus as a heuristic framework for integrating the various dimensions of transmigrants' lives. Drawing on interviews in Canada and the Philippines, we demonstrate the ways in which economic, social, and cultural capital are accumulated, exchanged,...

Whither Global Production Networks in Economic Geography? Past, Present, and Future

Abstract: We would like to thank Jamie Peck and Ros Whitehead for their efficient handling of the review process of this special issue. We are grateful to all the paper presenters and participants in the three paper sessions on “Global Production Networks” at the Philadelphia centennial meeting of the Association of American Geographers in March 2004 for their important contributions to the development of global production networks as a research paradigm in economic geography. We would also like to thank the authors who have subsequently developed their papers specifically for this special issue and waited patiently for the issue to be published. And finally, our sincere thanks to Neil Coe and Peter Dicken for their critical and constructive comments on a first draft of this essay. However, we are solely responsible for the content in this editorial.

Urban Sustainability: Learning from Best Practice?

Abstract: In the quest for sustainable development, numerous examples of ‘best practice’ have been created and circulated in national and international arenas. Yet despite the vast array of examples, demonstration projects, case studies, and the like, little is known about the ways in which best practices are produced and used, and their role in processes of policymaking. Focusing on best practice for urban sustainability, the author argues that, rather than conceptualising its role and impact in terms of policy transfer or lesson drawing, the creation, dissemination, and use of best practice can be better understood as a discursive process, in which not only is new knowledge created about a policy problem, but the nature and interpretation of the policy problem itself are challenged and reframed. Drawing on insights from concepts of governmentality, the author argues that best practices are at once a political rationality and a governmental technology through which the policy problem of urban sustainability is fra...

From Neoliberalism to Neoliberalisation: Consolations, Confusions, and Necessary Illusions

Abstract: Of late, I have been conducting a review of empirical research that analyses the relationships between neoliberalism and the nonhuman world.When published, the review will, I hope, be a useful way-station in advancing our understanding of these relationships. In a short space of time there has been a proliferation of research into the `nature of neoliberalism and the neoliberalisation of nature' (McCarthy and Prudham, 2004). Until recently neoliberalism had been the topical preserve of critically minded urban, economic, and development geographers. Now, though, a cohort of environmental geographersoalso critically mindedohave turned their attention to how the nonhuman world affects and is affected by neoliberal programmes. For instance, the journals Capitalism, Nature, Socialism and Geoforum have both devoted whole issues to the topic in the last twelve months. Much of the research I am surveying is Marxist or neo-Marxist in its explanatory and evaluative approach. Although theoretically informed, it is also insistently empirical: it attempts to trace the environmental logics and effects of neoliberalism contextually. My aim has been to parse it so that we can see the proverbial woodsoin diagnostic and normative termsofor the empirical trees. In the absence of a systematic review of the empirical literature I suspect that we will remain unclear what gains are being made in terms of concepts, evidence, or critique.

Shifts in Strategic Spatial Planning? Some Evidence from Europe and Australia:

Abstract: Clear-cut definitions of strategic spatial planning are rather exceptional. Therefore in this paper I use building blocks from literature (planning and business) and my experience in practice to construct a workable normative definition of the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of strategic spatial planning. Five main characteristics (selective, relational annex inclusive, integrative, visioning, and action orientated) that constitute the hard core of the ‘strategic’ in the normative view are confronted, in a first broad scan, with nine so-called strategic plans from different planning traditions in Europe (Italy, France, Spain, the Czech Republic, Belgium, and the Netherlands) and in Australia (Perth). The confrontation highlights some hesitant shifts towards the normative view but also makes it clear that there is still a long way to go.

Theorizing with gis: a tool for critical geographies?

Abstract: In this paper I explore the potential of using geographical information systems (GIS) in qualitative research by disentangling the seemingly rigid association of the field of geographic information science with quantitative geography. I examine the opposition between quantitative and qualitative methods as an extension of different epistemologies and not as indicative of their innate incompatibility, and reposition GIS within these methods seen as a continuum. I show that the always-assumed alignment of GIS with quantitative research has never been complete and the many openings in GIS enable qualitative research. I also discuss how critical geographers can engage with and transform GIS as well as enhance their explanations and social theory in general by representing spatially complex social processes and relationships.

Creativity, Connections and Innovation: A Study of Linkages in the Montréal Region

Abstract: The importance of creativity as a driving force in regional economic growth and prosperity has been previously documented; however, the mechanisms of this relationship are less well understood. Earlier research suggests, but does not demonstrate, that high levels of density and creative-class employment create conditions under which innovations generated by the interactions between indi- viduals are more likely to occur. The authors examine the specific interactions among the creative, technical, business, and design communities of the Montreal region. It is demonstrated that such connections are possible and can have a positive impact on the innovative and total business activity across the region. A set of mechanisms through which creativity helps to achieve regional growth and prosperity benefits is demonstrated through specific examples.

Rethinking the Port

Abstract: Structural change in container port operation and ownership over the past decade has seen the emergence of port-operating transnational corporations (TNCs). The emergence of the port-operating TNC requires a fundamental epistemological shift in reconceptualising the port, from a single, fixed, spatial entity to a network of terminals operating under a corporate logic. This shift is twofold. First, because under port reforms corporate entry occurs overwhelmingly at the terminal level, the terminal rather than the port becomes the relevant spatial unit of analysis. Second, although spatial theories of the firm represent a longstanding stream in economic geography, such theories have yet to find general application in port studies. Consequently, in addressing the interface between transport and economic geographies, the authors suggest a geography of the port-operating TNC as a potential bridge. A decade of privatization in the port sector has rendered the industry an appropriate empirical ground for enquiry...

Expert Conceptualisations of the Role of Lay Knowledge in Environmental Decisionmaking: challenges for Deliberative Democracy:

Abstract: The authors draw upon survey evidence of expert conceptualisations of the value of public knowledge in environmental decisionmaking. In the context of local air quality management in particular, they consider how experts understand the potential benefits of technological citizenship, and what status they accord to lay knowledge relative to their own roles. Evidence suggests a continuing expert-deficit model of lay knowledge, with suspicions that the public misunderstand environmental issues. Although the need for public ‘buy-in’ to the solutions to problems such as air pollution is supported, this does not translate to a more proactive engagement of lay knowledge in the assessment of such issues. Experts seem to be personally challenged by such notions. The authors discuss the need for a cultural shift in expert understanding of the value of lay knowledge, supported by a move away from an oversimplification of the need for, and value of, public participation.

Transnational Corporations and ‘Obligated Embeddedness’: Foreign Direct Investment in China's Automobile Industry:

Abstract: With the aid of an empirical case study of the automobile industry in China, we explore how, under certain political-economic conditions, the investments of transnational corporations (TNCs) can be shaped to meet the state's objectives. We develop the concept of 'obligated embeddedness' to capture the dynamics of this process. We show that foreign direct investment in the automobile industry in China is a type of market-led and embedded investment which is characterised by joint ventures and the follow-up network configurations. However, to achieve such obligated embeddedness on the part of TNCs-and for the state and its citizens to gain its benefits-the state not only has to have the theoretical capacity to control access to assets located within its territory, but also the power actually to determine such access.

Pioneering Mobilities: New Patterns of Movement and Motility in a Mobile World

Abstract: The paper presents empirical data from a research project on mobility pioneers. It shows new mobility patterns and constellations of mobility and immobility, movement and motility (mobility potential). The author raises the question as to whether the reported subject-oriented strategies for coping with the modern ‘mobility imperative’ open up a perspective on a structural change in the modern concept of mobility and mobility practice. The theory of reflexive modernization is used to discuss this question and to help to understand the relevance of the empirical findings. In concluding, the paper focuses on further mobility research and introduces a distinction between ‘transit spaces’ and ‘connectivity spaces’ as relevant issues for research on new configurations of spatial, social, and virtual mobility.

The Future of the Apparel and Textile Industries: Prospects and Choices for Public and Private Actors

Abstract: The expectation that Chinese apparel and textile exports will swamp the US and EU retail markets now that international quotas on those products have been eliminated has fueled much of the discussion of the future of these industries. Although imports from China have surged since the elimination of quotas on 1 January 2005, this conventional wisdom masks important choices that remain for public and private policies over time. In particular, two factors will continue to have major effects on the location of apparel and textile production going forward. First, public-policy choices will continue to influence sourcing location; in particular, as they relate to tariffs and regional trade polices as well as to policies affecting the linkages between countries. Second, the lean-retailing model that now prevails requires apparel suppliers to replenish basic and fashion basic products on a weekly basis. As that retailing model became dominant in the 1990s, so too did the advantage of sourcing these apparel items closer to the US market so that products could be manufactured and delivered more rapidly from a smaller finished-goods inventory. Even though costs remain a driving factor, we show that proximity advantages for certain classes of products will continue in a postquota world as retailers raise the bar ever higher on the responsiveness and flexibility required of their suppliers.

Remaking Urban Environments: The Political Ecology of Air Pollution in Delhi:

Abstract: In the growing field of urban political ecology, so far not much attention has been paid to air-quality and related policies. In this paper I examine the recent far-reaching air-pollution policies in India's capital, as well as the role of environmental nongovernmental organizations and judicial activism, in view of their implications for different groups of the urban population. I analyze these policies in the wider context of Delhi's ongoing strive for ‘city beautification’ and for changing (environmental) governmentalities, and reveal a marked middle-class bias in the environmental and judicial activisms practised, which also contributes to the refining of the boundary between public and private environments. Furthermore, it is argued that air quality with its complex sociospatial patterns plays a significant part in the coproduction of urban ‘socioenvironments' that needs to be addressed in political-ecological studies.

Bees, butterflies, and bacteria: biotechnology and the politics of nonhuman friendship

Abstract: The author seeks to decentre some already familiar geographies of biotechnology. By asking, with respect to genetically modified (GM) crops, not ‘what is the new?’, but ‘where is the new?’, the intention is to redirect attention (at least briefly) away from the GM technique or genetically modified object and its supposed properties, to the world to which that technique or object is being added. This in turn allows the question concerning GM to be approached from new directions, for example, via the routes taken into the controversy by three specific organisms. Not fully taken into account in the calculations of the biotechnology industry, the honey bee, the Monarch butterfly, and the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis have all, in very different ways, made their presence felt as they literally and metaphorically encountered GM. In an attempt to do justice to these marginalised lifeforms, the forms of life of which they are part, and the biopolitical questions which they raise, the works of Jacques Derrida o...

“We Turks are No Germans”: Assimilation Discourses and the Dialectical Construction of Identities in Germany

Abstract: In this paper I examine the ways in which politicians, media, and native residents formulate assimilation discourses—that is, expectations for immigrants to adapt to prevailing norms and cultures—and the effects that such discourses have on social relations in immigrant-receiving societies. Archival and ethnographic research in Germany illustrates that assimilation discourses are central in the dialectical process of identity construction in which native-born Germans and immigrants from Turkey construct their respective ‘other’, and thereby themselves. I pay particular attention to the effects of assimilation discourses in negotiations over belonging and culture at multiple scales in Germany—from the national to the neighborhood level. Space figures prominently in these negotiations, as the spaces that immigrants occupy and create often become the focus of debates about difference, otherness, and the unassimilability of migrants in Germany.

Mobility, Housing Stress and Neighborhood Contexts: Evidence from Los Angeles

Abstract: In this paper we examine, in two separate analyses, actual and planned residential moves. Although we now have robust models and substantive empirical analysis of residential mobility, especially of the role of housing consumption and the variables that trigger residential moves, we are less clear about how the model applies to minority households and in diverse ethnic settings. We use data from the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Study—a longitudinal study of mobility and neighborhood change in the Los Angeles region—to contrast the mobility outcomes for white and Latino households. In a separate analysis we examine planned mobility and extend the analysis of the role of neighborhood variables in explaining expected mobility. Through the incorporation of measures of neighborhood satisfaction and dissatisfaction we find, as hypothesized, that low levels of satisfaction and whether or not the neighborhood is perceived as ‘close-knit’ are modest predictors of the likelihood of future moves. However, the...

Spatiality, Built Form, and Creative Industry Development in the Inner City

Abstract: Theoretical treatments of new industry formation within the inner city emphasise the significance of agglomeration economies, social relations, institutional factors, and representational (semiotic) features of the landscape. The author contributes to a larger understanding of generative processes of industrial innovation in the urban core by demonstrating through theoretical synthesis and case studies, the critical roles played by ‘material’ (or physical) space and form. First, Soja's idea of the ‘industry-shaping power of spatiality’ in the new economic spaces of the post-Fordist metropolis is interpreted as the boundedness of inner-city space, the intimacy of urban landscapes, and the integrity of urban form. Second, the cogency of Helbrecht's injunction regarding the complementarity of abstractive and ‘concrete’ dimensions of urban space in knowledge-based industry clusters is demonstrated by case-study references situated in London, Vancouver, and Singapore. Third, the author draws on Markus's incisi...

Success or Failure: Selectivity and Reasons of Return Migration in Sichuan and Anhui, China:

Abstract: In this paper we examine urban–rural return migration in China. We argue that the traditional success–failure dichotomy approach used for analyzing return migration is inadequate and that it must b...

Making connections: global production networks, standards and embeddedness in the mobile telecommunications industry

Abstract: The authors investigate the contemporary restructuring of the mobile-telecommunications industry with the use of a global production networks (GPNs) perspective. After a brief conceptual discussion of GPN, standard setting and embeddedness, their analysis proceeds in four further stages. First, they consider how technological change has driven the development of complex mobile telecommunications GPNs in a sector previously characterised by relatively linear and simple value chains. Second, they show how processes of deregulation and privatisation over the past two decades have enabled the internationalisation of mobile telecommunications provision. Third, they explore the delicate power balance between embedded state and corporate actors in telecommunications GPNs through a consideration of the changing bases of standard setting in the industry. Despite ongoing processes of globalisation, the continuing importance of national policies and strategies is clear. Fourth, they demonstrate the continuing import...

Green Urban Political Ecologies: Toward a Better Understanding of Inner-City Environmental Change:

Abstract: This research uses a Marxist urban political ecology framework to link processes of urban environmental metabolization explicitly to the consumption fund of the built environment. Instead of reinventing the wheel, I argue in this paper that Marxist notions of metabolism are ideal for investigating urban environmental change and the production of uneven urban environments. In so doing, I argue that despite the embeddedness of Harvey's circuits of capital within urban political economy, these connected notions still have a great deal to offer regarding better understanding relations between consumption and metabolization of urban environments. From this theoretical perspective, I investigate urban socionatural metabolization as a function of the broader socioeconomic processes related to urban restructuring within the USA between 1962 and 1993 in the Indianapolis inner-city urban forest. The research examines the relations between changes in household income and changes in urban forest canopy cover. The res...

It's not Just a Question of Taste: Gentrification, the Neighbourhood, and Cultural Capital

Abstract: In this paper I explore elements of the relationship between deployments of cultural capital and neighbourhood change. Based on research in a gentrified neighbourhood of Bristol, England, I argue t...

Prospects for Qualitative GIS at the Intersection of Youth Development and Participatory Urban Planning

Abstract: In this paper I report on a participatory planning project undertaken in a community engaged in a ten-year revitalization effort. Working with several youth-serving organizations, a community planning project was conducted in which local youth collected qualitative data about their neighborhood through a variety of techniques (photography, drawings, narratives). The project took place against the backdrop of an emerging neighborhood indicators geographical information system (GIS) aimed at tracking the impact of the revitalization effort. Although techniques for collecting and using qualitative data have matured during several decades of use in the field of participatory planning and development, their effective incorporation into GIS remains elusive. Although few technical barriers remain, the absence of stakeholder participation and the lack of community capacity to implement a community-based GIS are important obstacles to a fully realized qualitative GIS. Drawing on the youth-development literature, I...

Transnationalism and Migrants' Imaginings of Citizenship

Abstract: Recent academic debates on transnationalism, immigration, and citizenship have largely ignored migrants' perspectives on citizenship. On the basis of ethnographic research in Germany and the United States between 1998 and 2001, we examine the values and meanings contemporary migrants assign to national citizenship and their citizenship practices. We argue that dominant discourses of liberal democratic citizenship and migrants' situated subject positions condition and mediate in complex ways their imaginings and practices of citizenship. We discuss how and why migrants' perspectives conform in significant ways across these two countries, while also varying among migrants. National citizenship remains meaningful in their struggle for mobility across borders, for equal protection under the law, and for equal access to social and political rights. However, migrants are also aware of the discrepancy between promises of equity and fairness associated with liberal democratic citizenship and the reality in which ...

Aeromobility and Work

Abstract: In this paper, the hypothesis is that there is a connection between international aeromobility, knowledge organisations, and environmental impacts. The object is therefore to examine the driving forces, mechanisms, and patterns of meaning behind the increase in international long-distance work mobility. The author will draw on a case study which involves two Danish examples of ‘knowledge organisations’. He argues that it is necessary to rethink central concepts of travel, tourism, and working life, in order to understand and describe this kind of international mobility in these organisations. The boundary between work and tourism is not distinct and there is a very complex connection between travel, work, tourism, and play. He shows that actually, there is a strong ‘material’ impact from supposedly ‘immaterial’ organisations and this ‘materiality’ is particularly linked to the extension of forms of mobility. This has implications for understanding the possibilities of replacing physical work mobility with...

Complexity Theory in the Study of Space and Place

Abstract: Researchers across disciplines apply complexity theory to issues ranging from economic development to earthquake prediction. The breadth of applications speaks to the promise of complexity theory, but there remain a number of challenges to be met, particularly those related to its ontological and epistemological dimensions. We identify a number of key issues by asking three questions. Does complexity theory operate at too general a level to enhance understanding? What are the ontological and epistemological implications of complexity? What are the challenges in modeling complexity? In answering these questions, we argue that, although complexity offers much to the study of place and space, research in these areas has a number of strengths that enhance complexity research.

The Urban Creative-Food Economy: Producing Food for the Urban Elite or Social Inclusion Opportunity?

Abstract: The food industry has always been a major generator of economic activity in the Greater Toronto Area. However, recently the innovative and creative elements of the industry have changed. Since the mid-1990s, the fastest growing segment within the industry has been small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The specialty, ethnic, and organic SMEs (hereinafter referred to as the ‘creative-food’ industry) appear to be particularly innovative as they respond to consumer demand for local, fresh, ethnic, and fusion cuisine. On the basis of sixty-five interviews with food producers, processors, restaurateurs, food media, non-government organizations, government, and private sector agencies, it is suggested that this creative-food sector is thriving despite existing public policies that bias toward large-scale, industrialized agri-food firms in the region. As such, a disconnect currently exists between, on the one hand, the traditional agrifood paradigm that the government regulatory environment is promoting and,...