Regional Inequality in China: A Case Study of Jiangsu Province

The tremendous changes in China's development philosophy and regional economies during the last two decades have carved out selectively new locations of development across the nation. While politicians heatedly debate the acceptable levels of regional inequality, most scholarly studies focus on broad aggregate trends of inequality among provinces and groups of provinces, and pay little attention to identifying and conceptualizing sources and major agents of spatial change. This paper aims at revealing detailed spatial ramifications of the reforms, and at understanding the impacts of the state, local agents, and foreign investors on regional development. To this effect, we conduct a disaggregated and empirical study of Jiangsu, a coastal province experiencing dramatic economic and spatial restructuring. We show that local agents which favor rural industrial enterprises accelerated new growth in selected rural areas, in contrast to slower growth of older cities and state‐owned enterprises, resulting in a net decline of intercounty inequality. But the coalescence of state policy, local agents, and foreign investment has widened the historical gap between northern and southern Jiangsu, and is likely to accelerate intercounty inequality in the future. Our study demonstrates the utility of the “developments from above, below and outside” framework for analyzing key forces of regional growth in socialist transitional economies.     

A Review of “The Middle East Today: Political,Geographical and Cultural Perspectives”

The tremendous changes in China's development philosophy and regional economies during the last two decades have carved out selectively new locations of development across the nation. While politicians heatedly debate the acceptable levels of regional inequality, most scholarly studies focus on broad aggregate trends of inequality among provinces and groups of provinces, and pay little attention to identifying and conceptualizing sources and major agents of spatial change. This paper aims at revealing detailed spatial ramifications of the reforms, and at understanding the impacts of the state, local agents, and foreign investors on regional development. To this effect, we conduct a disaggregated and empirical study of Jiangsu, a coastal province experiencing dramatic economic and spatial restructuring. We show that local agents which favor rural industrial enterprises accelerated new growth in selected rural areas, in contrast to slower growth of older cities and state-owned enterprises, resulting in a net decline of intercounty inequality. But the coalescence of state policy, local agents, and foreign investment has widened the historical gap between northern and southern Jiangsu, and is likely to accelerate intercounty inequality in the future. Our study demonstrates the utility of the “developments from above, below and outside” framework for analyzing key forces of regional growth in socialist transitional economies.     

The Geography and Area Studies Interface from the Second World War to the Cold War

Disciplinary geography's history represents an important source for contemporary debates over the status of geographical knowledge across the social sciences. This article argues for a reorientation of geography's history by examining its interface with the development of area studies in the United States. It investigates the epistemological and institutional transformations that occurred in the decades before and after the Second World War as the regional concept transmuted into area studies. The article finds that although geography's regional concept shaped the spatial constructions of area studies, the latter's imaginative geographies fixed the regional concept along geopolitical visions of the nation‐state and Cold War regional blocs that continue to occlude social scientific attempts to redraw the borders of the world.     

Scalar politics and strategic consolidation: The Norwegian Gas Forum's quest for embedding Norwegian gas resources in domestic space

Underthun, A., Kasa, S. & Reitan, M. 2011. Scalar politics and strategic consolidation: The Norwegian Gas Forum's quest for embedding Norwegian gas resources in domestic space. Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift–Norwegian Journal of Geography Vol. 65, 226–237. ISSN 0029-1951.

The article discusses political initiatives and networks that aim to enhance the use of Norwegian natural gas resources in domestic space. Through perspectives on state rescaling and scalar politics, the authors explore the strategies of the Norwegian Gas Forum (NGF). This political network serves as an umbrella organization for regional political initiatives for local distribution and exploitation of natural gas along the Norwegian coast. It is argued that the initiatives demonstrate a scalar politics that counter tendencies of state rescaling in the realm of petroleum politics, where the state is less willing to invest and intervene in domestic natural gas utilization. The article examines the NGF's policy work, organizational composition, and ‘networks of association’ with other organizations. This is framed in the analysis as ‘scalar politics’ aiming to secure the member regions’ current and future dependence on domestic gas supplies. The important networks of association in relation to the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions (LO) and the Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise (NHO) implied compromise and consolidation among the regional members of NGF, but also empowered NGF on important policy issues.     

基于投影寻踪模型的河南县域交通与经济协调性评价

通过建构县域交通优势度与经济发展水平综合评价指标体系,运用投影寻踪模型对2003 年和2008 年河南省各县域单元的交通优势度和经济发展水平进行综合评价与比较。进而采用耦合协调度模型对河南县域交通优势度与区域经济发展水平的耦合协调性进行评价、比较与分类。研究表明,2003-2008 年期间河南省各县市交通优势度与经济发展水平均获得了较大幅度的提升,但区域分异现象还较为突出。县域交通优势度由2003 年的沿主要交通干线带状分布向团块状连片分布态势演进,中原城市群地区县市交通优势度高于外围地区,平原地区县市交通优势度高于山区县市;而县域经济综合发展水平西部普遍高于东部,山区资源县市高于平原农业县市。交通优势度与县域经济耦合作用强度普遍较高,并呈明显的增强态势,但多数地区交通与经济的协调发展度还有待提升,大多数县市交通发展水平超前于经济发展水平。因此,如何在既有的交通优势条件下推进河南县域经济的快速发展,是实现河南交通与经济协调发展的关键问题。     

Constructing Alterity in Ile De France?

Abstract

The aim of the article is to determine whether the Walt Disney Company has manufactured a landscape “other” to French culture around its parks in the Eastern Paris Basin. Val d'Europe is contentiously constructed by three main groups, not just one enterprise: the French state, the Walt Disney Company and local and regional governments, as well as by present and future residents, within the constraints of a contract based on French laws. The Company's investment has been a tremendous boost to the French state's project but did not lead to Disneyfication of the Briard landscape of agricultural lands in the Eastern Paris basin. In Val d'Europe the French state did not abdicate its authority in favor of commoditization of Paris as a global metropolis. The French state and French culture were never “weak” and overwhelmed.     

Resource Peripheries and Neoliberalism: the Pilbara and the remaking of industrial relations in Australia

How mining companies overcome the problems faced by the fixity of resources and how they might come to exercise influence in societies which appear to be mostly post-industrial are complex questions of political geography. This is not least the case for a region such as the Pilbara—an iron ore site isolated from metropolitan centres—in Australia—a country isolated from many global centres and markets. At the same time, local struggles in this resources site have been profoundly influential in the making of a national neoliberal industrial relations agenda. Building on other scholarship on the Pilbara, but here re-emphasising the local scale and the details of work and regulation, provides a way to assess the place's wider importance. The Pilbara is a site of thoroughly transformed industrial relations, from a union space when export mining began in the 1960s to an employer stronghold today. Policy makers delivered changes to facilitate the remaking of employer power in workplaces in and beyond mining. This resource periphery has therefore been central to the remaking of national policy regimes.     

国外典型矿业城市空间可持续发展的借鉴与启示

矿业城市空间结构受自然资源和产业发展的影响明显,是基于自然资源与产业转型的空间可持续发展的典型研究对象之一。文章选取国外四个典型矿业城市美国休斯敦、德国鲁尔区、法国洛林和美国匹兹堡,对其转型战略与空间发展战略进行对比分析,并提出对我国矿业城市的借鉴与启示：制定城市与区域统筹发展政策;制定促进矿业城市转型的产业调整政策;规范矿业城市转型的环境保护政策;城市空间结构为城市的转型和持续发展提供基础支撑,创建企业创业园或产业基地作为转型的空间载体,重点关注对外交通联系的构筑以提升区位条件,以物质景观改变实现文化转型,负责处理和解决衰老矿区遗留下来的土地污染闲置场地的重新有效利用问题,将国土整治规划与城市转型结合起来。     

广东省区域经济差异的方向及影响机制

区域差异已成为中国经济高速增长背后的一大隐忧,如何实现区域经济协调发展是中国经济社会发展的核心议题,也是近年来国内外研究的热点命题。基于“最优尺度-总体趋势-差异方向-机制因素”的框架,综合运用传统总体差异指数、尺度方差及其分解、特定方向差异指数（PDI 指数）和多水平回归分析对1978-2011 年广东省区域经济差异进行了综合测度和分析。研究表明：① 尺度方差及其构成大小依次排列为县级、地级和区级,即尺度越小,尺度方差越大,对区域经济差异的贡献份额也越大。② 自改革开放以来,广东区域经济总体差异呈增大趋势,并出现波动性变化。③ 广东区域经济空间差异的主要方向是珠三角核心区与边缘地区之间,核心区与边缘区的差距扩大,省内沿海地区与内陆地区的差异微弱上升,市区与外围区的差异缩小。④ 全球化、简政放权、投资水平和市场化是导致区域经济差异的最重要的四个机制因素;全球化和投资是促进区域经济差异加剧的重要直接驱动力,简政放权则间接促进了区域经济差异的变大,而市场化能够潜在地促进区域平衡发展,缓和区域经济差异。     

Regions and sustainable development: regional planning matters

This paper looks at how the term 'sustainable development' has been used in the process of regional plan making over the past decade. It emphasizes the differing geographies of these debates within England, in terms of how sustainable development has been used to justify different types of approach in different parts of the country. Both drawing on and challenging recent work on state theory, the paper argues the need to see regional planning as a part of a multi-scalar governance system, whose importance should not be underestimated.     

On Geographic and geography

New Zealand Geographic is one of a number of geographical magazines published in the English‐speaking world that make little or no reference to work by academic geographers. It recently launched a New Zealand Geographic Trust to promote research into ‘New Zealand's life, culture and sciences’ and collaborated with four other publishers of geographical magazines to raise awareness of climate change: the work of academic geographers is again ignored. This exclusion of academic and school geography from such enterprises raises important issues regarding the discipline's public profile in New Zealand and suggests the need for greater public engagement activity by the country's geographers.     

Economic‐Development Stakeholder Perspectives on Boomtown Dynamics in the Eagle Ford Shale,Texas

Unconventional oil and gas production in the United States reversed a decades‐old trend of rising oil imports, provided an argument for lifting the U.S. crude oil export ban and motivated the development of domestic natural gas export facilities. But the most visible impact of unconventional‐hydrocarbon extraction is the creation of boomtowns in rural regions. Despite widespread media coverage, scholarly analysis of boomtowns is restricted to regional econometric studies with little attention to how economic stakeholders understand and respond to booming economies. Here we analyze interviews with key economic stakeholders in the Eagle Ford Shale in Texas. Respondents consider their community's economic success relative to the price of oil and indicate concerns about the deterioration of roads, high housing demand, and skyrocketing wages. We also re‐examine John Gilmore's foundational work on boomtowns in the 1970s in the context of contemporary unconventional extraction.     

国家区域政策对央企空间布局的影响

建国伊始, 国家区域政策就深刻影响着央企的空间布局。通过对改革开放以来我国区 域政策对央企空间布局的影响机制、特征与过程分析, 结果表明:央企空间布局是“经济人” 与“政治人”两种行为特征相互博弈的结果, 受国家区域政策直接、间接和累积循环三种模 式影响, 总体布局呈不平衡的板块集聚特征, 央企总部布局具有极高的首都指向性。国家区 域政策的转变历程与央企布局的演变过程相吻合, 均经历了均衡-不均衡-均衡的演变过程。 经济区内的政策强度与央企布局个数呈较强的正相关关系, 政策强度与央企扩张具有相似的 年际变化规律, 但存在时滞和周期性。在不同的区域政策时期, 央企布局的空间变动和区域 政策的调整具有相应的一致性, 各阶段主要的作用机制不同, 且趋于三种模式的相互混合 影响。     

Restoring degraded landscapes in lowland Namaqualand: Lessons from the mining experience and from regional ecological dynamics

Three-quarters of a century ago diamond mining was added to livestock grazing and cereal cropping as a serious cause of landscape degradation in the north-western semi-arid region of South Africa, Namaqualand. Since that time the activities of diamond mine operators and prospectors have eclipsed all other land uses as a cause of degradation in this region. Discontinuous patches along virtually all of the 400 km of the Namaqualand coastline have been, or are currently, being mined or prospected. Prior to 1992 little was done to restore the landscapes and ecosystems to their pre-mining state, but since then legislation has placed a clear responsibility for restoration on mining operators. Implementation of ecological restoration was initially slow, but has recently gained momentum, in line with a growing awareness of environmental responsibilities amongst the global mining industry. In general, autogenic recovery of the perennial vegetation does not take place. The low annual rainfall and prevailing strong windy conditions present the greatest climatic challenges to the restoration of the flora. While the unique vegetation, and its features (e.g. poor representation of perennial species in the seedbank) present challenges to understanding the interventions that are critical in achieving ecological restoration. At the same time, climatic conditions such as the strong seasonality and low variability of rainfall, together with floristic features such as the high incidence of succulence, and the extraordinary drought tolerance of many seedlings, present opportunities for restoration. Perhaps the greatest challenges to restoration derive from the unsuitability of much of the mined overburden soils for plant growth. The nature and importance of climatic conditions, mined soils, topsoils, soil nutrients, landscaping, seedbanks, seeding, transplantation, and the interactions between these and other factors are evaluated in the context of this semi-arid environment and the prevailing mining practices.     

Energy Policy in Australia: A comparison of environmental considerations in New South Wales and Victoria

World-wide, people and governments are gradually becoming more aware of the potential environmental, economic and health effects of climate change and the need for governments to take action to mitigate such impacts. This was emphasised by the creation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), signed at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. There has been much discussion on the greenhouse policy response of the commonwealth government of Australia, especially its stance taken at Kyoto in December 1997. Despite the recent nationalisation of Australia's state energy markets, due to Australia's federal political structure, much of the policy responsibility for energy and environmental issues rests with the states. Given these circumstances it is surprising that there has been relatively little academic focus on the energy policies of the states. This paper attempts to partially fill the policy analysis 'gap' by investigating the present environmental aspects of the energy policies of NSW and Victoria, implemented since the signing of the UNFCCC in 1992. NSW and Victoria are Australia's most populous states and are responsible for the bulk of the nation's greenhouse gas emissions with two very distinct policies.     

改革开放以来中国区域规划实践与理论回顾与展望

改革开放以来,随着工业化、市场化、经济全球化的不断深入,我国区域规划实践与理论不断发展。系统总结并提出了发展的3个时期:1 1978年至1990年代初实践起步与理论引入期,是注重效率的区域不均衡发展阶段,国土规划和城镇体系规划得到共同发展,区域规划理论开始引入、发展及应用;2 1990年代初至21世纪初实践增长与理论探索期,是注重效率兼顾公平的缩小区域差距发展阶段,区域规划工作受到重视并积极开展,区域理论研究进一步探索和发展;3 21世纪初以来实践深化与理论转向期,是注重公平的区域协调发展阶段,区域规划频繁出台并快速发展,区域规划理论多元化发展。在分析中国区域发展的新环境的基础上,提出了区域规划在实践总结与理论创新、体系构建、实施机制创新、新问题跟踪等需要进一步研究的方向。     

自然资源与城市的区位——兼论大河发展轴的经济机理

基于新经济地理学的研究方法,构建模型研究了偏在性自然资源对非资源型制造业区位选择行为和城市区位特征的影响机理。研究发现,当资源型制造业的规模较小、自然资源的位置较为偏僻、资源型制造业产品的运输成本较小时,城市—工矿区模式将成为区域空间结构的均衡状态;当资源型制造业的规模较大、自然资源的位置靠近区域的中心、资源型制造业产品的运输成本较高时,资源型城市是均衡状态。研究还表明,自然资源对城市区位的影响受控于偶然因素和路径依赖效应。接着基于研究成果完善了陆大道先生提出的大河发展轴的区位条件和经济机理的解释。最后进行了总结并对区域开发实践提出了建议。     

URBAN‐SYSTEM EVOLUTION ON THE FRONTIER OF THE ECUADORIAN AMAZON

ABSTRACT. Like the North American frontier, Ecuador's Amazonian margin has advanced in periodic waves. But the impetus has been extremely varied, interlacing periods of socioeconomic crisis with times of prosperity. Recent events in eastern Ecuador confirm that urbanization is a fundamental component of frontier development in South America. The urbanization process is not a sign, however, of regional economic strength. Capital gains at the periphery are transferred to the nation's core region. Even the larger boom towns display little functional specialization; they are, instead, precariously dependent on employment in the public‐service sector. Nonetheless, urban centers in the Ecuadorian Amazon continue to grow and to drain surrounding rural areas of younger and more educated individuals.     

West Virginia's Lost Youth: Appalachian Stereotypes and Residential Preferences

Abstract

This study uses a cognitive mapping survey to examine the effect of Appalachian stereotypes on West Virginia high school students' residential preferences. The research addresses the popularly held hypothesis that West Virginia is suffering out-migration of its young people in part because of negative regional imagery. Survey results provide some support for this position. Appalachian stereotypes are a leading explanation given by survey respondents for their residential disinclinations toward their home state. This research indicates the influence of regional stereotypes on residential intentions and the usefulness of cognitive mapping in exploring geographic stereotyping.     

Luxury Tourism and Regional Economic Development in Mexico

This article argues that little attention has been paid to the territorial and socioeconomic impact of consumer–service globalization on Third World countries. It specifically examines the economic role of tourism in Mexico and its limited effect on the country's regional development. Despite governmental support in order to enhance economic growth, currency receipts, and employment, tourism contributes less than 5 percent to the gross domestic product, and the majority of tourism–related jobs are precarious and low–skilled. The promotion of luxury resorts in coastal areas has led to highly concentrated and fast–growing enclaves of mainly foreign investment. However, this strategy has failed to stimulate productive links between tourist centers and their hinterlands and has led to large–scale urbanization characterized by a considerable lack of basic services for the resident population.