Devolution, the governance of regional development and the Trade Union Congress in the North East region of England

The devolution and regionalisation of political and administrative structures following the election of New Labour in 1997 have changed the nature of the state and territorial development and governance in the UK. A regional and sub-national tier has opened up within the existing multi-layered governance system operating at the supra-national, national and local scales. This ‘new institutional space’ is increasingly open to the participation of social institutions--including trade unions--in economic and social governance. Drawing upon empirical analysis of the experience of the Northern Trade Union Congress (NTUC) in the North East region of England, the paper argues that the NTUC--in contrast to its national organisation--is beginning to engage with the emergent institutional structures but its role is inhibited by the centralised strategy and structure of the TUC nationally, its own need for upgrading, capacity building and greater financial resources and the interaction between the North East’s particular legacy of tripartite corporatism and the more pluralist modes of regional development governance emerging in the English regions. Unless such issues are addressed regional trade union centres--such as the NTUC--risk remaining relatively junior partners in the emergent regional governance structures.     

Divergent growth trajectories in China’s chemical industry: the case of the newly developed industrial parks in Shanghai,Nanjing and Ningbo

In the late 1990’s, the “new-economy” industries in China proved to be relatively vulnerable and were strongly hit by the financial crisis in Asia. As a result, a new economic support policy was introduced in China’s Yangtze Delta region, which put greater emphasis on the support of traditional industrial sectors, including the chemical industry. This paper investigates the effects of the growth of this industry, as well as the potential and current problems emerging from new growth paths. It compares the growth of three newly developed chemical industry parks in Shanghai, Nanjing and Ningbo. The paper is based on an institutional perspective of clustering processes arguing that regional industrialization is subject to formal and informal institutions which shape the growth paths and contribute to divergent regional trajectories. Although these industrial parks all benefit from the general economic upswing in China, their development is influenced by different business models, economic contexts, goals and strategies, leaving room for divergence and specialization. Due to the existing structure of operations, these parks have a great deal of potential but also face substantial challenges, such as the establishment of internal networks and close customer linkages. It is argued that this might limit their innovative capability in the future. Furthermore, their growth prospects differ depending on future government policies.     

The role of economic sectoral structure as a policy mechanism towards more resilient peripheral regions: the case of South Africa

The role of economic sectoral structure in regional growth and development is widely acknowledged. However, there has been scarce reflection on its role as a policy instrument, particularly for peripheral regions. In reaction, this paper investigates the role of economic sectoral structure as a policy instrument towards more resilient peripheral regions. Through a multiple country policy analysis, the paper determines to what degree economic sectoral structure is reflected in regional development policies of 18 countries with predominantly rural characteristics and lagging regions. Moreover, the role of economic sectoral structure towards more resilient regions is quantified and measured for a specific peripheral region case in South Africa as developing country exhibiting poor economic resilience. The paper highlights related variety as a key ingredient for a region to reach a state of dynamic stability between adaptation and adaptability towards enhanced long-term resilience capacity of the peripheral region. The research concludes that policy focus should support the maintenance of the sectors and industries of comparative advantage on the regional scale, but strongly focus on sectoral comparative advantage within the national scale (if present) to establish a more robust region. This will establish and strengthen the identified peripheral growth centres as centres of national competitiveness and specialisation. Primary policy actions as emanated from the literature and the multiple country policy analysis will promote more efficient sectoral composition as key towards more resilient peripheral regions. It is acknowledged that these policy actions must be informed by a detailed regional economic analysis for different peripheral regions to determine inherent and latent economic potential and link with interdependent industries. This paper will highlight that regional policy should become more explicit by exploiting the role of economic and natural resources as growth engines for the peripheral regional economy in a more effective way through a multi-centred territorial structure.

     

研究微量元素区域分散与富集规律的新方法

本文从实际资料出发初步探讨了多年来一些区域化探工作者使用传统的浓度克拉克值来估计不同地质单元不同元素的富集与贫化规律的问题。提出了以元素的区域背景平均值代替地壳克拉克值计算区域浓集系数的新方法,研究微量元素的区域空间分布规律,取得了较好的效果。     

Local economic development: Theory, evidence, and implications for policy in Brazil

Local economic development policies have surged in Brazil over the past decade—a major shift in this regionally diverse country of 27 states, over 5000 municipalities, and the largest economy in Latin America. We review the stylized facts, expected patterns and policy recommendations from the foundational studies in regional and urban economics. We then provide a summary of a more recent stream of scholarship focused on local economic development (LED) studies in developed and developing countries that have surged in the last 20 years. Based on this review, we then systemize the findings emerging from studies focused on analyzing local economic development policies in Brazil recognizing the distinctive contributions emerging from both the empirical and the case studies literatures. We identify key lessons for (and from) the Brazilian experience and conclude that Brazil and Latin American countries need a new generation of studies that undertake more rigorous evaluations of these policy experiments. Finally, we recommend steps to advance such research.     

Regional policy in Spain

This paper shows how regional policy in Spain has been doubly transformed in the past decade, on the one hand by the economic crisis which has affected the content of regional disparities, and on the other hand by the return to constitutional democracy which has substituted for the centralism of the Franco dictatorship a radical devolution of government to the regions. Many of the uncertainties which have surrounded this process derive from fears that in the Spanish context, where regionalism is strongest in the wealthier regions, devolution will increase disparities and not reduce them. The paper discusses the basis for such fears.     

In the name of Development: Power,profit and the datafication of the global South

We examine the current ‘datafication’ process underway in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), and the power shifts it is creating in the field of international development. The use of new communications and database technologies in LMICs is generating ‘big data’ (for example from the use of mobile phones, mobile-based financial services and the internet) which is collected and processed by corporations. When shared, these data are also becoming a potentially valuable resource for development research and policy. With these new sources of data, new power structures are emerging within the field of development. We identify two trends in particular, illustrating them with examples: first, the empowerment of public–private partnerships around datafication in LMICs and the consequently growing agency of corporations as development actors. Second, the way commercially generated big data is becoming the foundation for country-level ‘data doubles’, i.e. digital representations of social phenomena and/or territories that are created in parallel with, and sometimes in lieu of, national data and statistics. We explore the resulting shift from legibility (Scott, 1998) to visibility, and the implications of seeing development interventions as a byproduct of larger-scale processes of informational capitalism.     

Regional development and regional planning in the countries of the Third World

Acceleration of socio-economic progress and the achievement of self-reliant economy by the developing countries are closely linked with transformation of sectoral and spatial structure of colonial type economy, which is characterized by nonintegration, extreme inequalities in resources and land utilization, and regional disparities in the levels of socio-economic development. The State plays the leading role in this process through elaboration and realization of long-term regional policy and regional planning, the necessity of which is admitted in the majority of the developing countries. Their scientific substantiation is connected with investigation of objective process of formation of the spatial structure of the new type economy. The latter is formed in the process of interaction of the major regionalization systems: natural-resources, demography-ethnic, socio-economic (systems of special sector-wise and integral-complex regions are embedded in these systems). The systems of socio-economic regionalization are the most dynamic and manageable. But the modern stage of the development of the Third World countries is characterized by the essential changes of other regionalization systems as well. Evaluation of disproportional correlations in their interaction and elaboration of measures to reduce them constistute one of the most important objects of modern geography. Specialization of economic regions in the productions, which have favourable regional combinations of resources results in acceleration of economic growth because of the benefits of spatial division of labour. At the same time regional specialization and increase of inter-regional linkages strengthens the integration on all-national scale, which is of vital importance for the developing countries. The acute, not only economic but also socio-political problem of rapid backward areas advancement can and must be solved not separately (although such attempts have been undertaken often enough) but as a part of the general strategy of regional development. Scientific substantiation of the effective regional planning in the developing countries is an object of interdisciplinary research, where geographers are called to play the leading role.     

Voluntarism,defensive localism and spaces of resistance to health care restructuring

This paper examines the evolving role of volunteers and the voluntary sector in shaping community responses to structural change in health care systems. It contributes to the emerging understanding of the different forms voluntarism can take within and among places, including as a space of resistance to contemporary restructuring initiatives such as regionalization. Within the geographies of voluntarism literature, however, little attention has been directed towards interrogating the local dynamics of such voluntarism, especially as it is reflected in public discourse. We address this deficiency through a media-based case study of public reaction to the recent implementation of Ontario’s Local Health Integration Networks (a type of regional health authority). Specifically, we examine a decade of newspaper coverage in a mid-size Canadian city region to document and characterize how the activities of volunteers and voluntary sector organizations in the community are portrayed in light of the structural imperatives to integrate health care services and regionalize health care governance. The media findings reveal a suite of public concerns and related activities, with the voluntary sector called upon in various ways to defend the autonomy of the community against the perceived threats to local services, employment and vulnerable populations. We interpret the evident complexity of voluntary sector resistance as a form of ‘defensive localism’ and discuss implications for developing informed policy on health care restructuring and for advancing knowledge on the local geographies of voluntarism.     

‘Competing Regionalisation’ Through Territory and Cluster Networks: Experiences from Post-Socialist Eastern Germany

‘New regionalism’ has become a buzzword in current debates on regions and regional governance. Much of this discussion revolves around the ‘right’ scale and structure of regional governance, implying changes to the ways in which the conventional main variables institutions, hierarchy and territoriality interact to circumscribe ‘regions’. The main difference between ‘old’ and ‘new’ regionalism is the degree of variability and responsiveness to locational strategies by businesses, i.e. essentially relative regional competitiveness, and thus by implication the question of territoriality and boundedness. Evidence ‘on the ground’ among policy makers, however, suggests that the changes may go further than theoretical arguments with their emphasis on territory and scale (Brenner, 2000, 2003) are suggesting. Much of the difference revolves around the distinction between technocratic, planning focused and firmly institutionalised understandings of territorially fixed regions within a government structure on the one hand, and more purpose driven, flexible, and inherently temporary and variable arrangements outside fixed government structures, whose territoriality is composed of the varying spatial background of the participating actors. Here, regional territoriality is an incidental rather than determining factor.The cleavage between ‘old’ and ‘new’ regionalism has become particularly obvious in post-socialist eastern Germany, where staid forms of traditional institutionalism and territorial governance had been transferred from ‘west’ to ‘east’. Increasingly, these arrangements appeared inadequate to respond to the vast and spatially widely varying challenges of post-socialist restructuring. The result has been a tentative emergence of new forms of regionalisation in between, and in addition to, the established ‘old regionalist’ approaches. Evidence from eastern Germany suggests that ‘new’ is not necessarily replacing ‘old’ regionalism’ in the wake of a shift in paradigm, but rather that the two coexist, with new forms of regionalisation sitting within established conventional territorial-administrative arrangements. This points to the emergence of a dual track approach to regionalisation, sometimes covering the same territory, more often relating to variably sized areas that overlap. Both forms of regionalisation aim at an internal and external audience, using varying images and employing different sets of actors when dealing with the two main sources/directions of consumption: internal (local) and external (corporate, competitive). By their very nature, however, these processes are varied and differ between places, rooted in particular local-regional constellations of policy-making pressures, actor personalities and established ways of doing things. This paper examines such processes for two regions in eastern Germany, both with distinctly different economic traditions and geographical contexts, aiming to illustrate the multi-layered process of regionalisation and region making. Inevitably, within the scope of this paper, the study cannot cover all possible models and regionalisation approaches across eastern Germany, because they not only differ between places, but also over time.     

Circulating climate services: Commercializing science for climate change adaptation in Pacific Islands

In order to address the impacts of climate change, global multilateral institutions, development organizations, and national and regional science organizations are creating climate services – packages of useful climate information intended to help decision makers. This diffuse collection of actors and institutions suggest that producing climate services will help bridge gaps between climate scientists and decision-makers and will therefore help vulnerable countries and people manage the risks and optimize the impacts of climate change. This article examines this global science-policy ecosystem using the case of climate services produced by Australian science agencies for consumption in adaptation programming in the Pacific Island countries of Kiribati and Solomon Islands. Linking research on geographies of marketization and the neoliberalization of science, I demonstrate that within the climate service movement a focus on usefulness is paired with an emphasis on commercialization. As a result, this case shows the inherent tensions in the climate service model: first, a focus on competition and circulating service products at the expense of collaborative relationships; second, difficulties in negotiating uncertainty; and third contradictions between ‘objective’ and ‘entrepreneurial’ science. In each of these instances, the commercialized mechanisms through which climate services are governed, and the political economic circumstances within which they are produced, magnify rather than ameliorate gaps between science and policy.     

Regional policy in Switzerland: an analysis of its effectiveness and an outline of a strategic reorientation

First, regional policy in Switzerland is examined theoretically. This is followed by a short review of those partial effects of this policy which, according to current empirical findings, can be regarded as proved. Finally, with the failings of present policy in mind, the basis for a strategically new concept is drawn up. Swiss regional policy is unlike that of other countries, in that it is not influenced by any one particular theory of regional economics. On the contrary, there is a combination of widely varying forms, especially a mixture of theoretical elements based on both neoclassicism and polarization. Viewed as a whole, this concept can be considered well-balanced, despite the criticisms brought forward here. A radical departure from the present concept appears neither necessary nor sensible, although the individual points of criticism show that to be really effective, present policy requires a few additions or shifts of emphasis. Thus regional policy should increasingly build on the region's existing potential, aiming for the broadest possible development and mobilization of local resources. This should enhance regional self-reliance, simultaneously, in economic, social-cultural, and political terms. In addition, appropriate measures should be taken to improve the innovative strength of peripheral regions. Finally, an essential aspect of strategic reorientation is increased attention to the problems of settlement structure in peripheral parts of the country. In this respect the promotion of small and medium-sized development centres deserves special attention.     

Networking,context and firm-level innovation: Cooperation through the regional filter in Norway

The paper assesses the role for innovation of one aspect which has been generally overlooked by evolutionary economic geography: context. It analyses how context shapes the impact of collaboration on firm-level innovation for 1604 firms located in the five largest city regions of Norway. Specifically, the analysis shows how the benefits to firms of collaborating within regional, national, and international innovation networks are affected by the knowledge endowments of the region within which the firm is located. Using a logit regression analysis, we find, first, that only national and international networking have a significant positive impact on the likelihood of innovation (the former only for process innovation), whereas the regional knowledge endowments have no direct effect. Second, regional cooperation is particularly effective in regions with high investments in R&D, whereas international cooperation is important in regions with an educated workforce – and regional and national collaboration may be ineffective in such cases. We conclude that, in the case of Norway, context is essential in determining the capacity of firms to set up networks and innovate. Regions with an educated workforce can use the resulting absorptive capacity to successfully assimilate knowledge being diffused through global pipelines from faraway places. However, this absorptive capacity is likely to be heavily filtered if regional firms mainly rely on internal connections within Norway.     

Regional policy in Great Britain

Recent policy initiatives for the inner cities and regions of Britain were reviewed in the context of the continued and deepening processes of metropolitan decentralisation of population and economic activity and of regional divergence in levels of economic well-being. The result is a policy focus on those areas considered as being on the margins of economic viability. Research evaluating past policy indicates only modest potential for the success of such a focus. Policies having a growth stimulation objective may be better centred outside these most marginal areas. Policies having a welfare objective may achieve greater efficiency if they have no particular spatial dimension.     

Problems of planning for urbanization and development in South Africa: the case of Natal's coastal margins

The growth of urban settlements along the Natal coast serves as a case study with which to evaluate the South African government's emerging concept of ‘planned urbanization’. Changing emphases in South African urban and regional policy are situated within the context of the contemporary legitimacy crisis of the South African state. Data on the experience of urbanization on the Natal coast, and particularly black perceptions of this experience, are presented. Recent government proposals dealing with urbanization—particularly the newly legislated Regional Services Councils—are assessed against this background.     

A comparative analysis of multi-scalar regional inequality in China

This paper investigates regional inequality across regions, provinces, prefectures, and counties in China from 1997 to 2010 using a comparative and multiscalar framework. Regional inequality is sensitive to geographic scales and regional heterogeneity. The year 2004 was a turning point for trends in inequality, when a new spatial regime started to emerge at the county-level in China. County-level inequality demonstrates a consistent upward trend despite a slight dip in 2005, which is different from a broad inverted U-shape trend at other geographic scales. Furthermore, intensifying inequalities are demonstrated between prefectures than within prefectures, within provinces than between provinces, and between regions than within regions. The underdeveloped Western region of China contributes the most to regional inequalities across counties and prefectures. Based on the heterogeneous characteristics of regional inequality, it is suggested that effective regional policies should adopt a geographic focus to reduce inequalities. Finally, a Markov chain technique is applied to predict the long-run properties of regional development in China. The results show that it is difficult for counties, prefectures and provinces to leapfrog from being less developed to well developed. This paper concludes that regional inequality in China in the long-run does not follow the neoclassical convergence hypothesis.     

The emergence of a post-industrial music economy? Music and ICT synergies in Stockholm, Sweden

Research into the music industry has for a long time been almost exclusively dominated by a focus on the production of albums and songs. In recent years, however, cities such as Stockholm have seen the growth of a profitable and varied music services industry producing everything from remixes to music marketing strategies. Standing at the forefront of this growth industry are a large number of firms attempting to combine in innovative ways music and ICT. This can take a variety of forms, for instance: selling and distributing music over the internet; web design and computerised advertising services tailored to music products; software design focused on multimedia products and virtual instruments; high-tech post-production and mixing services; and virtual centres and communities of music industry actors. The article will examine these activities within the city in attempt to measure the direction and cohesiveness of the emerging sector. The article concludes by arguing that these type of new industrial synergies tell us much about the way industrial innovations are formed in an interindustry and inter-cluster environment, and the future competitiveness and shape of the music industry. In particular, the article argues that evidence from Stockholm points to the emergence of a post-industrial musical economy.     

试论我国重要景观区中景观·表生因素对金·铜区域地球化学异常标志的影响

总结从我国东北到西南的5个重要景观区中13个金、铜异常区的表生地球化学异常特征，通过特征对比得出金、铜元素在上述地区表生介质中分布、分配及异常发育特征的基本规律，并根据这些初步规律提出景观、表生因素对哪些区域异常标志有影响及影响到什么程度的初步认识。     

Regional variations in electricity demand elasticities: The situation in the Central United States

Within the sizable literature on electricity demand relatively little attention is given to regional variations in electricity demand elasticities. This paper investigates 39 electric utility companies having a total of 93 separate operating regions in order to assess the nature of regional electricity demand elasticity variations. Residential, commercial, and industrial demand functions are estimated for each operating region using a flow adjustment model of demand. The resulting electricity price, measure of economic activity, and natural gas price elasticities vary regionally, but not in a systematic manner. The demand elasticities found in each sector range from highly inelastic to highly elastic with the pattern of elasticity variations exhibiting few spatial trends or relationships. Comparisons between operating region results and more aggregated statewide results indicate that statewide and national analysis of electricity demand masks much regional detail — a result which has important implications for energy policy making.     

A thick lens of fresh groundwater in the southern Lihue Basin,Kauai, Hawaii,USA

A thick lens of fresh groundwater exists in a large region of low permeability in the southern Lihue Basin, Kauai, Hawaii, USA. The conventional conceptual model for groundwater occurrence in Hawaii and other shield-volcano islands does not account for such a thick freshwater lens. In the conventional conceptual model, the lava-flow accumulations of which most shield volcanoes are built form large regions of relatively high permeability and thin freshwater lenses. In the southern Lihue Basin, basin-filling lavas and sediments form a large region of low regional hydraulic conductivity, which, in the moist climate of the basin, is saturated nearly to the land surface and water tables are hundreds of meters above sea level within a few kilometers from the coast. Such high water levels in shield-volcano islands were previously thought to exist only under perched or dike-impounded conditions, but in the southern Lihue Basin, high water levels exist in an apparently dike-free, fully saturated aquifer. A new conceptual model of groundwater occurrence in shield-volcano islands is needed to explain conditions in the southern Lihue Basin. Electronic Publication