Local music policies within a global music industry: cultural quarters in Manchester and Sheffield

This paper will explore the relationship between the local and the global in the music industry through the lens of place-based cultural policies.The first part of the paper will outline current debates around the complex interaction of the local and the global in culture in general and the popular music industry in particular. Alongside the continuous expansion of globalisation has been a reassertion of ‘place', of ‘locality'. Whilst this has been investigated to some extent at the level of local music scenes it has never been fully addressed in terms of music industry policy as part of an economic development strategy. Yet it is here that the particular values of ‘place' are asserted in the face of some ‘global' music industry with a view to developing (or at least retaining some of the benefits of) a local music industry.Whilst situating itself within these debates about the relationship of local and global musical production and consumption, the paper explores the different strategies of two northern English cities and their attempts to promote culture, and music, within each cities ‘cultural quarter': Sheffield's Cultural Industries Quarter and Manchester's Northern Quarter. The paper analyses the role and appropriateness of local authority policy intervention, the importance of ‘soft' networks within local music scenes and the different ways in which authorities in each example have tried to overcome dichotomies of art and industry, cultural and economy.     

Cultural industries, information technology and the regeneration of post-industrial urban landscapes. Poblenou in Barcelona - a virtual city?

In a former industrial part of Barcelona, as in the de-industrialising neighbourhoods of many big cities, the ‘new’ economy and the ‘cultural’ economy have started to replace the ‘old’ economy, bringing new life into a declining district but also causing conflicts of land use, housing or the preservation of architectural heritage. The latter is an important part of regeneration and marketing policies of city governments, whereby the ‘new’ economy not only emerges from the old but the physical space of the old industrial quarter becomes the tool and setting in which the city can re-present itself and its success story of transformation and regeneration. Through the increasing use of information and communication technologies, which are at the same time driving this transformation - an industry as such as well as business-aid in various sectors, cultural industries in particular - the city has acquired a second, virtual presence. The city exists and ‘lives’ on numerous websites. Those by city government and city organisations often have the express purpose of marketing and presenting the city, while those by (cultural) businesses and other organisations in the district add to the mosaic of the virtual city. As a result, the old industrial space continues to live and be productive, its economic value having changed largely into a cultural value. This coexistence of the real and the virtual, old and new, also meets with a conflict at certain junctures. There is the positive representation of plans and events on the city's websites on the one hand, and the undercurrent of protest and disenchantment among the local population who find themselves marginalised from the profits and success of development, on the other. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Variegated global expansion: Internationalization strategies in the temporary staffing industry

This article seeks to contribute to our understanding of the internationalization processes of business service sectors through an analysis of the 20 leading TNCs in the temporary staffing industry. While these TNCs broadly conform to a loosely coordinated decentralized or multinational organisational model, there is significant firm-to-firm, spatial and temporal variability in the internationalization strategies that they employ, deriving from both the breadth of the industry - i.e. the range of different staffing activities that it encompasses - and the inherently territorially-embedded nature of staffing industry activity. These complexities are exemplified through consideration, in turn, of the scope of staffing TNCs, their foreign direct investment strategies, levels of central coordination, and degrees of standardization. The analysis demonstrates that, due to the need to respond to markets, temporary staffing TNCs exhibit highly spatially and temporally variable internationalization strategies and there are considerable barriers to both the centralization of control and the standardization of business practices.     

Living and working in urban working class communities

Much has been written on the apparent urban renaissance in UK cities and the new lifestyle arrangements, working time patterns, economic activities and the more general reordering of work and life that appears to accompany it. Certainly, recent decades have witnessed a range of economic, social and cultural changes in the lives of those living and working in cities and surrounding suburbs. Much of the attention in this work has focused on those groups for whom the changes have appeared most profound: the high-income earners returning to live in the city - the gentrifiers - or those who suffer multiple deprivations as a result of economic restructuring. Seemingly absent from many accounts of urban change are those places where, at first glance, the effects of change have been less pronounced: low-income, working class neighbourhoods where most people continue to get by, albeit in the context of a harsher, and less secure political economic context. In light of this apparent silence, this paper draws on interviews from Wythenshawe in South Manchester, to examine how low-income mothers cope, live and labour, in a rapidly changing city, as they perform paid work at the same time as ensuring the social reproduction of the household.     

Strategies and tactics for local market making in the Temporary Staffing Industry

This paper examines the increasing complexity of interactions between temporary staffing agencies and their client firms within the local labour market of Birmingham, UK. Temporary Staffing Agencies have been identified as active and influential agents in local, national and international labour markets. Their influence on local labour market functioning, national labour regulation and international regulatory frameworks is growing. Existing literature demonstrates the power of large multinational temporary staffing agencies in both established and emerging temporary staffing markets. Such analyses also contend that multinational agencies operate in very different ways to smaller independent ‘back-street’ temporary staffing agencies, with different types of clients and at different ends of the market. However, the research conducted in Birmingham, UK suggests that the reality is more complex. It is argued that there can be more subtle and intricate nuances of relevance to the temporary staffing industry in respect of the relationships that exist between large and small temporary staffing agencies, as well as between such agencies and their clients. We highlight how smaller agencies in Birmingham are utilising a variety of strategies and tactics to creatively ‘bolt-on’ to more formalised national agreements established by multinational agencies with their clients. Moreover, smaller agencies – in some instances – are able to exploit their knowledge of local labour markets to subvert, sabotage and/or infiltrate the activities of multinational agencies in increasingly astute ways. In turn, this generates a series of questions for understanding the nature of ‘market making’ associated with the temporary staffing industry more broadly.     

Beer-Sheva,capital of the Negev desert —Function and internal structure

The rapid growth and development in modern times of Beer-Sheva, the city of the Patriarchs, and its transformation into a major centre of growth in the southern desert part of Israel has intrigued experts who deal with urban growth and development. In this paper we examine the major factors that have contributed to the city's place and function in Israel's urban system, its economic base and ecological structure — all with reference to the city's historical background.     

Transformation of residential planning in Umtata during the post-apartheid transition era

The political changes in South Africa after 1994 necessitated that the Bantustans, the main servers of apartheid planning, be re-incorporated into the mainstream of South Africa, implying the transformation of apartheid residential planning. Since then there has been much speculation about the type of transformation that would be implemented in the Bantustans to effect change in a non-racial South Africa. The aim of this paper is to analyze the effects of post-apartheid territorial restructuring in the former South African Bantustans. Examining and elucidating the manner in which the diverse social, economic and political factors have manifested themselves in the process of transformation of spatial residential planning in Umtata (the former capital city of the Transkei Bantustan) since 1994 is the central theme of this paper. Using property registers together with changes in legislative policies and land ownership, the transformation pattern was analysed in the former Bantustan capital city (Umtata). The findings indicate that the new South African policies and development strategies have been partially successful in eliminating the incongruencies of the past with regard to access to housing in Umtata. More critical is that this paper suggests that there still remains a greater challenge lingering from the influence of the Bantustan government in the city.     

Global,regional and local: new firm formation and spatial restructuring in China’s apparel industry

The rise of China as the ‘world factory’ has been attributed to the export-oriented industrialization largely driven by some fundamental transformations unfolding in China’s economic, political and cultural arenas, since the Reform and Opening-Up policies. As production costs and competitive pressures both rise, the flexible business environment that export-led production used to embed in has undergone dramatic restructuring and this has further pushed forward new rounds of spatial restructuring and industrial relocation, especially in China’s highly export-oriented apparel industry. Using a large firm-level dataset on new firm formation, we show the articulation of global, regional and local factors are shaping the new firm formation pattern and industrial relocation in interactional and collective ways. The econometric estimations also indicate the ways in which and the extents to which these factors affect firm location choice are highly determined by firm-specific capability.     

Some problems in planning the office economy in a third world city: the example of Tunis

While the office economy has been studied extensively in the advanced industrial nation, it has been overlooked in the context of the developing country. Based on a case-study of Tunis it is shown how the growth of office activities in the central area has exacerbated the planning problems of the city's core. Planning policies designed to control the rate of office growth in the central area and encourage its suburban decentralization have been introduced. However, achievements to date on either of these two aims have been limited, reflecting political, administrative and fiscal problems which limit the effectiveness of planning in the city as a whole.     

镇江市矿产资源开发利用发展战略探讨

介绍了镇江市的矿产资源特征和条件,结合全市经济未来的发展目标,提出了相应的矿业发展战略和对策。     

The political geography of Australian Federal-State relations

It is difficult, if not impossible, to completely separate political from economic relationships in any political system at any scale; this is no less true for Australia than it is for other countries. Changes in Australian Federal-State political relationships must be viewed in the context of changes in the overall system of international trade, the increasing economic power of the Pacific States and the economic restructuring of the Australian economy. However, explanations of political relationships cannot merely focus on the economic issues; the legal, historical and geographical contexts are also relevant. This paper explores Federal-State relations within the overall framework of a centre-periphery model within which jurisdictional conflicts revolve around Federal Government attempts to maintain power at the centre at the expense of the periphery. It takes the viewpoint that any meaningful discussion of political relationships must encompass aspects of human conflict which take place in particular political-geographical and legal contexts.     

Integrating sustainable development and economic restructuring: a role for regulation theory?

Despite the growing importance of environmental issues within international and national economic policies, little attention has been paid to these issues in work on economic restructuring. However, the increasing adoption of the concept of sustainable development as a means to resolve conflict between the economy and the environment has major implications for the form and direction of economic restructuring. In this paper it is therefore argued that the growing adoption of sustainable development as a central guiding principle for economic development necessitates the incorporation of environmental issues into work on economic restructuring. The limited amount of existing work linking the environment with economic restructuring is criticized and it is suggested that there is considerable potential to use regulation theory to combine debates on economic restructuring and sustainable development.     

Local state restructuring and urban transformation in post-apartheid Cape Town

This paper analyzes processes of state restructuring at the scale of the local state and the city, exploring the social and political relationships generated through processes of reconstruction specifically in Elsies River, a formerly segregated `coloured' neighborhood in Cape Town. While the relationship between Elsies River residents and the local state has been characterized by an obsessive focus on housing debt, I examine the ways in which antagonism over housing problems overlie a broader relational disjuncture between neighborhood and state political and social networks. The specificity of this case provides a lens onto the ways in which processes of state restructuring both contest and reinforce racial, economic, and place-based inequalities in South African cities. The paper concludes by using the complexities of local state-neighborhood relationships in the South African case to reflect on geographical theories of state-society relations on a conceptual level. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Winners, losers and curate's eggs: Urban and regional outcomes of Australian economic restructuring 1971–1991

Since the early 1970s the Australian economy has undergone major transformations common to other western industrialised countries. Jobs in manufacturing declined precipitately whilst the service economy grew, most significantly in producer services but also in lower skilled jobs. Tourism and services exports began to rival traditional agricultural and mining staples. Social outcomes, also typical of international trends, included rising unemployment and polarisation of incomes. Australia's changing global context, especially the nation's increasing orientation towards Asian growth economies, have underpinned restructuring. A political climate of economic rationalism has facilitated and accentuated restructuring. The economic shifts of the past quarter century have meant that everywhere the basis for economic growth has changed. Overlaying and reinforcing the re-definition of competitive advantage has been a shift in the pattern of agglomeration economies and diseconomies. New growth regions have emerged, others have had their prospects reinforced, and still others have had their outlook diminished in absolute or, more commonly, relative terms. The paper traces the regional outcomes of national economic restructuring and shifts in the balance of agglomeration economies and diseconomies over the period from 1971 to 1991. The focus is on the top end of the urban hierarchy, on specialised industrial cities where job loss from manufacturing has hit hard, amenity regions where international and domestic tourism have been major factors in growth, and non-metropolitan balances where growth has been uneven but generally low. Demographic, economic sectoral and welfare indicators are woven into a tableau of change expressed at national, intra-state and intrametropolitan scales.     

淄博市淄川区地质灾害防治及建议

淄川区位于淄博市中部,属于经济发达区,除采矿业、陶瓷业的繁荣外,其他工业、交通及公共设施建设也在迅速发展,随着经济发展,地质灾害的危险因素也日益增加,滑坡、崩塌、采空塌陷随时可能发生。该文根据多年地质灾害防治工作情况,综合分析淄川区地质灾害现状和特点,对地质灾害防治提出建议。     

Changes in the internal spatial structure of post-communist Prague*

The article overviews the most important changes in the internal urban structure of Prague since 1989. Post-communist urban development has been influenced by government-directed reforms of political and economic system, internationalisation and globalisation, public policies favouring unregulated market development, economic restructuring in terms of deindustrialisation and growth of producer services, and increasing social differentiation. The three most transparent processes of urban change in Prague have been (1) commercialisation of the historical core; (2) revitalisation of some inner city neighbourhoods; and (3) residential and commercial suburbanisation in the outer city. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

桂林生态建设实践及建设生态城市的思考

阐述了根据当地的经济特点和城市性质的定位，在积极开展生态基础工程建设、生态产业建设和开展城区生态环境改造以及人居环境建设方面取得的良好生态效益。提出在今后的生态城市建设中必须依据当地的自然条件，制定生态经济发展模式。     

The development and structure of the Croatian economy

The first part of the article deals with the general and historical conditions of the development of the Croatian economy, with an emphasis on industry as the dominant branch. The relatively favorable developmental possibilities of Croatia are stressed, with the combination of the agrarian Pannonian region, the forested stock-farming highland regions and the tourism-transit front of the Adriatic. The basic data on periods of historical development are mentioned, with an explanation of the five developmental stages.The second half of the article deals with a thorough analysis of the basic processes of the restructuring of the Croatian economy. Emphasis is placed on the decreased significance of agrarian and agricultural production (in 1961 Croatia had an agricultural population of 43.7%, while in 1991 it was only 9.6%), and the domination of industry, which in 1987 accounted for 35.1 percent of the employed population and 50.3 percent of the gross national product. The processes of restructuring and transition from a socialist to a market economy, as well as the wartime crisis, caused a fall in the value of industrial products to 43 percent in the years from 1990 to 1994. The branch and spatial restructuring of the economy and industry, privatization processes and the problem of increased unemployment are also analyzed.     

Excavating Lefebvre: The right to the city and its urban politics of the inhabitant

Much current activism and scholarship has raised concern that the various processes of neoliberal restructuring are threatening democracy. More specifically, researchers in geography and other social sciences have stressed that political and economic restructuring in cities is negatively affecting the enfranchisement of urban residents. Much recent research and writing has explored progressive responses to this perceived disenfranchisement in cities. One popular trend has been a fascination with the idea of the `right to the city' as a way to respond to neoliberal urbanism and better empower urban dwellers. I argue that the right to the city holds promise, but that in the literature the idea remains both theoretically and politically underdeveloped. It remains unclear (1) what the right to the city entails or (2) how it might address current problems of disenfranchisement. This paper examines the right to the city in greater depth. It does so by offering a close reading and analysis of the intellectual roots of the idea: the writings of Henri Lefebvre. I suggest that Lefebvre's right to the city is more radical, more problematic, and more indeterminate than the current literature makes it seem. The paper concludes by suggesting that the right to the city does offer distinct potential for resisting current threats to urban enfranchisement. However, the right to the city is not a panacea. It must be seen not as a completed solution to current problems, but as an opening to a new urban politics, what I call an urban politics of the inhabitant.     

Economic restructuring, housing policy and Maori housing in Northland, New Zealand

Since 1984 the New Zealand economy has experienced a significant phase of economic restructuring which has had a differential impact on various sectors, regions and social groups within the economy. This paper examines the extent to which economic change has affected the marginalized status of Maori households in the predominantly rural region of Northland. The social implications of economic restructuring are assessed by focusing on the housing circumstances of this indigenous people. Using a newly developed Maori housing database, we argue that relatively progressive housing policies, developed in the 1980s, have failed to address the housing problems of Maori and that the recent reliance on ‘market’ mechanisms to meet housing needs is likely to exacerbate problems of housing access and cost.