An evaluation of the Wellington Regional Genuine Progress Index

There is widespread discontent with the gross domestic product (GDP) as a measure of progress for society. Alternative measures have been proposed, including the genuine progress indicator (GPI). This paper examines the changing institutional arrangements and attitudinal context in the recently developed Wellington region (New Zealand) GPI. We found an alignment between the GPI framework and the Local Government Act. Despite this fit, we identified challenges, including the need to revitalise public participation through deliberative techniques. It remains too early to judge whether the GPI initiative will launch a viable alternative to the GDP for the Wellington region.     

Digging into Google Earth: An analysis of “Crisis in Darfur”

Google publicists have suggested the Crisis in Darfur is an example of the Google Earth software’s “success at tangibly impacting what is happening on the ground.” Yet whether or not Google Earth’s interface, along with a medley of other media representations of the conflict, have impacted events on the ground or led to coherent policies of humanitarian intervention remains open to debate. This article draws upon critical approaches from media studies—namely discourse analysis—to analyze several aspects of the Google Earth/USHMM Crisis in Darfur project. While this project was no doubt developed with the noble intention of generating international awareness about widespread violence that has recently occurred in the Darfur region, it is important to evaluate how representations of global conflicts are changing with uses of new information technologies and whether such representations can actually achieve their desired impacts or effects. The article begins with a discussion of the Crisis in Darfur project’s history, proceeds to analyze some of the press coverage of the project and then moves to a critique of the layer using four categories of analysis: (1) the shifting role of satellite image; (2) the temporality of the interface; (3) the practice of conflict branding; and (4) the practice of “information intervention.” Throughout the article, I explore how the presentation of Darfur-related materials through Google Earth reproduces problematic Western tropes of African tragedy and misses an opportunity to generate public literacy around satellite images. I also consider how humanitarianism is intertwined with digital and disaster capitalism, and suggest that this instance of “information intervention” makes patently clear that high visual capital alone cannot resolve global conflicts.     

Seeing the local in the global: Political ecologies, world-systems, and the question of scale

Scale, as concept, has featured prominently in political ecology and remains, even if implicitly, a crucial point of analytical reference. Recent studies, drawing from both human geography and ecology, have sought to demonstrate how scales, rather than pre-existing ontologically, are both socially and environmentally produced. Given the different scales through which social and environmental processes occur, the study of society-environment relations can be improved by analysing varying scalar configurations of interaction. This recent and promising methodological corrective would greatly benefit from a dialogue with world-systems approaches, which integrate diverse scale-producing processes and to some extent overlap in scope with political ecology. World-systems perspectives, by focusing on the long-term systemic character of people-environment relations, effectively connect micro- to macro-scale social and ecological processes and explain long-term internal dynamics and interrelations of systems at different scales. Conversely, world-systems approaches could learn much from political ecologists’ consideration of nonhuman processes into understandings of scale and society-environment relations, which has a long tradition in geography, as well as from the more context-sensitive analytical framework brought to those understandings. Case studies are discussed to demonstrate not only how these two perspectives could be integrated, but also how explanations of environmental change can be thereby improved. Combining the two approaches provides the basis for a more ecologically oriented world-systems paradigm and, in political ecology, for greater sensitivity to socially large-scale systemic processes and, given the originally anti-capitalist underpinnings of both paradigms, for more political coherence.     

Should political ecology be Marxist? A case for Gramsci’s historical materialism

This paper investigates some aspects of political ecology’s relation to Marxism, specifically its ties to Marxism’s “historical materialism”. I argue Gramsci is an essential feature in the reinvigoration of that relation, and that political ecology should be Marxist, if by Marxist we mean Gramscian. I focus on the concept of hegemony, arguing that Gramsci’s historical materialism, in contrast to the Engelsian tradition within which most materialism is snared, allows us to take account of both moments in Gramsci’s hegemony, the “economic” and the “ethicopolitical”.     

Contested H2O: Science, policy and politics in water resources management in Chile

This paper critically explores the politics that mediate the use of environmental science assessments as the basis of resource management policy. Drawing on recent literature in the political ecology tradition that has emphasised the politicised nature of the production and use of scientific knowledge in environmental management, the paper analyses a hydrological assessment in a small river basin in Chile, undertaken in response to concerns over the possible overexploitation of groundwater resources. The case study illustrates the limitations of an approach based predominantly on hydrogeological modelling to ascertain the effects of increased groundwater abstraction. In particular, it identifies the subjective ways in which the assessment was interpreted and used by the state water resources agency to underpin water allocation decisions in accordance with its own interests, and the role that a desocialised assessment played in reproducing unequal patterns of resource use and configuring uneven waterscapes. Nevertheless, as Chile’s ‘neoliberal’ political-economic framework privileges the role of science and technocracy, producing other forms of environmental knowledge to complement environmental science is likely to be contentious. In conclusion, the paper considers the potential of mobilising the concept of the hydrosocial cycle to further critically engage with environmental science.     

Private sector involvement in urban governance: The case of Business Improvement Districts and Town Centre Management partnerships in England

Although it has many merits, the voluminous literature on urban governance gives scant attention to the actual involvement and positioning of business elites and businesses within Public-Private Partnerships. There is also little consensus among academics as to why the private sector become involved in such schemes. This paper begins to address these issues through a critical empirical examination of how and why the private sector is involved with three English Town Centre Management (TCM) partnerships and the Business Improvement District (BID) subsidiaries all three partnerships have recently developed. In order to do this, the empirical study is guided by a conceptual framework that foregrounds the relationship between (a) the opening up and monitoring of ‘institutional space’ by partnerships and the state, and (b) the motivations and ‘constrained agency’ of the business elites. The paper demonstrates that the positioning of the private sector is more multifarious and fractured than previous studies of urban governance have suggested. It also reveals that business elites and businesses view their participation as an ‘investment’ that needs to accrue significant financial returns and that partnership and state officials are highly selective in their choice of ‘who governs’.     

Consulting as a threat to local democracy? Flexible management consultants,pacified citizens,and political tactics of strategic development in German cities

These days, it is often claimed that democratic procedures are under threat. The detachment of policy decisions from political debates is partly a result of the increasing influence of non-elected organizations and experts. Following a conceptual discussion of the spatiality of democracy, this paper focuses on management consultants as constraint on collective political participation in urban development; namely on McKinsey and Roland Berger. (De-)democratization is assessed alongside processes of inclusion and exclusion of both topics and people from political decisions. Based on a comparison of strategy-making projects in six German cities, the findings reveal three different types of urban policymaking ranging between expert-led and participatory versions. Despite the differences, each of the projects relied on a notion of passive citizens, who primarily need to be “gotten on board” and who lack the power to make decisions. This paper exposes the political tactics involved in an expert-influenced curtailment of democratic procedures.     

Participation in higher education: A geodemographic perspective on the potential for further expansion in student numbers

Higher education in England has expanded rapidly in the last ten years with the result that currently more than 30% of young people go on to university. Expansion is likely to continue following the recommendations of a national committee of inquiry (the Dearing Committee). The participation rate is known to vary substantially among social groups and between geographical areas. In this paper the participation rate is calculated using a new measure, the Young Entrants Index (YEI), and the extent of variation by region, gender and residential neighbourhood type established. The Super Profiles geodemographic system is used to facilitate the latter. This is shown to be a powerful discriminator and to offer great potential as an alternative analytical approach to the conventional social class categories, based on parental occupation, that have formed the basis of most participation studies to date. Received: 20 October 1998/Accepted: 5 May 1999     

村落遗产地社区居民旅游发展态度的影响因素

构建了社区依恋、社区关注、社区参与、旅游影响感知和社区居民旅游发展态度的结构关系模型,并以村落遗产地——福建土楼为例,采用结构方程模型（SEM） 验证社区居民旅游发展态度的影响因素,并引入个人获益作为调节变量,剖析在获益居民和没有获益的居民中,各种旅游感知对旅游发展态度的影响是否存在显著差异。研究结果表明：① 经济获益感知、社会文化获益感知和环境获益感知均对态度具有显著正向影响,而经济成本感知对态度具有显著负向影响;② 社区依恋通过社会文化获益感知和环境获益感知对态度产生间接影响;③ 社区关注通过经济获益感知和环境获益感知间接影响态度,并通过经济成本感知间接影响态度;④ 社区参与通过经济获益感知、社会文化获益感知和环境获益感知对态度产生间接正向影响,并通过经济成本感知对态度产生间接负向影响;⑤ 经济获益感知、社会文化获益感知和环境获益感知对态度的影响对获益居民比没有获益的居民要大,而经济成本感知、社会文化成本感知与环境成本感知对态度的影响对没有获益的居民比获益居民要大。     

国外空间规划研究与实践的新动向及对我国的启示

空间规划是可持续发展必不可少的公共管理工具。20世纪90年代以来,人们认识到空间规划应该具有协调和整合空间发展的功能,而不仅仅是部门性的土地利用管理体系;应该关注地域的可持续发展,而不是一味地追求增长;应该关注不同利益人之间共识的形成,而不是简单地分析一定地域空间开发的适宜性和先后顺序。20世纪90年代以来国外空间规划实践的一些新动向： a) 重新分配空间规划的权利和职能; b)注重全纳性的参与; c) 重视空间规划的协调与整合; d)强化空间规划的环境维度; e)增强空间规划的灵活性。基于此对我国的空间规划实践得到几点启示： a)空间发展的战略框架和行动计划相结合; b)形成适合于我国的规划参与机制; c)在增强规划约束性的基础上增加灵活性; d)强化区域层次的空间规划; e)突出空间规划的公共管理职能。