Making market rationality: material semiotics and the case of congestion pricing in New York City

What were politicians, planners, and activists able to make of market concepts and market devices as they crafted congestion pricing plans in the context of New York City’s regional governance structure, its transportation infrastructure, and its physical geography? The answer challenges typical assumptions about the use of market mechanisms in restructuring urban space. Market mechanisms and market rationality created a platform for political debate about citywide mobility and its costs. From 2003 to 2014, through five formal plans, advocates and detractors opened up a political space for debating the interests of actors, from drivers, to pedestrians, to the local and global environment to citywide mobility. Market rationality was a provisional assemblage into which actors sought to embed values like sustainability and fairness. These values became more important in each new plan as advocates sought to address the political vulnerabilities of the one that had come before. The changes from plan to plan show challenges, liabilities, and possibilities for using market tools to address ecological and justice issues.     

Credit stacking in nutrient trading markets for the Baltic Sea

Heavy loads of the nutrients nitrogen and phosphorus cause severe damage in many waters in the world. Nutrient trading markets where capped firms can buy and sell nutrient load credits have been established in several countries in order to achieve certain nutrient reduction targets at minimum costs for society. The availability of multifunctional nutrient abatement measures that simultaneously reduce loads of both nutrients, such as wetland construction, raises the issue of credit stacking, i.e. whether a firm constructing the wetland should earn credits for both nutrients. This article examines theoretically and empirically the implications of establishing alternative nutrient trading market designs (markets with and without credit stacking, a market for a bundled payment of nutrients, and separate markets for either nutrient) for total costs and achievement of stipulated nutrient reduction targets for the Baltic Sea. The results show that the total abatement cost of achieving reduction targets of both nutrients is always lowest if a market design with credit stacking is established, that markets without credit stacking result in higher abatement cost and nutrient abatement in excess of the reduction targets, and that none of the single nutrient market systems is able to generate the required abatement of both nutrients. The application to the Baltic Sea shows that the total abatement cost can be 20% higher when credit stacking is not allowed than when it is allowed.     

辽宁佟二堡皮革制造集群与专业市场共同演化

制造集群和专业市场分别由经济活动的生产环节和销售环节在空间上高度集聚形成,两者间互动融合已成为中国沿海地区产业转型升级的新路径。基于共同演化理论分析框架,以辽宁佟二堡镇皮革产业为例,通过实地调研和企业访谈,研究制造集群和专业市场的形成与共同演化过程及其驱动机理,重点考察政府和企业衍生在推动两者共同演化过程中的作用。研究表明,佟二堡镇皮革制造集群与专业市场遵循共生发展型演化模式,呈现出产业规模共同扩大、组织方式共同演进、产业分工共同深化的共同演化过程。东北广阔的消费市场、地方政府的积极推动、制造集群和专业市场内企业衍生是引致两者共同演化的主要原因。     

Contested carbon: Carbon forestry as a speculatively virtual,falteringly material and disputed territorial assemblage

Assemblage approaches are increasingly being used to understand new socio-natural formations arising in relation to the multiple crises of capitalism, climate change and environmental degradation. The valuation of nature is key to these new formations, which the creation of new ‘valued entities’, through calculative practices, that can be accounted for, costed and circulated in monetised and financialised forms in order to ostensibly ‘fix’ certain environmental outcomes in relation to contemporary global crisis. This paper uses an assemblage approach in relation to the global’ transnational project of carbon forestry offsetting and REDD+ in a particular place, Uganda, arguing that it has utility in this respect. While Uganda has been named by Lang and Byakola (2005) as a ‘funny place to store carbon’ due to its contested land politics and history of violence its weak governance context paradoxically re-enforces the imperative for intervention. The paper argues that carbon forestry assemblages are inherently ephemeral and fundamentally contested in three ways: exhibiting a speculative virtuality, faltering materiality and disputed territoriality. Such analysis has the ability to go beyond technical and managerial, or solely pollical economic critiques of carbon forestry, to point at openings for alternatives.     

我国新世纪区域发展规划的基本发展趋向

区域发展规划是特定经济体制下引导区域经济和社会持续稳定发展的必然产物,面对市场经济条件下规划编制的“小政府,大社会”宏观背景,我国新世纪区域发展规划编制的基本趋向应该是编制计划与市场兼容型的弹性区域发展规划、多目标复合协调型的区域可持续发展规划、公平与效率兼容型社会发展规划、效益型发展规划和应用导向型发展规划。     

Industrial sulfur demand: Analysis and prospect

Weak growth in industrial (nonagricultural) U.S. sulfur demand has slowed the growth of total sulfur demand. Evaluating prospects for trend reversal is hampered by inadequate detailed data published by industry, and the lack of an easily measured demand component that reliably depicts total demand. In this article, I try to overcome this data deficiency by constructing an industry-by-industry breakdown of published data on total industrial sulfur consumption. Industrial sulfur consumptions were estimated from data on consuming industry activity, characteristics of relevant industrial processes, and analyses of the conditions affecting choice among alternative industrial processes. Subjective projections of the industry detail data are presented.In addition to cyclical factors, past declines in industrial sulfur demand were due to replacement of sulfur-using industrial processes with alternative processes that use less or no sulfur to achieve production cost economies. In some, but not all, cases, changeovers of process were in response to impositions of environmental-related requirements. The demand for industrial sulfur has good prospects for positive growth as shrinkage of some markets reaches natural limits and total market growth comes increasingly to be dominated by markets with positive growth prospects. Positive growth has been generated by environmentally related regulation in several markets, such as petroleum alkylation and copper production.     

测绘市场的有序管理和执法要求

测绘市场的依法管理，是促进测绘事业健康发展的重要工作，因此要充分分析测绘工作的基本特征和发展趋势，使测绘市场管理走向规范、服务和促进测绘事业发展的正常轨道。     

90年代发展中国家国际资本流入的新特点及其影响

从1992年起,流向发展中国家的证券资本以较大的优势超过了国际直接投资。在全球经济一体化、金融市场自由化和国际化的背景下,国际资本跨国流动呈现出规模巨大化、运作方式机构化、流动形式多样化的特点。庞大证券资本的注入在给新兴市场国家带来益处的同时,也可能造成伤害,这一点在墨西哥和东南亚金融危机中已经得到证实。因此防范和化解国际资本的流入所带来的金融风险,是新兴市场国家当前所面临的严峻课题。     

论地理学研究的市场策划功能

我国经济走向市场化,地理学研究面临新的挑战,本文提出发挥地理学研究市场策划功能将能适应这种变化。策划研究力在不追求研究因子的完备性,争取时间,以达到研究成果及时出台并投入市场,有效地转化为生产力。这一观点与以往地理研究在观念上存在较大分异。