The Stadium and Economic Development: Cardiff and the Millennium Stadium

Cardiff, in common with other cities in the UK, has increasingly identified the attraction of major sporting events as a potential driver of economic development. This policy in large part depends on the ability of the Millennium Stadium to attract these events, and for local agencies to lever the maximum consequent regional benefit. This article examines the development of the Cardiff stadium, through its construction and hosting of the 1999 Rugby World Cup, to operations in the longer term. Drawing in part upon the substantial American narrative, the article examines whether the city centre stadium is likely to drive wider city or regional economic development, and considers the likely success of an events-based development strategy.     

Place Marketing,Strategic Planning and Competitiveness: The Case of Malta

This article investigates place marketing and strategic planning processes in the case of Malta Island as a competitive tourist destination. The article focuses on the main ingredients that compose the marketing and strategic planning performance and presents the repositioning process of Malta's image in the international tourism market. The article concludes that place marketing is a strategic process with particular phases of development that leads to the creation of a competitive and attractive destination. Finally, the article supports that strategic planning and place marketing could not operate by themselves, but they need to be built on partnerships among local actors and decision-makers.     

Place Making: the Social Construction of Newcastle

The city of Newcastle has experienced significant transformations of identity. The city's contemporary reconstruction is a deliberate shift from industrial to post-industrial identity. An industrial identity is now held to be debilitating for places, while a post-industrial vision proffers an impression of improvement. The notion that places are constructed, symbolically as well as materially, allows us to problematise the identity of place, and to expose the ideologies and the actors behind such (re)constructions. Creative literature, media comment and autobiographical material provide insight into the landscapes and discourses of the city's changing identity, and into persisting patriarchal ideology, Anglo-centrism and elitism.     

Reconceptualizing Senses of Place: Social Relations, Ideology and Ecology

The purpose of this paper is to reconceptualize sense of place through the examination, re-analysis and theorization of two case studies, one of an ex-urban community in England, the other a Himalayan farming and herding community. The paper begins by examining the traditional locus of sense of place research in humanistic geography with extensions to political geography and interpretive anthropology. Identifying three core components—social, ideological and ecological—of senses of place, the paper goes on to reconceptualize these elements using Habermas's theory of communicative action and Ingold's work on environmental psychology. It then applies this reconceptualization to the case studies of Towcester and Shimshal. The paper concludes by emphasizing the ways these cases enrich our understanding of sense of place, by stressing the theoretical contributions of conceiving sense of place as rooted in theories of social organization and society, and as being variably and contingently ecologically emplaced.     

Social Concertation and Local Development: The Case of Industrial Districts

It is often believed that industrial districts result from an entirely spontaneous process of economic development. On the basis of in-depth study of several Italian industrial districts, in this paper it is argued that the competitiveness and the dynamism of industrial districts' firms are dependent from social integration. Social integration, however, is usually the result of a conscious co-ordination among the local institutions: i.e. the 'high road' to competitiveness is not the outcome of market mechanism, but of a combination of market and concerted collective action among the representatives of the principal district categories and the local establishment.     

The Future of Collective Farms' Built Social Infrastructure: Choosing Between Central Place and Network Theories

The aim of this paper is to discuss local and regional planning and development practices in a post‐socialist country such as Estonia. Two approaches — central places and network theories — are used as a conceptual basis. According to the first hypothesis, planning and development of social infrastructure (e.g. schools, sports halls) has remained based on the central place theory — as an outdated planning approach — in Estonia. The second hypothesis argues that while, on the one hand, the application of the network paradigm and increased cooperation between local communities would considerably save public resources, on the other hand, because of the path dependency of Soviet centralized planning and development practices, the networking and lobbying takes place vertically rather than horizontally. This restricts both administrative cooperation and networking on the local and regional levels. The paper consists of three parts. The first part describes the turn in Western planning theory: the shift from normative top‐down planning to a bottom‐up approach and networking. The second part analyses critically the Soviet and post‐Soviet planning theory and practices: the planning and development culture created during the Soviet era. Finally we present a case study of a community planning procedure in the Suure‐Jaani locality — a good example of the influence of historical changes in the settlement system and planning culture of the past on current development.     

The Place of Regional Economic Geography in the System of Geographical Sciences

The author holds that regional geography cannot be regarded as an independent geographic discipline because it lacks its own system of laws, such as the natural laws that operate in physical geography and the social laws that operate in economic geography. He agrees with the view that both physical and economic geography fall into theoretical and regional departments, and that regional studies test the localized application of the general laws formulated by the theoretical departments of the two great divisions of geography.     

FDI and Local Economic Development: The Case of Taiwanese Investment in Kunshan

The extent to which foreign direct investment (FDI) can foster the long-term economic development of lagging regions remains a highly debated issue in the literature, even in the current era of intense territorial competition for mobile investment and resources. The emergence of new industrial spaces in China that have flourished through FDI offers a good opportunity to revisit the topic. Kunshan in Suzhou, China has evolved from an impoverished area into a world-class information technology (IT) centre within 25 years. FDI, mainly from Taiwan, has enabled Kunshan to gradually upgrade its economy, following a development path that has been largely based on the transplant of entire production chains from Taiwan. Local innovative strategies for attracting and increasing the embeddedness of Taiwanese FDI are also an important element of Kunshan's success. This paper discusses the positive aspects, as well as the potential costs and negative facets, of FDI in Kunshan, with the view to draw some policy lessons regarding the impact of FDI on the economic development of lagging regions.     

Local Politics,Economic Structure,and Performance: The Case of Sakhalin

Two geographers assess the results of the State Duma elections in Sakhalin Oblast and relate the regional pattern of voting to varying socio-economic conditions of the region. The research is structured to test a working hypothesis that voting patterns in large part can be explained by regional variations in economic structure and performance. More specifically, it explores whether, at the rayon level, there is any relationship between: (1) economic specialization and election results; (2) economic trends and election results; and (3) long-term socioeconomic indicators and election results. The case study is presented as a caveat against the uncritical use of national party preferences as a measure of the political climate in Russia's regions. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: J60, O18, R12. 2 figures, 7 tables, 36 references.     

The Genealogical Society Library of Salt Lake City: A Source of Data for Economic and Social Historians

Abstract. Some important novelists have written a great novel early in their careers and have produced lesser works thereafter, whereas others have improved their work gradually over long periods and have made their major contributions late in their lives. Which of these patterns a novelist follows appears to be systematically related to the nature of his work. Conceptual writers typically have specific goals for their books, and they produce novels that emphasize plot; experimental writers' intentions are often uncertain, and their novels more often stress characterization. By examining the careers of 12 important modern novelists, the author demonstrates that conceptual novelists—including Herman Melville, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ernest Hemingway—are generally those who have declined after writing landmark early novels, while, in contrast, experimental novelists—including Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, and Virginia Woolf—have typically arrived at their most important work later in their careers. As is the case for modern painting and poetry, the ranks of great modern novelists have included both conceptual young geniuses and experimental old masters.     

The Social and Economic Performance of Australia's Large Regional Cities and Towns: Implications for Rural and Regional Policy

Australia's large regional cities and towns display wide variation in how they are adjusting to the socio‐economic transitions occurring in Australia. That variation is exposed using a multi‐variate model analysing performance on a range of socio‐economic variables over the decade 1986 to 1996 for 122 cities and towns with populations of 10 000 and above at the 1996 census. Those places are classified into seven clusters of community performance reflecting opportunity/vulnerability, and their spatial patterns are mapped. The resulting framework is then used to show how the recent geography of the socio‐economic performance of the large regional cities and towns has a distinctive selectivity and contributes to opportunity in some places and the vulnerable performance of others. The influence of that selectivity can be seen in the mismatched geographic patterns evident from an analysis of shares of national population and employment change, investment in non‐residential construction, levels of welfare dependency, and the ratio between household income tax generation and transfer benefits received. The paper uses the insights drawn from that analysis to pose questions suggesting the need to rethink national policy perspectives for addressing change in non‐metropolitan Australia.     

The Social and Historical Context of Short-Term Stylistic Replacement: A Zuni Case Study

Large collections of ethnographic ceramics created over multiyear periods of intensive collecting provide a way to bridge discrepancies between the temporal scales of ethnographic studies based on single field visits and archaeological analyses of assemblages accumulated over much longer periods of time. The Smithsonian's Stevenson collections of Zuni ceramics, consisting of 3500 vessels, were assembled in three intensive field seasons over a 6-year period. They are particularly useful for addressing questions about rates of stylistic change and the relative use-lives of vessel forms and sizes with known ethnographic functions.