The geography of venture capital investments in the UK

The role of venture capital in economic development increasingly is recognized as central to the development of an entrepreneurial economy. However, the supply of venture capital is not distributed evenly across the space economy. In the UK, evidence for the 1980s demonstrated that venture capital investments were highly concentrated in Greater London and the South East, reinforcing the existing patterns of regional concentration of economic activity. This paper reviews the regional distribution of venture capital investments in the UK in the 1990s, a period of massive growth in venture capital investment activity. It concludes that the regional concentration of venture capital investment has been considerably reduced since the 1980s. However, more detailed analysis of the data demonstrates that this shift towards a less unequal regional distribution has been driven by so–called 'merchant' venture capital – investments in large–scale management buy–outs and buy–ins which facilitate corporate restructuring through ownership change and often have adverse consequences for employment. 'Classic' venture capital – investments in young entrepreneurial companies with high growth potential – remains highly concentrated in London and the South East, and also in Scotland. This reflects both supply– and demand–side factors. The Government's new regional venture capital funds are unlikely to be effective in closing this regional finance gap. An alternative approach to intervention, in the context of the increasing globalization of venture capital investments, is to seek to attract venture capital money and expertise from elsewhere.     

Human capital, cluster formation, and international relocation: the case of the garment industry in Japan, 1968-98

This article examines the changing roles of human capital inthe process of the formation of industrial clusters, changesin marketing channels, and the relocation of the industrialbase to less developed areas and abroad, based on a case studyof a garment cluster in postwar Japan. We found, among otherthings, that experience as local traders played a major rolein the cluster formation. However, formal schooling assumesgreater importance in later stages, when direct transactionswith large customers replaced transactions with local merchants,and the international relocation of the production base becamea major management issue.     

Taking risks in regions: the geographical anatomy of Europe's emerging venture capital market

Over the past 25 years, the USA has pioneered a new technologicalrevolution, based on large numbers of new small enterprises,financed by a dynamic venture (risk) capital market. The EuropeanUnion, meanwhile, has lagged behind in this sector of economicactivity, and compared to the US innovative small and mediumenterprises appear to find it more difficult to get startedand grow. At a time when regional and local banking systems– traditionally major sources of capital for small andmedium sized enterprises across Europe – are undergoingintense reorganisation and restructuring, the European Commissionconsiders the development of a substantial risk capital marketto be a key condition for closing the ‘enterprise gap’with the US. While the venture capital industry is much lessdeveloped in Europe than it is in the US, nevertheless it hasrecently experienced a marked increase in activity. But whereasthe European Commission argues that venture capital activityneeds to be much more regionally clustered if it is to emulatethe US experience, the OECD and some EU member states have arguedfor a more even regional distribution. The aim of the paperis to chart the growth and geographical anatomy of the emergingEuropean venture capital market, and to examine its spatialdevelopment and regional implications in the context of thesesomewhat opposing views.     

British voluntary hospitals, 1871-1938: the geography of provision and utilization

This article examines the distribution of beds, staff and in-patients in voluntary hospitals in England, Wales and Scotland between 1871 and 1938. The findings bear upon two theoretical debates; first, the concern of historians of social policy with the extent to which charity and mutual insurance delivered a satisfactory level of institutional care before the NHS, and second, the broader issue of whether the localism of voluntary sector provision tends to produce a geographically uneven service. We survey the chronology of voluntary hospital growth pointing to reasons for foundations. We then analyse the levels of beds, staff and in-patients per head of population in counties, county boroughs and large burghs. This evidence suggests that despite the expansion of the sector and the narrowing of differences between places, considerable variations in provision and utilization remained. We argue that these variations were likely to have had an impact on the health of individuals. We conclude by tracing the emergence in political and public discourse of the perception that geographical unevenness was a failing of the voluntary system.     

Regional knowledge capabilities,embeddedness of firms and industry organisation: Bioscience megacentres and economic geography

Changes in epistemology in biosciences are generating important spatial effects. The most notable of these is the emergence of a few 'Bioscience Megacentres' for basic and applied bioscience medical and clinical research (molecular, post-genomic, proteomics, etc.), biotechnology research, training in these and related fields, academic entrepreneurship and commercial exploitation by clusters of 'drug discovery' start-up and spin-off companies, along with specialist venture capital and other innovation system support services. Large pharmaceutical firms that used to lead such knowledge generation and exploitation processes are becoming increasingly dependent upon innovative drug solutions produced in such clusters, and megacentres are now the predominant source of such commercial knowledge. 'Big pharma' is seldom at the heart of megacentres such as those the paper will argue are found in about four locations each in the USA and Europe, but remains important for some risk capital ('milestone payments'), marketing, and distribution of drugs discovered. The embedding of these processes also creates major new regional disparities, which some regional governances have recognised, causing them to develop responsibilities for regional science policy and funding to offset spatial biases intrinsic in traditional national (and in the EU, supranational) research funding regimes. Responses follow a variety of models ranging from market-following to both regionalised (decentralising by the centre) and 'regionalist' (ground-up); in each case, the role of megacentres is justified in health terms. But their role in assisting fulfilment of regional economic growth visions is also clearly perceived and pronounced in policy terms.     

边疆史地研究与民族问题

改革开放以来,我国的边疆史地研究取得了显的发展。具有多学科综合性特点的边疆史地研究在继承历史、边政、舆地、方志、游记等传统的同时,开始吸收和借鉴民族学、宗教学、政治学等学科的理论和方法,使边疆史地研究正在形成贯通古今的新特点,体现出服务于现实边疆建设的应用性功能。所以,从边疆史地研究的发展来看,虽然定位于边疆,但并不局限于史地。     

French geography, cartography and colonialism: introduction

This paper provides an introduction to a special feature of the Journal of Historical Geography devoted to recent research, by French scholars, on the relations between French geography, colonialism and the mapping of colonial boundaries, with particular reference to Africa between the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries.     

Constructing national identity in Canada's capital, 1900–2000: Confederation Square and the National War Memorial

Ottawa's Confederation Square was initially planned to be a civic plaza to balance the nearby federal presence of Parliament Hill. A century of federal planning, with the direct involvement of Prime Minister W.L. Mackenzie King, repositioned it as a national space in the City Beautiful style. Recent renovations have improved its pedestrian amenity and restored much of the original plan by French urban designer Jacques Gréber. The square contains the National War Memorial and the National Arts Centre, yet is a weak public space due to weak edge definition, animation, and spatial enclosure. The war memorial design was selected in a 1925 international competition won by Britain's Vernon March. The Great War monument was not installed until the 1939 Royal visit, and Mackenzie King intended that the re-planning of the capital would be the World War II memorial. However, the symbolic meaning of the Great War monument gradually expanded to become the place of remembrance for all Canadian war sacrifices. The National War Memorial is more successful as a symbolic object than Confederation Square is as a public space, yet both have evolved into important elements of the Canadian capital's national identity.     

Population geography: disorder,death and future directions

This is one in a series of reports on research trends in population geography. The author suggests that recent political changes concerning the breakup of the former Soviet Union and a possible decline in concern among developed countries about the problems of developing ones should affect the research agenda. Particular attention is given to studies done on differential mortality and internal migration in developed countries.     

A world apart: geography, Australian quarantine, and the mother country

In many respects the Australian colonies were what one person called "the proud offspring of a grand old mother." Yet when it came to the prevention of imported infectious disease, Britain's Australian colonies were not a chip off the old block. British opposition to the lengthy and costly imposition of quarantine had intensified throughout the nineteenth century, eventuating in the abolition of human quarantine in 1896. The Australian colonies, on the other hand, which had based their first quarantine regulations on British law and remained constantly aware of changing medical trends in the mother country, gradually expanded the breadth and capabilities of their maritime quarantine as the century progressed. Although other European powers and British colonies progressively adopted systems of medical inspection more in line with British port prophylaxis and away from quarantine, the Australian colonies invested increasing amounts of time and money into more elaborate quarantine stations and regulations. In this article I examine some of the basic features of coastal disease prevention in the Australian colonies and how they differed from British controls. Australia's distance from Britain was emphasized in the quarantine debates geographically as well as in policy. I argue that the often controversial differences in quarantine policy were for the most part a product of Australia's geographical location. The natural prophylactic of Australia's remoteness was not a reason to minimize quarantine in the colonies but rather served to increase it; whereas, it was argued that "the geographical position of England deprived it of the advantages...derived from a comprehensive quarantine system." I discuss this seeming anomaly in light of other arguments that have claimed that the close proximity of a state to the acknowledged origin of a disease was likely to increase its eagerness to quarantine.     

The discourse of the past: phenomenology,structuralism and historical geography

Historical geography has to be predicated on a critical examination of past and present discourses, and this necessarily involves a rejection of positivist epistemology. This was, in more general terms, the basis of Husserl's critique, but two alternatives to this are the constitutive phenomenology of Alfred Schutz and the linguistic structuralism of Claude Lévi-Strauss. Both present major difficulties. Schutz fails to recognize the necessity of a hermeneutic understanding of past societies and cannot account for the genesis and temporality of meaning, while Lévi-Strauss provides for a formalism which is directed towards the structure of the human mind rather than the historically specific structures of particular discourses. The connections and contrasts between these two positions suggest several ways in which the examination of discourse might be constituted in order to contribute to a structural history.     

Science, text and space: thoughts on the geography of reading

The idea of a 'geography of reading' provides a potential point of conversation between the cultural and scientific wings of our profession. Here I explore some dimensions of the geography of reading scientific texts. Drawing on a number of theoretical pronouncements – Gadamer's 'fusion of horizons', Said's 'travelling theory', Secord's 'geographies of reading', Beer's 'miscegenation of texts', Fish's 'interpretive communities' and Rupke's 'geographies of reception'– I focus on the spaces where scientific theories are encountered. The argument is that where scientific texts are read has an important bearing on how they are read. This realization points to a fundamental instability in scientific meaning and to the crucial significance of what might be called located hermeneutics. As a case study in the development of a cartographics of scientific meaning, I explore the different ways in which Darwin's fundamentally biogeographical theory of evolution by natural selection was construed in a number of different settings. The sites I have chosen to illustrate this are the scientific communities which congregated around the Charleston Museum of Natural History in South Carolina, the Wellington Philosophical Society and New Zealand Institute, and the St Petersburg Society of Naturalists in Russia during the second half of the nineteenth century. In each case the encounter with evolution theory, and the ways it was interpreted, are shown to have been shaped by local cultural politics, thereby disclosing the critical role that space plays in the production of scientific meaning.