A tetradic analysis of GIS and society using McLuhan's law of the media

The social implications of GIS have been debated over the past five years among scholars in several disciplines. GIS have been either conceived by practitioners as value‐free, neutral tools for problem‐solving or castigated by critical social theorists as socially biased technologies serving only corporate and state interests. Neither of these polarized views is very helpful in understanding the complex relationship between GIS and society. This paper argues that GIS are increasingly becoming media for communicating various crucial social and environmental information to the general public. By reconceptualizing GIS as media, the paper conducts a detailed tetradic analysis on the social implications of GIS using Marshall McLuhan's law of media. The analysis reveals the paradoxical and ambivalent nature of GIS technology. To make GIS fulfill democratic ideals in society, this paper calls for a shift of perspective, from viewing them as instruments for problem‐solving to viewing them as media for communication. This shift from instrumental to communicative rationality enables us to examine more critically and holistically how space, people and environment have been represented, manipulated and visualized in GIS and thus promotes a more critical and democratic GIS practice .     

State Archaeology and the Private Museum: An Integrated Approach to Archaeological Site Management for Local People in China

During the emergence of Chinese archaeology, the legislative system of cultural heritage in China included archaeological excavations and investigations as being the ‘exclusive right of state’. This mode of state archaeology has proved its worth by increasing the authority and quality of archaeological research and excavations, as well as enhancing the social values and benefits at the state level. The local communities, however, have hardly been embedded into the archaeological projects, nor have the archaeological projects been employed to improve local and regional economic development. This paper considers private museums as embodying regional values and beneficial to projects under the mode of state archaeology. With a case study outlining collaborations between archaeologists and local agents under the excavation and conservation of ancient kiln sites at the town of Zichuan, I argue that private museums could be relatively prominent platforms for public engagement in activities of state archaeology. It might contribute to a reconsideration of the following: indirect archaeological concerns, local economic benefits, identities and alternative interpretations of locality.     

Community‐based cooperative ventures for adults with intellectual disabilities

When people with intellectual disabilities gain some influence over the running of their own households and the organisation of their workplaces, their lives can improve markedly. But success depends on community support not only from their families and social workers, but also from nonprofit groups and public services such as social housing and public transit. Dominant trends among institutions in the social sector responsible for meeting the needs of people with intellectual disabilities have produced models that focus on deficiencies, individualisation and service. Through cooperative structures and entrepreneurial activity, projects in community economic development have attempted to replace these models with an emphasis on capacities, collectivisation and care. We describe projects engaged in by community‐based cooperatives in Toronto that demonstrate this approach and encourage those with disabilities to live interdependently and to participate as partners in their own businesses.     

Sport facility development: municipal capital and shutting out the private sector

Regime theory provides a framework for exploring changes in development patterns and internal dynamics of growth coalitions. Academic debates on sport and urban development have focused on large American and European markets, where such venues are increasingly led by urban regimes that aim to leverage public goals through private investment. Based on a detailed qualitative analysis of four projects in three major Israeli cities, this work examines a different typology of sport venue development – ‘public regime’, which operates in a small market context. The Israeli public regime neither allows the private sector to assume central roles in the design, development and operation of venues nor does it stimulate real estate development anchored by the venue. The assumption that professional sports is not a viable business in small markets is used to justify the public monopoly that regards the venues as public amenities, legitimizing the lack of strategic and business plans, producing benefits for the local political elite but doing little to stabilize professional sport and secure economic returns for the public. The more affluent city of Tel Aviv demonstrates a breakout from a pure public regime, where public control is retained but more business-oriented considerations are incorporated.     

Public versus Private Technological Incubator Programmes: Privatizing the Technological Incubators in Israel

Private technological incubators began operating in Israel in 2000, and developed thanks to the rapidly growing private (venture) capital (VC) sector, which traditionally had not funded such projects. The present study examines the differences and similarities between two types of technological incubators—public and private. It addresses the question whether the need still exists for the Public Technological Incubators Programme (PTIP). Based on our empirical analysis and findings, the main conclusion is that private incubators cannot fully replace public incubators; even after the entry of the private sector into the area of technological incubator activity, there is still justification for the continuation of the PTIP. Private incubators tend to concentrate in selected fields, whereas public incubators sponsor a large variety of activities. The PTIP was found to provide answers to advancing national objectives, such promoting peripheral regions and providing special incentives to selected population groups (e.g. new immigrants) for whom such activities would otherwise be out of reach.     

The Wrong Terms of Reference

Abstract

Agriculture in Alaska is beginning to expand. The approach used to facilitate this expansion may serve as an example for other regions where the pressure for development stems from public interest groups. Alaskan agricultural development is tied to the disposal of government-owned land. If agriculture is to develop according to the United States farm production model, then large quantities of agricultural land must be sold to private citizens. Past federal policy in Alaska has not led to this outcome and thus the present-day development efforts spring from state government leadership. This has led to the recent undertaking of three state agricultural projects which have in common low cost land, low cost financing, and planning by people trained in agricultural disciplines. The pivotal aspect of agricultural development efforts in the state of Alaska is the successful transfer of research and technology to private sector farmers. If this can be accomplished, then Alaskan agriculture is likely to flourish.     

Flexibility and Public Accountability in Public Land Development Projects in Progress

Abstract

Local authorities have moved many entrepreneurial activities outside the direct control of the municipal council. This includes land development activities relating to planning policies which involve both private development and public infrastructure. Many studies have shown that positioning activities outside the control of elected bodies undermines public accountability. Less is known, however, about public accountability in contexts where entrepreneurial activities are still run by the local authority. This issue may be particularly relevant when it comes to projects that are already underway because entrepreneurial activities imply flexibility and the choices made as part of this flexibility also need to be justified. This paper is based on a study of five key projects in a single municipality, Midden-Delfland in the Rotterdam/The Hague metropolitan region in the Netherlands, and analyses how land development projects are organized within a local authority. It shows that while they are structured to allow for flexibility in the process, the level of public accountability is not ideal. The quality of arguments used and the way in which decisions are justified leave room for improvement, which might be promising because they are organized within the local authority.     

Neoliberal privatisation? Remapping the public and the private in Sydney's masterplanned residential estates

The analysis of neoliberalism has become a key point of departure in critical urban studies and political geography. Its application in theorising new forms of residential environments is no exception. Common interest developments, gated communities and, in the Australian case, masterplanned residential estates (MPREs) are cast as vehicles of neoliberalist privatisation, extending private property rights and embedding market logics and neoliberal modes of privatised governance. This paper is a critical theoretical and empirical engagement with the interpretation of these residential developments as iconic expressions of urban neoliberalisation. We bring poststructuralist thinking on neoliberalism as an assemblage of diverse practices and projects together with poststructuralist conceptions of the public and private as contextual and enacted political constructions, to provide an alternative analytic—an analytic of assemblage—for investigating putative pathways of neoliberal privatisation. We suggest the purchase of this extended framework through an exploration of MPRE development by Sydney's largest MPRE developer. In this framework, MPREs become contingent productions in which multiple and overdetermined projects, practices and paradigms of governance are at work including, amongst others, social sustainability and interventionism. Rather than producing neoliberal privatisation, we explore how MPRE developments involve the complex constitution of new forms of public and private that exceed coding as neoliberal. We conclude that the framework engaged with here can enable productive advances for urban theorising. Its emphasis on practice, enactment, multiplicity and assemblage can resist a tendency to reify urban neoliberalism and nurture the development of new conceptions and discourses of urban governance less bound to the neoliberal imaginary.     

Physical Planning in Entrepreneurial Urban Governance—Experiences from the Bo01 and Brunnshög Projects,Sweden

Recent research has argued that urban policy has turned towards entrepreneurial forms of urban governance, resulting in a more fragmented and decentralized setting within which public policy is formulated and implemented. This implies that the context for public sector urban planning is also influenced by this “turn”. This article questions this “turn” by arguing that, in Sweden and in practice, forms of fragmentation and decentralization coexist with remnants of coherence and centralization. It focuses on two planning projects, one in Malmö and one in Lund. A case study approach is followed, using official documentation and expert interviews. The article indicates that public authorities and planners remain crucial in urban development projects as initiators of projects, when they bring in financial incentives or lease out the plots for development, or when they add to the project's political legitimacy and bring to the table different actors that would otherwise be less likely to join forces. It concludes by discussing how public sector urban planning is adjusting to the changes brought forward by entrepreneurial urban governance. The article contributes to the literature on how urban planning is adapting to changes in the context for urban governance.     

Using Technology Absorption as an Evaluation Criterion: Case Studies from a State Research and Development Program

State agencies sponsoring local research and development projects often finance the development of technologies in partnership with other organizations. These contracting partners develop and demonstrate the new technology. This study distinguishes between two types of outcomes from such projects. Technology absorption is the adoption of a technology by an organization participating in the project. Technology transfer is the process by which outcomes are adopted by organizations outside the project (i.e., nonparticipants). From an evaluation perspective, research and development projects that result in the absorption of technology, without any subsequent transfer, are difficult to assess. Often these outcomes are counted the same as a transfer even though the process is subsidized by the state.
Three case studies of absorption outcomes are presented. Absorption projects tend to be distinctive because: (a) they develop technologies that are very large in scale and very complex; (b) project leadership typically is provided by an end-user who attempts to employ the technology for commercial purposes; (c) success is measured through the technological accomplishment and ongoing commercial venture rather than by the number of adopting organizations; and (d) they produce spillover benefits in the cohesion of the social networks formed among project participants.     

Flexibility in Planning and the Consequences for Public-value Capturing in UK,Spain and the Netherlands

In the 1960s, flexibility was often seen in planning literature as a negative feature, whereas today it is perceived by planners and policy-makers as a positive asset to cope with the challenges of growing complexity, opportunism and diversity in cities. The discussion seems to rest between two approaches. While planning should be flexible to facilitate a non-linear and multi-layered decision-making system, implementation should not be too flexible as the public sector might lose the controlling power and the private sector might gain increasing influence in urban development. This paper uses empirical data from case-based research on British, Spanish and Dutch urban regeneration projects, and provides an analysis of the effects of an important feature of flexibility on public-value capturing. Public-value capturing is the level at which public bodies manage to make developers pay for public infrastructure—infrastructure provision, public roads and space, public facilities and buildings, affordable and social housing—and eventually capture part of the economic value increase. This important aspect of flexibility is the level of certainty about future development possibilities before negotiations between developers and local planning bodies take place.     

Questions of Symmetry: Programme Experiences Featuring Northern Borderland Development

In the North European border region between the Nordic countries and northwestern Russia, much of cross–border development continues to be steered by public authorities and channelled through programmes which are dominated by public actors–even though the participation of private partners such as businesses and various non–governmental organisations is strongly encouraged. This article examines one case of Northern European peripheral cross–border development by focusing attention on institutionalised co–operation programmes. This chosen approach brings to the fore some of the persistent obstacles and challenges of these development initiatives. Particular attention is paid to institutional conditions of and for collaboration, including administrative and legislative systems or economic and governance mechanisms, social structures, institutional systems and general living conditions across national boundaries. Symmetry between the participating countries' institutional environments is perceived as a necessity for the construction of balanced interdependence as well as the increasing involvement of a variety of actors (e.g. private partners) in the creation of a functional borderland.     

Creating social spaces for transnational feminist advocacy: the Canadian International Development Agency, the National Commission on the Role of Filipino Women and Philippine women's NGOs

The postauthoritarian democratisation process in the Philippines saw the rise of 'state feminism', which emphasised gender mainstreaming in government development planning. Various international development agencies, particularly the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), played an important role in harnessing the social capital of women's movements and nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) for gender and development (GAD) programs in the post‐Marcos era (1986–2002). This period was marked by a decline in the CIDA's direct assistance to women's NGOs in the Philippines and its shift to institutional capability‐building of government agencies, particularly the National Commission on the Role of Filipino Women (NCRFW). The article examines how local women's organisations have interpreted, engaged and negotiated transnational discursive practices on 'development', 'social capital', 'capacity‐building' and 'gender mainstreaming.' The CIDA‐funded Women NGOs Umbrella Project and Canadian aid to the Negros Occidental province are used as case studies to illustrate issues and problems in transnational linkages between Philippine women NGOs, national and local governments and Canadian development agencies. Such transnational linkages, embodied in the interesting mix of 'gender mainstreaming' and 'critical engagement' between states, donor agencies and women NGOs, show the interpenetration of the 'global' and the 'local' and the blurring of boundaries between 'state' and 'civil' societies in the course of gender advocacy. At the same time, transnational processes and demands may concurrently create better understanding, as well as conflicts and tensions between state machinery, NGOs and social movements, thus defeating the original intentions of development projects sponsored by international donor agencies.     

Waterfront redevelopment and urban policy: The case of Barcelona,Cardiff and Genoa

In this article, waterfront redevelopment is linked to the recent development of urban policy and to relations between port and city. This is discussed with the empirical study of three European regional capitals (Barcelona, Cardiff and Genoa) of different size, how the redevelopment was done and how the projects link with the development of urban policy. The redevelopment of Baltimore's Inner Harbour has influenced strongly the physical outcome of the projects in these three cities but it is very difficult to achieve similar success because of the differences in time, space, local culture, etc. Each case demonstrates that a strong market‐ and property‐led approach has serious weaknesses when heavy public subsidies are used for improving the infrastructure but the private sector has not been able to fulfil its part in time. The question of social justice of waterfront redevelopment is raised at the end of the article.     

Spaces of Labor Activism, Mexican‐American Women and the Farm Worker Movement in South Texas Since 1966

This paper studies the farm worker unionization experience and the historical development of Mexican‐American women's activism in South Texas to elaborate more precisely the relationship among socio‐spatial practices, political activism and labor's geography. Drawing upon archival documents and interviews, the paper describes how Mexican‐American farm workers used public space for political activity; however, radical unionization efforts also domesticized other spaces for women's activities. The paper chronicles how Mexican‐American women in South Texas transformed the farm worker center from a "domesticated space" into one of empowerment. In short, women in the union made the farm worker center into a space that challenged both the class‐based structure of larger South Texas society and masculinist practices within the larger farm worker movement. The analysis advances the imperative to better understand how workers "make space" to ensure their own survival. The paper advances the study of labor geography by arguing that working class mobilization reconstitutes dynamic social geographies within laboring communities themselves. In arguing this point, the paper illustrates the limitations of activism based solely on the use of public space and argues for more attention to the significance of other socio‐political spaces for labor mobilization.     

Public–Private Plan Development: Can Early Private Involvement Strengthen Infrastructure Planning?

Private parties, who are usually involved in later stages of design, construction and maintenance, can potentially strengthen the early plan-making stages of infrastructure planning. They can bring in knowledge, expertise and experience to help address complexity in planning. Such early private involvement can be accommodated through several models for which experiences in Dutch infrastructure planning practice differ. In this article, we assess the potential of early private involvement for strengthening infrastructure plan development by examining evaluative studies and conducting interviews with public and private actors involved in four early private involvement models in Dutch infrastructure planning: market consultation, early design contest, market reconnaissance and unsolicited proposal. We conclude that in order to unlock the potential of early private involvement government needs to incorporate incentives for creativity, reward private involvement and strike a balance in the setup of the investigated models between conceptual freedom for private solutions and transparent public guidance in preconditions and regulations. Early private involvement could, thus, provide opportunities for conceptual creativity and innovation and opportunities for public–private collaboration, which can strengthen plan development.     

Gender mainstreaming and water development projects: analyzing unexpected enviro-social impacts in Bolivia,India, and Lesotho

Gender mainstreaming policies and programs, meant to be gender-sensitive or to target gender issues, are increasingly implemented by both governmental and non-governmental actors. However, these projects seem set to continually aim solely at women, despite more than a decade of work encouraging broader scope. Using recent case studies from Bolivia, Lesotho, and India, we address the tensions laden in three major questions about water, gender, and development: (1) Is mandatory inclusion of women in water governance and decision-making effective?, (2) Do water development projects provide equal benefits and burdens for women and men?, and (3) In what ways are water projects and their policies impacting and impacted by gendered enviro-social spaces? By providing triangulated data from ethnographic studies in three distinct local contexts, we are able to pinpoint major cross-cutting themes that serve to highlight and interrogate the gendered impacts of water development projects’ policies: public and private lives, women’s labor expectations, and managing participation. We find that gender mainstreaming endeavors continue to fall short in their aim to equitably include women in their programming and that geographic, environmental, and socio-cultural spaces are intimately related to how these equitability issues play out. We provide practical recommendations on how to address these issues.     

The Retirement Village as a Residential Environment for the Third Age – The Example of Firhall,Scotland

Abstract

Retirement villages represent a recent addition to the range of residential options for older people in the UK. Research has focused on the development and nature of retirement housing in the public and voluntary sectors in England. Limited attention has been directed to the private retirement communities and, in particular, to the lived experience of residents in private sector retirement villages. This research, which is the first study of a private retirement village in Scotland, overcomes this information deficit by identifying the nature and growth of private retirement villages in the UK and exploring the lived experience of residents of the private retirement village of Firhall. The discussion is organised into four main parts. Part I examines the concept of the retirement village. Part II explains the growth and geography of retirement villages in the UK. Part III comprises the empirical analysis of the case study retirement village. The research identifies the social, economic and demographic characteristics of the village population and provides insight into lived experience of the residents in the study village. Finally, in part IV, the discussion identifies a number of key issues for further research, and the potential contribution of retirement villages for meeting the needs and preferences of the growing third age population of the UK.     

Making Space for “Neo‐communitarianism”? The Third Sector,State and Civil Society in the UK

During the 1990s the urban became an important "institutional laboratory" for state‐initiated policy experiments to address the social costs and political repercussions of economic polarisation and social exclusion associated with neo‐liberalism. One such policy experiment has been neo‐communitarianism, emphasising the contribution of the "third sector" to improving social welfare and reinvigorating a sense of civil society. Focusing on the UK, I examine the background to and implications of the emergence of a neo‐communitarian strategy under the "new" Labour government, which came to power in 1997. First, I consider the repositioning of the third sector within contemporary policy discourse as a result of the Labour government's programme of welfare reforms and Prime Minister Blair's "Third Way" political philosophy, which attempts to combine neo‐liberalism with a neo‐communitarian stance of stressing the importance of civil society for social cohesion. Then, I draw on Foucauldian notions of governmentality to examine how Labour's neo‐communitarian agenda has involved a fundamental reconfiguration of the governance of the third sector, centred on the creation of government–voluntary sector "compacts" at national and local levels. These compacts are of strategic importance for the restructuring of the UK third sector and so the local implications of such restructuring are then considered. In particular, case study evidence from Glasgow is used to critically evaluate government claims that the third sector can contribute to the "reinvigoration of civic life" by highlighting the importance of the internal characteristics and political environment of local third sector organisations for the differential development of social capital and citizenship.     

Resisting and Challenging Neoliberalism: The Development of Italian Social Centers

In the 1970s, Italy experienced a difficult transition from Fordism to a flexible accumulation regime. The resulting changes in production relations led to the disappearance of traditional public spaces and meeting places such as open squares, workplaces, party offices or the premises of groups involved in the antagonistic, ie anti‐capitalist and anti‐fascist, movement. Within this context, in the 1980s and 1990s, these groups managed to create new social and political spaces by setting up Self‐Managed Social Centers (CSAs), ie squatted properties which became the venue of social, political and cultural events. Over 250 Social Centers have been active in Italy over the past 15 years, especially in urban areas. Their organizational modes are examples of successful direct democracy in non‐hierarchical structures and may provide alternative options to the bureaucratic organization of so many aspects of social and political life. Point number one on a Social Center's agenda is a daunting task: it must renovate and refurbish privately or publicly owned empty properties and turn them into public spaces open to the general public. For this task it relies exclusively on collective action, ie cooperative working modes which do not come under the provisions governing regular employment contracts and can thus be used to combat marginalization and exclusion processes which are becoming more and more dramatic in our cities. An analysis of the evolution of this original Italian movement provides the opportunity to address a number of issues associated with alternative practices to neoliberal globalization.