Spatial Disparities and Economic Development in China, 1953-92: A Comparative Study

It seems to be widely accepted that China's interior development during the Maoist period was based on ‘equality’ considerations, which narrowed Chinese regional disparities. By contrast, the recent coastal development during Deng's reform era has been coined as ‘uneven’ and ‘undesirable’, because it has created tremendous inequalities across the country. However, the findings of this study suggest that the question may not be that simple. This article examines the spatial disparities of economic development in China between 1953 and 1992, focusing on a time-series comparison between the development policies of Mao and Deng, their outcomes and the resulting changes. By using provincial and regional economic and investment data, the article elaborates why Mao's interior development did not lead to a more equitable outcome than Deng's uneven strategy of’ east coastal development’. The findings provide an insight into some of the unexpected outcomes of more than forty years of socialist development, in the realm of economic growth and disparity.     

The neo-liberalization of strategic spatial planning and the overproduction of development in Celtic Tiger Ireland

This paper argues that the role of the planning system in the overproduction of development during Ireland’s Celtic Tiger needs to be analysed as instructive of contemporary neo-liberal transformations of strategic spatial planning. Leaning on a Foucauldian governmentality perspective, the genealogy of modern Irish planning practice is explored to elucidate how neo-liberal rationalities became embedded in institutional norms through consensus-driven partnership governance. The central premise is that the turn to ‘strategic spatial planning’, particularly with the publication of the National Spatial Strategy in 2002, was usefully exploited to mask the spatial politics of the ever-increasing need for the state to facilitate capital switching into built environment formation in order to maintain conditions of high economic growth. Using the empirical case study of housing development in the ‘Upper Shannon’ region and large-scale commercial development in County Meath, it is argued that this contributed to a destabilization of the planning system and an abandonment of basic planning principles. The paper concludes that, in the context of the new and deeply uneven economic geography of post-crisis Ireland, there is an urgent need for a repoliticized critique of normative interpretations of strategic spatial planning practice in order for more progressive practices to emerge.     

Heritage spectacles: the case of Amphipolis excavations during the Greek economic crisis

This article explores the ways in which the archaeological excavations at Amphipolis, Northern Greece, were transformed into a ‘heritage spectacle’ during the summer of 2014. The article argues that the spectacularisation of Amphipolis excavations constituted a powerful, political medium for dis-orientating the wider Greek public from issues related to the severe economic crisis of the country. Although the practice of heritage spectacularisation is not new, the media spectacle of Amphipolis introduced an advanced mechanism for spectacularizing archaeological research and the past. The article deconstructs this mechanism through a thematic content analysis of about 100 newspaper articles published in the Greek press, filtered through the lenses of spectacle theory. As it is demonstrated, the spectacularisation process of Amphipolis excavations is embodied by emotive dramatisation, banal cultural symbols, escapism and power imbalances. The article concludes with an interpretive framework for heritage spectacles while highlighting ethical and practical implications regarding the role of archaeologists and heritage practitioners towards political ‘abuse’ of heritage in times of socio-economic and political crises.     

European developments in strategic spatial planning

Strategic spatial planning which takes an integrated approach to the development of a territory seemed to go out of fashion, but now there are signs that it is being re‐established. This paper explores these developments using case studies from 10 European countries. The analysis uses an ‘institutionalist’ approach, which examines how the ‘agency’ of spatial planning practices responds to the ‘structure’ of contextual forces, at the same time influencing that structure. The ‘driving forces’ which are influencing strategic spatial planning are investigated, as are two aspects of the changes in spatial planning: institutional relations and policy agendas. The conclusions are that—at least in the case studies—there is a movement in the institutional relations towards horizontal articulation, territorial logic, and negotiative forms. Policy agendas too are changing, becoming more selective and using new conceptions of space and place. Those institutional developments, however, are not necessarily being translated into territorially‐integrated policy (as distinct from functional/sectoral policy). That translation appears to require simultaneous re‐framing of relational resources (trust, social capital), knowledge resources (intellectual capital), linked to strong mobilization efforts (political capital). The cases considered varied significantly in how far that had been done. Where it had, strategic spatial plan‐making practices were playing a key role in developing institutional territorial integration and re‐invigorating territorial identities.     

The ‘Cultural Turn’ in Australian Regional Economic Development Discourse: Neoliberalising Creativity?

Regional economic policy‐makers are increasingly interested in the contribution of creativity to the economic performance of regions and, more generally, in its power to transform the images and identities of places. This has constituted a ‘cultural turn’, of sorts, away from an emphasis on macro‐scale projects and employment schemes, towards an interest in the creative industries, entrepreneurial culture and innovation. This paper discusses how recent discourses of the role of ‘creativity’ in regions have drawn upon, and contributed to, particular forms of neoliberalisation. Its focus is the recent application of a statistical measure — Richard Florida's (2002) ‘creativity index’— to quantify spatial variations in creativity between Australia's regions. Our critique is not of the creativity index per se, but of its role in subsuming creativity within a neoliberal regional economic development discourse. In this discourse, creativity is linked to the primacy of global markets, and is a factor in place competition, attracting footloose capital and ‘creative class’ migrants to struggling regions. Creativity is positioned as a central determinant of regional ‘success’ and forms a remedy for those places, and subjects, that currently ‘lack’ innovation. Our paper critiques these interpretations, and concludes by suggesting that neoliberal discourses ignore the varied ways in which ‘alternative creativities’ might underpin other articulations of the future of Australia's regions.     

南京大学经济地理学发展历程与展望

南京大学是我国地理学研究的重要阵地,在经济地理学领域更是有着深远的影响。本文基于对地理学刊物上发表论文的统计,对南京大学经济地理学发展的历程进行了系统的研究。南京大学经济地理学发展主要分为快速发展期、波动停滞期、复苏繁荣期、蓬勃发展期等四个阶段。在研究内容上,主要涉及区域经济与区域发展、交通地理学、空间结构与空间布局、产业集群与新产业区、企业与区域增长、低碳经济与可持续发展、全球化的经济活动、技术进步与信息化、制度经济地理学等9个主要领域。这9大领域在国内学界有着重要的影响。最后,展望南京大学经济地理学学科发展,提出新经济地理学、制度转向/文化转向、服务国家需求是未来研究的三大主要方向。     

Too many Scotlands? Place,the SNP,and the future of nationalist mobilization

Scottish nationalism has always had a ‘geographical problem’ in the sense that support for its central goal, the independence of Scotland from the United Kingdom, has had much more backing in some regions and localities than it has had in others. In the 1970s and 1980s the geographical pattern to this support, at least as expressed in votes for the Scottish National Party (SNP), seemed very clear. Suddenly the picture changed between 2011 and 2016, to the extent that the whole of Scotland, notwithstanding the overall ‘No’ vote on Scottish independence in the 2014 referendum, seemed to be lining up to some degree or another in the ‘nationalist column.’ As quickly, this proved ephemeral. As of 2017, the future of the central goal of Scottish nationalism is once more in doubt because of a new geography of support and disaffection that seems to reflect a number of recent trends in attitudes towards voting for the SNP. The article maps the course of the older and newer geographies of Scottish nationalism in terms of the overall political economy of the country, given its proponents’ heavy emphasis on economic themes, and the ways this is refracted through place-to-place social and economic differences across the country.     

From International to Global Development: New Geographies of 21st Century Development

Recent claims of 21^st century global convergence and the ‘rise of the South’ suggest a profound and ongoing redrawing of the global map of development and inequality. This article synthesizes shifting geographies of development across economic, social and environmental dimensions, and considers their implications for the ‘where’ of development. Some convergence in aggregate development indicators for the global North and South during this century challenge, now more than ever, the North–South binary underlying international development. Yet convergence claims do not adequately capture change in a world where development inequalities are profound. Between‐country inequalities remain vast, while within‐country inequalities are growing in many cases. Particular attention is given here to exploring the implications of such shifting geographies, and what those mean for the spatial nomenclature and reference of development. This article concludes by arguing for the need, now more than ever, to go beyond international development considered as rich North/poor South, and to move towards a more holistic global development — where the global South remains a key, although not exclusive, focus.     

Linking polycentricity concepts to periphery: implications for an integrative Austrian strategic spatial planning practice

This contribution searches for a regional planning conception that allows for a mutual recognition and practical translation between strategies for urban regions and peripheries beyond separate urban and rural categories; taking the Austrian strategic spatial planning context as the example. For this, various notions of polycentricity are discussed and assessed with regard to periphery. The Austrian strategic spatial development concept ÖREK sets out a focused work programme with changing responsibilities and participation of actors. The objectives are targeted and the processes are implementation oriented. Amongst other topics, urban regional issues and peripheral, declining regions are worked on separately. A conceptually integrative, plan-like strategic instrument across the topics and for the whole of Austria is lacking. The ESPON notion of ‘inner peripheries’ is proposed as a complementary concept to the ESDP notion of polycentricity, helping to create a bridge between urban regional and periphery strategies. This has the potential to guide strategic planning practice efforts in Austria towards a yet missing strategic spatial plan for the whole of the country beyond urban and rural categories. Practice relevant conclusions related to the case of Austrian strategic spatial planning are drawn and a need for further, comparative research in a European context is identified.     

Rent control measures of immediate post‐war period (1944–1952) and their impact on urban development in Greater Athens

The purpose of this paper is first to highlight the importance of the immediate post‐war period in influencing development trends and spatial policy in post‐war urban Greece and Athens in particular. Second in this respect, to stress on the critical impact of rent control measures adopted in response to specific social economic and political issues which emerged at the time. Rent control—together with other exceptional reconstruction measures—contributed above all to the reinforcement of the post‐war development pattern, founded on owner occupation and self‐financed Property development. This in the short run acted against a planned policy rationale and to the various planned attempts formulated during reconstruction. In the long run, it has also acted as a determinant for the consolidation of an ‘non‐planning policy’ situation persistent in Athens and in most urban areas in Greece.     

Participating together: dialogic space for children and architects in the design process

Typically enmeshed in the ‘voice’ perspective within children’s participation debates, there are currently sporadic insights into designer–child creative dialogue. Drawing on the findings of a Leverhulme Trust-funded research project, this paper articulates moments of dialogue between architects and children in spatial design processes, whose spatial and symbolic qualities help to understand the interactions and meeting of cultures. Several authors have discussed the transformational potential for adults and children to ‘co-author’ identities in dialogical contexts. The paper builds on this body of research to suggest that design dialogue offers the space, literally and metaphorically, for children and architects to participate together. Identifying the qualities of the dialogic design space as potentially present in children’s and adults’ everyday cultures and interdependent relations, it is proposed that this dialogical framework might diversify architects’ and children’s roles in the design process and enrich practices and perceptions of design participation.     

Territorial development,planning reform and urban governance: the case of Ireland’s second-tier cities

The increased emphasis within Europe on the role of second-tier cities has implications for the ways in which these urban centres are considered within national spatial planning strategies. In centralized, monocentric states such as Ireland, there has been a general ambivalence towards urban policy for cities outside the capital city, and historically, this has prevented the development of a strong, diversified urban hierarchy undermining prospects for balanced regional development. This paper examines the extent to which a new found emphasis on Ireland’s second-tier cities which emerged in the ‘Gateways’ policy of the National Spatial Strategy was matched by subsequent political and administrative commitment to facilitate the development of these urban centres. Following a discussion of the position of second-tier cities in an international context and a brief overview of recent demographic and economic trends, the paper assesses the relative performance of Ireland’s second-tier cities in influencing development trends, highlighting a comprehensive failure to deliver compact urban growth. In this context, the paper then discusses the implications of current development plans for the second-tier cities and proposals for Irish local government reform for securing compact urban development.     

‘The right to immobility’ and the uneven distribution of spatial capital: negotiating youth transitions in northern Sweden

‘Successful adulthoods’ are associated with mobile professionals, higher education and cosmopolitan lifestyles. This paper takes an interest in how this discourse is adopted or altered by young people living far away from big cities. Based on interviews in a traditional woodland community in northern Sweden, the study examines how young people in the second and final years of upper secondary school negotiate their transition from education to work. It draws on the two-dimensional concept of ‘spatial capital’. It sheds light firstly on a range of local possibilities underpinned by ‘position capital’, such as proximity to mining districts as well as to educational institutions. These possibilities compete with ‘situation capital’ in the form of young people’s dispositions towards mobility where they consider alternatives in other cities in Sweden and sometimes – although rarely – abroad. I argue that spatial capital is an indication of young people’s habitus, where the geographical marginality of the study location influences perceptions of the future in divergent and sometimes contradictory ways. The paper also problematizes contemporary society’s privileging of mobility, which should be viewed in relation to youth’s perceived ‘right to immobility’.     

Attitudes towards Heroin Addicts and Addiction in Inter-War Greece

Abstract

This article concentrates on the ‘drug scare’ caused by the introduction of heroin to Greece in the inter-war period. It will first retrace the story of heroin’s introduction into the Greek drug scene and assess the reasons for its speedy diffusion among drug users. Following this, it will examine some central themes in the discourse on drugs and heroin in particular, such as the actual or projected harm caused to individuals, society, or the nation as a whole. Then the focus will shift to perceptions of heroin and its users, considering broader debates which circulated in Greek inter-war society, for example, the country’s identity and its position within two parallel and interrelated conceptual frameworks: traditional vs. modern and ‘East’ vs. ‘West’. The paper will conclude by addressing drug users’ self-representations that were influenced, to a certain degree, by the prevailing approaches to drug addiction.     

'[…;] all poetry is difficult […]: the limitations of Seferis' modernist poetics

Abstract

In Greece, as in several other countries in the period between the two World Wars, one of the serious charges frequently made against Modernism was that it was impossibly bad mannered towards the reader – that it made no effort at all to communicate and that modernist poetry was ‘difficult’ or ‘obscure’. For example, as early as 1931, Kostis Palamas – the poet who had had an enormous impact on Greek literary affairs in the first half of this century – in a charming if not somewhat condescending letter addressed to George Seferis, noted that the poems of <inline-graphic href="splitsection4_in1.tif"/>were ‘cryptographic’ and stated that he was personally unable to find the ‘key’ that was needed for deciphering such difficult poetry (Palamas 1931). A few years earlier, Seferis himself had noted in his journals that whenever he tried to read Valery's poems to Palamas and his circle, they had reacted by saying that they did not have time to solve ‘puzzles’ (1975: 62).     

Politics of the ‘creative industries’ discourse and its variants

The existing academic debate on creative industries can be summarised as ‘Trojan horse or Rorschach blot’: creative industries working as a neoliberal discourse or producing different effects depending on local context. Arguing that these are two sides of the same coin, this article looks closely at the discourse’s depoliticising and encompassing forces and their interplay on the discourse’s intersection to the broader new economy narrative. The article’s focus is South Korean variants of creative industries discourse. First, the country’s ‘content industries’ discourse served as a Trojan horse for the depoliticising narrative of knowledge economy while boosting the cultural sector discursively and financially. Second, ‘creative economy’ has very recently emerged as the current conservative government’s master economic narrative. This discourse allows the government’s neoliberal economic policies to be further justified while making cultural policy unable to persuasively claim that creativity belongs in the culture’s domain.     

Illustrating spatial policies in Europe

The visualisation of spatial policy options through maps and other cartographic illustrations can be very powerful both in the planning process and in communicating the key messages of planning strategies. However, experience from the ‘European Spatial Development Perspective’ (ESDP) shows that visualisation can also be the most difficult aspect in transnational spatial planning processes. This paper explores the potential role of policy maps in communicating spatial policy, and the progress made so far in visualising spatial policies in European spatial planning. It suggests possible reasons for the difficulties on reaching agreement on the form and content of planning policy maps at EU and transnational levels. The paper goes on to discuss theories that might assist in improving performance in the use of cartographic visualisations in European spatial planning. The article concludes by highlighting the need for further research on the communicative potential of cartographic visualisations in European spatial planning.     

The age of the manager is over? Shale gas fracking and the challenge to the post-political regime for English planning

Planning systems developed through the period of ‘normative’, ‘third way’ neoliberalism were critiqued as being ‘post-political’. Planning systems were developed that bypassed political conflicts through technocratic and consensus-seeking approaches following a so-called ‘end of history’ in which left/right ideological conflicts were deemed settled. Following the North Atlantic financial crisis of 2007/8 though, scholars have begun to question whether this is a suitable critique of planning, and state institutions more generally, as political and economic conditions shift. This paper examines a case of an exemplar post-political planning system: England. The paper identifies three key logics of a ‘post-political regime’ for planning: techno-managerialism, consensus and participation. Through an analysis of texts and interviews of contested planning decisions made over shale gas fracking sites, this paper shows a ‘post-political regime’ for planning facing a crisis of legitimacy as it is challenged by an anti-fracking movement and reactionary interventions from central government. The paper provides an institutional level analysis of the crisis of post-political planning, which has lost legitimacy amidst the slow collapse of normative neoliberalism.     

South Africa’s form of globalisation: a continental posture paradox for insertion and dependence

The fashionable form of globalisation has perpetuated Africa’s incapacity for auto-centeredness. As promises of political and economic reforms did not materialize and as economically powerful states continued to be indifferent, most African states resorted to the strategy of self-interest for international legitimacy and faith in foreign direct investment (FDI) and aid. Departing from its portrayal as a relatively developed, competitive and civil-minded state in Africa, South Africa reinvented modernity in the hope of servicing similar self-interests. I argue that South Africa’s form of globalisation is paradoxical. While positing as a voice for the voiceless and leader of African renaissance, that country simultaneously mediated Africa’s relations for appropriation of neo-liberal principles. Occurring predominantly through political and economic liberalisation, globalisation of Africa is ‘an old story’ of insertion for dependence on foreign capital. I show that South Africa’s neo-liberal agenda in Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR), as well, engendered openness to imports. Given the commonalities between GEAR and the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), I argue that the latter is South Africa’s instrument of ‘reintegrating’ Africa. I also illustrate that South Africa’s foreign economic policy in Africa and NEPAD are founded on the marginalisation thesis, misreading of the paradoxical operations of neo-orthodoxy globalisation in Africa and the thinking that South Africa is suffering due to its geographical association with Africa. I conclude that that country’s form of globalisation will further empty Africa of its capacity of auto-centeredness and engender openness to imports, which are yet to deliver continental recovery.     

The Element of Sustainability in the Greek Statutory Spatial Planning System: A Real Operational Concept or a Political Declaration?

This paper focuses on the response of the Greek statutory spatial planning system to the concept and principles of sustainability. The query to be answered is the following: Have the structure, institutions, processes and instruments of the planning system been affected by sustainability principles and in what way? Furthermore, are there any public policy results contributing to sustainable development and attributable to spatial planning? Methodological approach is based on cross-examination of a group of assumed sustainability criteria on the one side and recent changes/transformations in the key-factors of the spatial planning system (institutions, processes, instruments) on the otherside. The approach is complemented by reverse direction considerations: in cases of operational processes leading evidently up to sustainability the responsible policy sector is acknowledged and any factual connection to spatial planning is addressed. The main conclusion is that for the time being sustainability objectives in strategic and top-down spatial planning in Greece rather perform the function of a political manifesto and 'legalize' traditional weaknesses than drive real development towards a sustainable course. The chances for operational success are expected slim in the near future and originate mostly from the European Union (EU) political and economic pressures, producing however fragmented, single-dimension (mainly environment conservation) results for which commitment of the involved societies has never been accomplished and confirmed.