WHAT ATTRACTS KNOWLEDGE WORKERS? THE ROLE OF SPACE AND SOCIAL NETWORKS

The aim of this paper is to identify the determinants of the geographical mobility of skilled individuals, such as inventors, across European regions. Among a large number of variables, we focus on the role of social proximity between inventors’ communities. We use a control function approach to address the endogenous nature of networks, and zero‐inflated negative binomial models to accommodate our estimations to the count nature of the dependent variable and the high number of zeros it contains. Our results highlight the importance of physical proximity, job opportunities, social networks, as well as other relational variables in mediating this phenomenon.     

DO FEDERAL DEFICITS MOTIVATE REGIONAL FISCAL (IM)BALANCES? EVIDENCE FOR THE SPANISH CASE

This paper studies the vertical and horizontal interactions between federal and regional governments in terms of public deficits. Recent studies commonly restraint budget slippages to the incentives created by the institutional arrangements within a country. Alternatively, we estimate here a fiscal reaction function for the Spanish regions over the period 1995–2010, paying special attention to the impact of the federal fiscal stance on regional fiscal imbalances. Our results indicate that higher public deficits for the central government encourage larger fiscal imbalances at the regional level. This vertical interaction is interpreted in the context of yardstick competition models. We also find a significant impact from fiscal decisions taken by governments at the same decision‐making tier in a specific region.     

GUERRILLA WARFARE IN THE PLANNING SYSTEM: REVOLUTIONARY PROGRESS TOWARDS SUSTAINABILITY?

This article extends Qviström's (2007; Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography 89 (3): 269–282) ideas concerning “landscapes out of order” within a re‐discovering and re‐imagining of spatial planning theory and practice. Taking the viewpoint that planners and decision‐makers order and manage space in prescribed and constrained ways, the article argues that this can hinder innovative practices which have the potential to deliver significant societal and environmental benefits. Using case studies from permaculture and guerrilla gardening, we illustrate how planning practice can be rooted in confrontation and legal challenge rather than with more positive and inclusive approaches, as is envisaged within spatial planning theory. Clearly, the ways in which such initiatives intersect with the planning system raise important questions about joined‐up policy across scales and sectors, and the ability of planning to be a proactive vehicle of environmental and social change. Our findings confirm that spatial planning theory is largely “disintegrated” (Scott et al. 2013; Progress in Planning 83: 1–52) from much contemporary planning and environmental practice and wider discourses of sustainability. This suggests an urgent re‐examination of the spirit and purpose of planning to embrace and promote the new even where they challenge established orthodoxy and planning order.     

WHAT HAS THE DALAI DONE OVER THE PAST 36 YEARS?

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WHAT DRIVES THE URBAN WAGE PREMIUM? EVIDENCE ALONG THE WAGE DISTRIBUTION

This paper aims at disentangling the role played by different explanations on the urban wage premium along the wage distribution. We analyze the wage dynamics of migrants from lower to higher density areas in Italy, using quantile regressions and individual data. The results show that unskilled workers benefit more from a wage premium accruing over time, while skilled workers enjoy a wage premium when they migrate as well as a wage increase over time. Further, we find that for unskilled workers the wage growth over time is mainly due to human capital accumulation in line with the “learning” hypothesis, while for skilled workers the wage growth is mainly explained by the “coordination” hypothesis, i.e., cities enhance the probability of better matches between workers and firms.     

WHAT IS THE BEST COIL ORIENTATION IN THE SLINGRAM ELECTROMAGNETIC PROSPECTING METHOD?

In the Slingram electromagnetic method the appropriate coil orientation must be chosen. Until now, the choice of this parameter has not been discussed but as it influences the shape of the anomalies and their magnitude, it is important to try to define the best possible arrangement. Theoretical studies of the 1D layered model, the response of a dipole and the response of a 3D body are used to define the best arrangement. The perpendicular configuration with a vertical moment transmitter gives better results in most cases and the building of an apparatus with this coil arrangement should give very interesting results.     

ASSESSING THE PRODUCTS OF GOVERNMENT: WHAT GETS DISTRIBUTED?*

The literature on the provision and distribution of urban public services has recently stressed the study of impacts rather than outputs. Impacts are conventionally conceived as the final stage of an orderly production process. Benefits are produced only after impacts are achieved. This paper argues, to the contrary, that costs and benefits stem from each stage of the public service production process. Consequently, a focus on the impact stage alone can be grossly misleading.     

“WHAT HAS POSTERITY EVER DONE FOR ME?”: FUTURE GENERATIONS,INTERGENERATIONAL JUSTICE,AND THE CHRONOPOLITICS OF DISTANT FUTURES

“Future generations” play a key role in current political debates. In the context of the climate crisis especially, political controversies are often framed as moral problems of “intergenerational justice.” This article aims to historicize the use of the concept of “future generations” in modern political discourse and to uncover its long—and often ambivalent—history. Its main argument is that talking about “future generations” was part of an attempt to integrate (distant) futures into the political discourse of the time. The first part of the article outlines a theoretical perspective on the relationship between generations and temporalities. The second part focuses on how anticipating “future generations” became an important part of the history of utopian thinking and political planning in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, especially in the realm of demographic and economic discussions. The third part analyzes the emergence of “future ethics” and “intergenerational justice” as important political discourses in the 1970s. This part refers both to the academic debates about “future generations” and to the way political decision-makers used the concept to legitimize their policies. The article argues that the concept of “future generations” should not be taken as an ethical principle that transcended the political debates of the present. Rather, it was itself the result of intense political controversies.     

THE CRISIS OF HUMANITY: OR,WHAT IF WE HAVE NEVER BEEN HUMAN?

This collection of nine essays brings together a variety of responses to the question of the “nonhuman turn” within the humanities and the social sciences, understood broadly as a developing concern with overcoming anthropocentrism in its diverse manifestations. Emerging from The Nonhuman Turn conference held at the University of Wisconsin‐Milwaukee in 2012, which was hosted by the Center for 21st Century Studies, it represents the first attempt to account for and consolidate the many intellectual approaches and developments that may now be regarded as constituting the nonhuman turn. The nonhuman turn is contextualized as both “yet another” turn but also a necessary one, and as something critically distinct from “the posthuman turn”—whereas the posthuman turn is concerned with what comes after the human (ways of being, ways of thinking), the nonhuman turn insists (according to editor Richard Grusin) that “we have never been human.” My reading of this volume suggests that this claim is not borne out across the chapters it contains, and that the notion that we have never been human, though a noble gesture to Bruno Latour's widely lauded claim that “we have never been modern,” does not enable a new philosophy, nor does it advance the two primary streams of philosophical thought featured here: object‐oriented ontology (OOO) and new materialism.     

WELCOME TO THE NEIGHBORHOOD: HOW CAN REGIONAL SCIENCE CONTRIBUTE TO THE STUDY OF NEIGHBORHOODS?*

ABSTRACT We argue in this paper that neighborhoods are highly relevant for the types of issues at the heart of regional science. First, residential and economic activity takes place in particular locations, and particular neighborhoods. Many attributes of those neighborhood environments matter for this activity, from the physical amenities, to the quality of the public and private services received. Second, those neighborhoods vary in their placement in the larger region and this broader arrangement of neighborhoods is particularly important for location choices, commuting behavior and travel patterns. Third, sorting across these neighborhoods by race and income may well matter for educational and labor market outcomes, important components of a region's overall economic activity. For each of these areas we suggest a series of unanswered questions that would benefit from more attention. Focused on neighborhood characteristics themselves, there are important gaps in our understanding of how neighborhoods change – the causes and the consequences. In terms of the overall pattern of neighborhoods and resulting commuting patterns, this connects directly to current concerns about environmental sustainability and there is much need for research relevant to policy makers. And in terms of segregation and sorting across neighborhoods, work is needed on better spatial measures. In addition, housing market causes and consequences for local economic activity are under researched. We expand on each of these, finishing with some suggestions on how newly available data, with improved spatial identifiers, may enable regional scientists to answer some of these research questions.     

DID THE GREEKS GO TO COLCHIS FOR METALS?

A too simple understanding of the process of Greek colonisation, especially the reasons for it, sometimes leads modern scholars to unrealistic conclusions. This paper examines the view commonly found in the literature that the main reason for the arrival of the lonians in Colchis in the middle of the 6th century BC was the area's richness in metals. Archaeological material discussed here shows that Eastern Pontus was far from being so well endowed, and that the local tribes were less advanced in metallurgy than is often believed. The Scythian 'incursion'into Colchis at the end of the 7th century BC both introduced Colchians to iron metallurgy and gave rise to a lacuna in the material culture of the area. New tribes in the Eastern Black Sea in the middle of the 6th century BC revived the iron industry, but it never again reached the scale of production achieved in the 7th century BC. The involvement of the Greeks in iron metallurgy is a matter of which, so far, we know nothing. Nevertheless, the Greeks, trying to adapt their art to the tastes of the local rulers, established in Colchis in the 5th century BC schools of gold- and silver-smiths, as well as the production of metal seals and engraved gems.     

ARE NEW URBAN FORMS EMERGING? EMPIRICAL TESTS FOR CANADIAN URBAN AREAS

Frequent reference is made in the urban literature to a recent and massive restructuring of the form of contemporary cities. This paper tests five separate but related hypotheses concerning the outcomes of this process and whether they suggest the emergence of new urban forms. The analysis builds on the results reported in an earlier paper in this journal using data on the changing intraurban properties of the 27 largest urban areas in Canada. The empirical results confirm the hypotheses of a continued decentralization of population and employment and of an increasingly diverse social and ethnocultural landscape. They do not, however, support the hypotheses of higher levels of residential segregation by income nor the emergence of an elite inner city (the reverse social status gradient). A wider spatial mismatch between the distribution of jobs and labour is confirmed by journey-to-work data, but primarily for inner city residents. In addition, these data suggest that, despite the rapid suburbanization of employment, a distinct multi-nucleated urban form has not as yet emerged. Les publications dans le domaine de la littérature urbaine font état fréquemment d'une restructuration massive et recente de l'organisation des villes contemporaines. Le présent article examine cinq hypothèses différentes quoique reliées—hypothèses quant à l'issue du processus de restructuration et quant à l'émergence possible de nouvelles formes. L'analyse s'appuie sur les résultats rapportés dans un article précédent publié dans cette revue et utilisant des données sur les propriétés intra-urbaines en changement dans les 27 agglomérations urbaines les plus importantes du Canada. Les résultats empiriques confirment fes hypothèses d'une décentralisation continue de la population et de l'emploi et d'un paysage social et ethnoculturel de plus en plus divers. Cependant les résultats n'appuientpas I'hypothèse d'une plus grande ségrégation résidentielle d'après le revenu ou encore l'hypothèse de l'émergence d'un centre urbain occupé par l'élite (le gradient inverse du statut social). Les donnees du trajet au travail confirment l'existence d'un déséquilibre spatial beaucoup plus grand entre la distribution des emplois et celle de la main d'euvre, ceci principalement chez les résidents du centre. De plus ces données suggèrent qu'une forme distincte de nuclei multiple n'est pas encore apparue malgré une décentralisation rapide de l'emploi en banlieue.     

EVALUATION FOR CUTBACK MANAGEMENT IN SMALL CITIES: CAN THE PROBLEMS BE SOLVED?

Problems of undertaking applied research in small cities planning economic cutbacks are explored. Researchers face problems in balancing administrative and political pressures. Predetermined ideas held by members of the city council on how the city should cut back services might cause politicians to ignore the findings of the study. While the belief of department heads that the study was simply going to excuse cutbacks could cause difficulty in data gathering efforts. In overcoming these problems care was needed in defining precisely what topics to study, in getting mutual consent on technical issues and in protecting the findings from possible distortion.