Regional Approaches to Mesopotamian Archaeology: The Contribution of Archaeological Surveys

This work synthesizes and critically evaluates the results of field surveys conducted over the last 20 years in southern (lower) and northern (upper) Mesopotamia, with emphasis placed on the increasing contribution of off-site and intensive surveys to regional analysis. During the Ubaid period the density of settlement was probably higher in the rain-fed north than the irrigated south, and even during the phase of 3rd millennium B.C. urbanization, settlement densities in the north were probably equivalent to or even exceeded those in the south. Although trends in settlement were often synchronous between north and south, there was also a marked spatial variability in settlement, with declines in one area being compensated by rises elsewhere. Particularly clear was the existence of a major structural transformation from nucleated centers during the Bronze Age towards dispersed patterns of rural settlement and more extensive lower towns in the Iron Age.     

Equitable Approaches to Local Economic Development

Central city economic development during the 1980s and 1990s resounded with the theme of "public-private partnerships" putting together new downtown hotels, sports stadiums, and festival marketplaces. Yet, as city after city proclaimed its "renaissance" and "rebirth," poverty and unemployment increased in many of the same cities. Economic disparities also increased between central cities and their suburbs. These contrasting patterns of growth and decline were often reflected in local economic development struggles over downtown versus neighborhoods, economic development as job generation versus real estate development, and the rich and powerful versus the poor and marginalized. In some cities, these concerns often were articulated by African-American, Latino, and blue-collar communities and their activist supporters. They led to new development strategies designed to balance more equitably the costs and benefits of local economic development. The new strategies included opening government to previously excluded constituencies, linking downtown development to neighborhood development managed by community development corporations, and balancing development across economic sectors. This article reviews efforts in several cities to implement redistributive urban planning and local economic development policies. It concludes with three possibilities for improving broader equity outcomes in future local economic development.     

Regional Aspects of Collaborative Invention Across National Innovation Systems

Abstract

This article analyzes the association between intraregional collaboration and levels of invention in nine developed countries. Patent data of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) regions of nine inventive countries are used to determine if a significant positive correlation exists between reliance on own region partners and overall invention. Strong intraregional collaboration is also related to the knowledge bases of technologies and to the tendency for inventors to team up in the first place. Results show strong evidence that inventors in highly inventive regions co-patent more with own region partners and that they have a greater tendency to collaborate in the first place. Support for the hypothesis that information and computer technologies favour own region collaboration and that more biotechnology invention encourages external alliances is mixed. However, there is far less evidence that more biotechnology invention encourages more external alliances. Variation in the results between countries is interpreted as evidence that national innovation systems have distinctive internal locational attributes. The findings refute the assertion that strengthening aspatial network proximities has eclipsed the pivotal role of intraregional linkages in technological advance.     

The Scientific Trajectory of the French School of Proximity: Interaction- and Institution-based Approaches to Regional Innovation Systems

The multi-faceted concept of proximity is often used nowadays in many theoretical and empirical analyses. It mainly originates in some French regional scientists' attempt, in the early 1990s, to develop new conceptual and methodological avenues with a view to the study of the industrial and spatial dynamics. The wide diffusion of the resulting research findings is explained by the fact that these scholars realized early on that it was in their interest to collectively structure their works through the setting-up of a research group. The present paper sets out to outline the scientific and institutional trajectories of the French group “Proximity Dynamics”, while underlining the progressive broadening of its scientific and institutional dimensions, as well as the main theoretical research fields these trajectories have permitted to investigate.     

System Innovation in Spatial Development: Current Dutch Approaches

A system innovation is a cross-organizational qualitative intervention that various system participants bring about together through their various contributions of different kinds of knowledge and skill. The term refers to the innovation of an entire system involving many actors. Spatial development refers to both the dynamic in land use, and changes in the development and implementation of spatial plans. The current large number of societal and spatial developments taken as a whole in a country such as the Netherlands increase the pressure on space and create the need for a powerful system innovation. This paper explains the system innovation which is going on in the Netherlands now, drawing on such themes as the coproduction of policy, public–private partnership and demand management. A process architecture for area development is more and more proposed, in which project envelopes are formed, the scope is optimized and surplus profits are ploughed back into the area (value capturing). The future will tell whether this new approach will really work and whether the traditional values and performance of Dutch spatial planning will be safeguarded under changing circumstances.     

From Clusters to Platform Policies in Regional Development

This short briefing paper addresses the next stage in the evolution of regional development policy. It is clear that the cluster idea has held sway in this field for some 20 years. By now, practitioners and academics are widely sceptical of policy capabilities to create let alone build clusters. Recessionary times make this more difficult. Moreover, where some recent success can be seen, it is associated with command economies such as China where normal market and democratic barriers to large public investments in such measures are absent. Nevertheless, clusters exist in many places and there is evidence, displayed in this paper, that in some regions they have mutated into multi-cluster platforms. Now, as regions seek to rebalance, platform policies are evolving and being implemented. This paper shows how this is in part a response to “Grand Challenges” and the emergence of “challenge-driven” innovation.     

Learning to Innovate: Building Regional Technology Development Learning Networks in Midsized Cities

There has been increased attention to the importance of knowledge in economic success. The ability of a region to develop learning capabilities has been linked to knowledge-based success. However, conflicting perspectives exist about whether and how it is possible for policies and institutions in a lagging location to foster a learning region. This article examines this debate in the context of an effort to develop a second region of innovation (outside of Atlanta) in the US state of Georgia through a learning network called the Midsize Cities Technology Development Initiative. This initiative partnered four midsized cities in Georgia with four European midsized cities to stimulate benchmarking and learning. While traditional perspectives on economic development persist, some learning and reorientation of strategy was evident in the participating US cities. In stimulating these changes, significant roles were played by outsiders in brokering interaction and imparting fresh ideas, in strengthening ties to research and innovation capabilities in the core Atlanta metropolis, and in building new local institutions. A major new state-sponsored programme (the Centers of Innovation) with local presence in each of the four cities resulted from the effort. Still, it remains to be seen how learning will continue and whether a fully fledged second region of innovation will emerge in Georgia.     

Regional Identity in Regional Development and Planning1

This paper analyses the regional identity and social capital formation process and components. Regional identity is the special kind of phenomenon, which forms throughout historical and territorial socialization. The great ambition of this paper is to interrelate Anssi Paasi (1986) and other cultural geographers' and sociologists' ideas with recent regional economic development and planning discussion and to enhance regional identity as a planning tool. The theoretical part describes components and the process of regional identity formation. We assume that regional identity correlates with people's volition in achieving common goals, raises their personal activity and influences due to that regional development and planning. The regional identity is crucial in securing public participation in planning. The empirical part of the paper is based on mass survey analysis.     

区域对比:环境与聚落的演进

Through the comparative analysis considering environment, archaeological culture sequence, alteration of settlement quantities, relation between the change of environment and the movement of settlements, cultural embedding superposition exponent of ancient sites, ect. among three regions, the author thinks that they respectively represent three different developing patterns of ancient settlements. The middle and lower reaches of Yellow river and the Valley of Xilamulun River respectively represented different development patterns of the two native cultures, namely, the agricultural civilization of Great River and the half-agricultural and half-stockbreeding civilization of northern districts. The Valley of Hulu river, located in the northwest, can be the representation of secondary cultures, which originated from civilizations of great river, but dissimilated during the course of spreading abroad towards west.