Venezuelan peasants,capitalism, and the modern world‐system

Roseberry, William. Coffee and Capitalism in the Venezuelan Andes. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983. xv + 256 pp. including bibliography and index. $22.50 cloth.     

Creative planning in Ireland: the role of culture‐led development in Irish planning

This paper attempts to close specific gaps in our understanding of practice and policy concerning culture, planning and development in Ireland. This is a nation in which the development and planning impacts of cultural policy are of increasing importance, yet the state of knowledge of policy and infrastructure remains underdeveloped. The paper begins by charting the evolution of culture‐led development in Western Europe over the last few decades, highlighting the emergence of culture as a central element in both economic and social development strategies. The paper then focuses upon Ireland, reviewing the nation's rich cultural and especially musical heritage, and the direct economic impacts of this. Detailing the successful mobilization of this heritage in search of tourism, the recent incorporation of culture into strategic planning and development initiatives, and the links between culture and development in Dublin, Cork and Galway, the paper concludes that Ireland is in a strong position to avail itself of the positive social and economic impacts of planning for culture and creativity.     

Expanding the ‘language’ of planning: A meditation on planning education for the twenty‐first century

What kinds of knowledge do planners need in a post‐modern age in which cities and regions are characterized by fragmentation, polarization, and ‘difference’ in its many guises? This paper identifies four dilemmas of traditional planning education: the reduction of ‘knowledge’ to a set of measurable skills; the ossifying of programmes around a core which reinforces an outdated modernist paradigm; the loss of focus on questions of meaning, of value, of the spirit, which has resulted from a divorce between planning and design education; and the tendency to draw tight boundaries around professional identity, which prevents a truly interdisciplinary practice from emerging.

Preparing planners for the challenges of the twenty‐first century might involve the following: identifying the specificity of the domain of planning in a more dynamic way so that the core does not become redundant every decade; articulating planning programmes with environmental and design programmes; shifting from an emphasis on skills to key literacies (five are identified); approaching planning as an ethical inquiry.     

Italy and the politics of European defence: playing by the logic of multi‐level networks

The article looks at the role of Italy in the decision‐making arena of the EU Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), analysing the initiatives it put in place to address and influence the construction of a common defence. The article aims to explain the ability or inability of Italy to build up a consensus around its proposals. By studying two initiatives in the field of European defence and security, it seeks to determine the factors which resulted in the differing outcomes of Italian actions at the European level.     

Ideology,clientelism and the ‘fascistization’ of the Italian state: fascists in the Interior Ministry police

Abstract

This is a study of fascist police personnel under Mussolini's dictatorship. Based on an examination of the personal files of the Interior Ministry police, the article questions how far the recruitment and/or promotion during the mid-to-late 1920s of fascist police officers and officials, several of whom had been involved in the black-shirt movement before the March on Rome, represented an effective ‘fascistization’ strategy. If their presence led to a ‘fascistization’ of the police of sorts, they generally distinguished themselves neither as ‘good’ policemen nor as ‘good’ fascists. The professional attitudes and ideological outlooks of fascist policemen should be considered in the broader context of clientelism and factionalism which characterized public life in Italy and which played a key role in career advancement in the state.     

Seeing like an investor: urban development planning,financialisation, and investors’ perceptions of London as an investment space

There is a growing orthodoxy that since the global financial crisis European policy-makers and planning systems have become more dependent on inward investment and the availability of global finance to fund welfare services and projects. This process of financialisation, it is claimed, is driven by the needs of developers and investors, who are focused on maximizing returns and limiting their social and economic liabilities. Planning agencies and traditional territory-based arrangements are viewed with increasing suspicion, as standing in the way of investment and acting as a brake on much needed house-building and regeneration. However, in this paper, drawing on detailed research with investors and developers in London, we argue that there needs to be a stronger focus in academic and policy writing on the multiple, variegated, and diverse calculations and framings that private sector actors take when making investment decisions. Too often their perspectives are caricatured and/or over-simplified. We show that and imaginations of planning and regulation are complex and that many firms have realized that market success results from becoming more deeply embedded in the local political, social, and regulatory environments in which they are investing. A greater understanding of these multiple forms of calculation, in turn, opens up opportunities for the maintenance and/or implementation of more effective forms of territorially-based soft and hard regulation. The paper concludes by outlining a broader research agenda for planning and urban studies.