Berlin: The Metropolis as a Production Space

Metropolitan regions can be regarded as economic areas comprising various sub-economies with different forms of economic and spatial organization. The purpose of this article is to undertake a critical appraisal of the vision of Berlin as a 'service metropolis' through empirical observation of sectoral trends and locational patterns in the city, and to establish that Berlin's urban area is a major production space with a complex fabric of specialized production districts. This spatial organization will be examined in terms of the level of agglomeration of various sub-economies with special reference to the formation of local enterprise clusters in the Berlin economic area. Berlin's specialization profile and the employment trend in the city compared with other metropolitan cities in Germany make it clear that the metropolis of Berlin is under threat as a production space, and this threat partly stems from the way in which the real estate business has developed in the Berlin area.     

The nuclear nation and the German question: an American reactor in West Berlin

This essay analyses the relationship between nuclear technology and ideas about the nation in the late 1950s by looking at the US–West German bilateral agreement and at American proposals to develop reactors in West Berlin, both of which emerged from Eisenhower's 1953 Atoms for Peace programme. American efforts to maintain tight control over the German nuclear sphere contradicted the claim that reactors were solely instruments of peace. At the same time, plans to build a reactor in West Berlin underscored that city's status as an occupied city with an uncertain future and with ill-defined relationships to East and West Germany.     

南宋建康城居住空间布局研究

建康城是南宋时期的留都,城市地位仅次于京师临安,对其空间布局进行研究可以为城市发展提供稀缺资源和文化启迪。南宋建康城内的居住空间存在一个由区域中心出现——新街道出现(表现为新的街道名出现)——新坊设立(表现为新的坊名的出现)的过程,这一现象深刻的反映了当时城市经济及其文化内涵的变迁。     

Governing Global Displacement in Austerity Urbanism: The Case of Berlin's Refugee Housing Crisis

A surge of forcibly displaced migrants into Europe in 2015 culminated in what has been referred to as the ‘refugee crisis’. As the continent's top destination country, Germany has been widely praised for its welcoming culture while heavily criticized for failures of integration. This is particularly true of Berlin — a city that has absorbed the highest number of war refugees in Europe, many of whom remain without stable accommodation. Despite its significance, the scholarship has largely neglected the housing question within the European refugee crisis. The aim of this article is to cast a critical light on the complexities and contradictions glossed over by the refugee crisis trope. Drawing on the Berlin case, the author argues that resettlement initiatives need to be understood against the backdrop of austerity urbanism, particularly its insistence that markets can meet housing demand. By focusing on three types of shelter provisioning for refugees, the article reveals the multifaceted and nuanced ways in which the Berlin government, refugees and grassroots organizations contest, produce and navigate the moving frames of austerity urbanism in search of stable housing.     

新中国60年西宁城市建设和发展的理念与实践

新中国成立60年来,西宁城市建设由过去的老城局部改造、综合开发转向骨架拓展、环境整治、功能完善、特色塑造的一体化发展,城市在系统性建设中焕发出新的活力,中心城市在区域经济社会发展中的引擎功能日趋强化。本文对西宁城市建设和发展的理念与实践进行了梳理,目的在于总结经验,为进一步推动西宁城市建设和发展提供借鉴。     

“马斯基尔”与犹太社会——以启蒙视阈下的德国为个案

欧洲启蒙运动发生之后,德国犹太思想家马斯基尔以自由理性为旗帜,批评传统犹太教、发展世俗教育、提倡现代生活方式,引领犹太人走出隔都,对犹太社会产生了极为深刻的影响,也留下了惨痛的教训,越来越多的犹太人背离了民族传统。从此以后,传统与现代性的关系成为犹太史上的核心命题。本文以启蒙视阈下的德国尤其是柏林为个案,探讨社会转型时期犹太思想家对传统社会的重创,分析犹太文化与现代主义、德国主流文化多重汇集之后,犹太知识阶层无所适从的精神困境,从而为研究现代化背景下少数族群的身份认同以及亚文化的存续与发展提供借鉴。     

Post‐political planning and community opposition: asserting and challenging consensus in planning urban regeneration in Newcastle,New South Wales

This paper examines recent urban regeneration plans for inner city Newcastle, in New South Wales, Australia. The focus is on recent plans to rejuvenate the historical commercial centre of the city—the Hunter Street Mall. Recent plans for the city are positioned as post‐political efforts by planning and development agents to limit antagonistic politics and secure consensus around a future planning vision. Core to this new vision is high‐rise development. Formal and technocratic consultation processes are central to efforts to secure consensus and limit conflict. Yet, conflict nevertheless arises as local residents, community groups, and politicians oppose the planning vision pursued by planning and development agents. Debates about the need for regeneration and the form of regeneration surface as central points of contest. Likewise, the material configuration of the city and wider political context frame both post‐political planning efforts and oppositional politics. The paper contributes to a growing body of work by scholars who question the presence of a dominant, overarching post‐political condition. Rather, post‐political efforts emerge as contextual and fluid processes to secure the planning and development objectives of urban elites. As the case study illustrates, such post‐political efforts are rarely unchallenged, as contest and antagonistic politics emerge, allowing citizens to resist the efforts of state and development actors and help shape their cities.     

Beyond ‘logistics sprawl’ and ‘logistics anti-sprawl’. Case of the Katowice region,Poland

The growing role of logistics in the economic space of large metropolises is visible in an increasing number of objects of this kind as well as in their high spatial concentration. Taking into account these circumstances, a phenomenon known as ‘logistics sprawl’ is considered in the article. This is one of two problems concerning the development of logistics in metropolitan areas. Studying the Katowice conurbation in Poland, the authors note, however, that in this region the opposite phenomenon, which they define as a ‘logistics anti-sprawl’, is more noticable. Its characteristic feature is a location of logistics facilities not in the outer zone of the conurbation, but in its core. This phenomenon undoubtedly differs from the patterns of localization of logistics facilities in all major CEECs. It is caused by some chief factors which are disscused in the paper. Therefore, an attention is drawn on the period of socialist development of the region, its contemporary postindustrialism, urban shrinkage, as well as the polycentricity of the conurbation. The crucial question whether the expected reduction of the ‘sprawl logistics’ phenomenon may be based on the development model observed in the Katowice conurbation is also discussed in the article.     

Die Verlegung der Berliner Sternwarte nach Babelsberg — ein konservativer Neubeginn

In 1913 the Berlin Observatory was moved from the center of the city to Babelsberg on the outskirts of Berlin, now part of Potsdam. The new observatory was considerably larger in size and with respect to its staff, and it had got a completely new equipment. At that time it was the most modern astronomical observatory in Germany and possibly even in Europe. However, the scientific results achieved afterward were not comparable to that of other institutions, especially in the USA. A main reason was the conservative concept for the observatory, drawn up by Wilhelm Foerster and his colleagues, and restricting the work to classical fields of astronomy. Foerster's successor Hermann Struve tried to follow rather strictly this concept as well as the traditions of his family of astronomers. This led to conflicts with his collaborators Eugen Goldstein, Erwin Finlay Freundlich and Paul Guthnick, who were interested rather in astrophysics than in the classical problems.     

Building Localized Interactions Between Universities and Cities Through University Spatial Development

Universities are important players in the global development of knowledge economy, alongside being significant contributors to the economic development of their host cities. They are both significant knowledge enterprises and the suppliers of the human and intellectual capital on which the knowledge-based economy depends. What seems under-explored is how deliberative partnerships between universities and city authorities can develop around projects of mutual benefit, especially based on campus development. In this paper, with the help of five case studies (QUT, MIT, Harvard, Twente and Newcastle universities), we investigate how the spatial development of universities can be one of the main meeting points between the city and university and how it can be used for stimulating economic development and managing growth. These cases show that university—city collaborative initiatives focused on the university properties represent a desire to produce creative and competitive new urban spaces, which reinforce the position of the university and the city in global economy. They also show that these developments need to be jointly managed to avoid undesirable impacts on either side.     

Developments in Russia's Far East and their implications for the Pacific Basin

The Soviet Union ceased to exist as a subject of international law and a geopolitical reality in December 1991 with the declaration of a new Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). For the present the territory formerly known as the Soviet Far East remains part of the Russian Republic controlled from Moscow, but its political and economic destiny remains uncertain. In 1986 Mikhail Gorbachev asserted that the USSR was an Asian-Pacific country and that the development of the Far East region was to be reinvigorated. This coincided with. and was closely related to, efforts designed to improve relations with several countries in the Pacific Basin, including Australia. This paper outlines some of the infrastructural, social and other obstacles to development that can only be overcome by financial and technological assistance from abroad. Lingering international tensions (such as the Kurile Islands dispute with Japan) and political, economic and administrative uncertainties within the Russian Republic and the CIS more generally have led private companies — including several in Australia — to defer their investment plans. It seems likely that it will be many years before the Russian Far East will have much impact on the economy of the Pacific Basin.     

Application of Quantitative Methods of Settlement Analysis to a Lower-Level (Intra—Oblast) Economic Regionalization

Two quantitative techniques—the mean center of population of the old centrography school, and the potential of population—are applied to settlement analysis in Eastern Siberia for purposes of lower economic regionalization. The migrations of the mean center of population of Yakut ASSR and Irkutsk Oblast are interpreted in terms of regional development trends from the 1920s to the 1960s. Analyses of the potential of population for different dates suggest the formation of areal production nodes that can be used in delimiting lower economic regions. The boundaries between such lower-order regions tend to pass through undeveloped and sparsely settled areas that show up as low values on maps of the potential of population.     

Bergen and Seattle: A tale of strategic planning in two cities

Strategic planning, as developed in the military and business sectors, offers a procedural model with important differences from the earlier comprehensive approach. Economic and physical development strategies, often called for by national planning legislation in European countries, frequently have little in common with the model proposed by Steiner for private firms, or espoused for the public sector by Bryson and others: there appears to be confusion resulting from use of similar terms. This paper investigates efforts to employ at least the major features of strategic planning in two institutionally and culturally different contexts, nearly half a world apart. In Bergen, Norway, these principles have informed economic development planning and planning for a major district of the city. In the case of Seattle, Washington, USA, the new comprehensive plan is based on framework policies developed during a 2‐year public process, and now that the city‐wide plan is adopted, Seattle is turning to developing neighbourhood plans which will provide more operational detail for guiding public and private investments. Comparison of these two cases both provides contrasts and similarities stemming from the two different contexts, and help to evaluate the transférability of strategic planning from the private to the public sector.     

Institutional Arrangements and Political Mobilization in the New Italian Regionalism: The Role of Spatial Policies in the Piedmont Region

The paper focuses on the resurgence of the regions as protagonists of the process of the state rescaling in many European countries. In the EU countries this process can be seen as a result of a mix of economic and institutional factors, which have been producing an increasing competition between the central governments and the regional authorities. The rise of the multi-level governance and of the so-called Euroregionalism has reinforced the role of the regional scale in the territorial development: on one hand, with new actors like agencies and organizations engaged in the economic development (FDI attraction, place marketing, innovation and learning), on the other hand by the resurgence of “old” actors, such as the regions, in many cases empowered by processes of institutional devolution. The literature has investigated this re-composition of the political space with regard to the “hollowing out” and the “rescaling” of the state. On the base of these theoretical underpinnings, we discuss some empirical evidence from the Italian experience, in order to show whether and how the regional structures are not only “spaces for policies”, but also “spaces for politics”. Over the last decade, the changes in legal framework, the external inputs from supranational levels of government—the European Commission—and the re-territorialization processes have introduced many elements of innovation in the role of the regions. By illustrating the case of the Piedmont Region, we try to demonstrate that the transition towards the region as an active space of politics can be mediated by the sphere of the policies, especially the spatial ones.     

Where East meets West: The German—polish border region in transformation

There is growing interest in the German‐Polish border area's future status in the changing regional structure of Europe—contrasting scenarios contain, on the one hand, a vision of the region as a new ‘tiger’ region, and are seen at the other extreme as a ‘drainage area’ on the outskirts of the EU. In this article, border areas are treated from a point of view that pays more attention to the regions’ system of production and regulation. The first part deals with some general characteristics of border areas; the second part outlines in more detail the specific developmental conditions of the German‐Polish border area, especially the region between Berlin and Poznan along the middle part of the River Oder (comprising the Euro Region Pro Europa Viadrina). Three aspects of the border region's developmental conditions are emphasized: the region's quality of location within Europe and the respective national territories; the permeability of the border; and the economic structure in the border area, whereby forms of trans‐border economic linkage and cooperation are of particular interest. The last section discusses new challenges for European border areas as posed by economic change and the restructuring of the European spatial fabric.     

POPULATION GEOGRAPHY AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC PLANNING

Population geographers are urged to get involved in the program of socio-economic planning that is expected to supplement the present economic planning process in the Soviet Union. So far socio-economic plans have been drawn up only for a few large cities like Moscow, Leningrad and Sverdlovsk. In general, there is a need for integrating the social planning process with purely economic planning, and to supplement the present sectoral planning system with an integrated system of spatial planning entities. At the present time, city and regional plans are derived by simply collating sectoral data at the city and regional level rather than by a separate integrated spatial planning procedure. A system of intra-oblast regions, or okrugs, numbering perhaps 500 or more, is recommended as a new level suitable both for government administration and for socio-economic planning.     

Neutrality and submarine warfare: Germany and Spain during the First World War

The Spanish government maintained official neutrality during the Great War because deviating from neutrality would supposedly endanger the nation’s already limited political and social stability and even threaten the survival of the monarchic regime. In August 1914 there were no direct Spanish interests in the conflict and no benefit to be obtained from any intervention by Spain, which was very weak in military terms and in the international arena. Nevertheless, Spain’s geographic location and its commercial dependence on the Entente made it especially vulnerable to the pressures of France and Great Britain, both of which attempted to take advantage of the services that Spain could offer in the economic war; Spain’s importance increased with the prolongation of the fight. Germany, in contrast, could not hope for more from Spain than its strict neutrality because of its highly important political and economic ties with the Entente and its defencelessness before England and France, from which Germany could not protect it. Because Germany could not wait for Spain’s participation next to her, the primary target of German diplomacy had to be to resist the influence of the Entente and maintain Spanish neutrality while preventing Spain from inclining towards favouring the Allies. To achieve this objective, Berlin fed, with vague promises, the idea that a Spanish collaboration would be rewarded with the annexation of some territories. On this basis, we can begin to study German–Spanish relations during the Great War, which came to be determined by incidents that were caused by the submarine war. The dependence on the Entente also helps to explain the last evolution of the relations between Germany and Spain, which could follow no other policy than that imposed by the final development of the war: taking up a position near the winners and distancing from, and nearly rupturing ties with, Germany. Using both Spanish and German documentation allows us to reach different conclusions that aim to contribute substantially to understanding the relationship between Spain and Germany during the Great War.     

城市内部场所更新整合探究

以探求城市内部发展脉落,寻求城市新旧元素融合机制,通过城市规划与设计,体现城市发展的连续性为目的。方法采用现场调查,定性说明城市内部新旧元素不协调性。结果城市在不断的发展,人们生活方式在呈阶段性的改变,城市旧的肌理和场所不断受到新元素的挑战,致使城市内部更新在所难免,利用整合的方法对构成更新场所实虚两类要素的新旧进行融合成为必然。     

Concentrated Urban Poverty: The Case of Izmir Inner Area,Turkey

In Turkey, poverty has been a main subject of debates since 1960s. It used to be a serious problem for both rural areas and the big cities that gained migration. In Turkey and world-wide since the 1980s, however, there have been more research interests in the concentrated urban poverty, especially along with the increase in levels of impoverishment around the world. With the help of a case study in Izmir (Turkey), this paper aims to examine the process of concentrated urban poverty from different points of view in the literature. This is a case study developed at the peripheries of the traditional city centre—or inner areas—of the city of Izmir, Turkey. The paper, first, discusses the parameters of concentrated poverty according to the literature. Then it introduces the study findings of the author, which point out the macro-scale, micro-scale and ecological dynamics that are important in the development of concentrated urban poverty. The macro-scale dynamics suggest that poverty in inner areas of the city are related to the unbalanced development trends within the country, such as the overgrowth of metropolitan cities, economic restructuring processes, migration trends and the development of informal economy. The ecological dynamics address to the housing and job location preferences and invasion-succession processes in the city, which emphasize that socio-economic characteristics of inner areas of the city are different from those of other city parts. Micro-scale dynamics are related to poors' ability of developing solidarity relations among themselves, which is also related to the spatial characteristics of inner areas of the city, according to this study's findings.