The Local Implications of Major Job Transformations in the City: A Spatial Microsimulation Approach

The changing dynamics of regional and local labor markets during the last decades have led to an increasing labor market segmentation and socioeconomic polarization and to a rise of income inequalities at the regional, urban, and intraurban level. These problems call for effective social and local labor market policies. However, there is also a growing need for methods and techniques capable of efficiently estimating the likely impact of social and economic change at the local level. For example, the common methodologies for estimating the impacts of large firm openings or closures operate at the regional level. The best of these models disaggregate the region to the city (Armstrong 1993; Batey and Madden 1983). This paper demonstrates how spatial microsimulation modeling techniques can be used for local labor market analysis and policy evaluation to assess these impacts (and their multiplier effects) at the local level‐to measure the effects on individuals and their neighborhood services. First, we review these traditional macroscale and mesoscale regional modeling approaches to urban and regional policy analysis and we illustrate their merits and limitations. Then, we examine the potential of spatial microsimulation modeling to create a new framework for the formulation, analysis and evaluation of social and local labor market policies at the individual or household level. Outputs from a local labor market microsimulation model for Leeds are presented. We show how first it is possible to investigate the interdependencies between individual's or households labor market attributes at the microscale and to model their accessibilities to job opportunities in different localities. From this base we show how detailed what‐if microspatial analysis can be performed to estimate the impact of major changes in the local labor market through job losses or gains, including local multiplier effects.     

The Study of Local Public Economies: Multi‐organizational,Multi‐level Institutional Analysis and Development

One important extension of the IAD framework has been to the study of local public economies. These are multi‐organizational, multi‐level arrangements defined as the set of governmental jurisdictions, public and nonprofit agencies, and private firms that interact in various patterns to provide and produce public goods and services within a specific locality or region. Commonly, the localities or regions studied from this perspective have been U.S. metropolitan areas, often defined as a central city and its surrounding or adjoining county. Localities can be delineated, however, on various terms, and in the IAD framework, it is the geo‐physical nature of a locality that, in substantial part, drives the analysis. One of the strengths of the approach is its capacity to explain local variations in public organization as a function of the geo‐physical diversity of localities, while at the same time developing empirical generalizations and normative principles that apply across diverse regions. What, for example, might the organization and governance of a complex metropolitan area have in common with the organization and governance of a complex protected area, such as the greater Yellowstone eco‐region or the Adirondack Park? Construing both sorts of regions as local public economies can enhance our overall understanding of public organization at the same time that it permits a more nuanced understanding of diverse localities. Such work contributes to the ongoing IAD project of “understanding institutional diversity.”     

PLACE‐BASED ATTRIBUTES AND SPATIAL EXPENDITURE BEHAVIOR IN TOURISM

In recent discussions on local sustainable development, notions like “local for local” and “home bias” have often played a role. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether preferences for specific place‐based attributes might constrain or support tourism participation and tourism destination choice of distinct socioeconomic groups of visitors. To test this proposition, a large data set from the Italian Households Budget Survey for the period 1997–2007 has been used and, by means of the double‐hurdle model, tourism participation and expenditure are modeled over the life‐cycle of tourists. These data are next merged with location‐specific attributes including natural amenities and infrastructural and regional‐economic context variables. Our results show that location‐specific or place‐based characteristics affect intra‐ and interregional tourism differently, as well as destination choices. Regional differences between residents in two different macroareas in Italy (North and Center‐South) are investigated. Location‐specific characteristics may be either push or constraint factors for tourism participation. For families living in the North, participation in the tourism market is supported by the tourist characteristics of their home region. For families living in the central and southern regions however, economic conditions of the area where they reside appear to be more significant.     

Monitoring to Learn,Learning to Monitor: A Critical Analysis of Opportunities for Indigenous Community‐Based Monitoring of Environmental Change in Australian Rangelands

Indigenous community‐based monitoring has been a central feature in many international attempts to improve monitoring of and local adaptation to environmental change. Despite offering much promise, Indigenous community‐based monitoring has been underutilised in natural resource management in Australia, particularly within the remote, semi‐arid rangelands. This paper discusses contextual social and environmental factors that may help to explain this apparent deficiency, before critically analysing key stakeholder perceptions of the roles for, and challenges of monitoring in the Alinytjara Wilur ara Natural Resources Management region in the north‐west of South Australia. The analysis guides a discussion of responses to better integrate monitoring in general, and Indigenous community‐based monitoring in particular, into regional environmental management approaches. We argue that community‐based monitoring offers a range of benefits, including: better coordination between stakeholders; a heightened ability to detect and respond to climatic trends and impacts; the effective utilisation of Indigenous knowledge; employment opportunities for managing and monitoring natural resources; and improved learning and understanding of rangeland socio‐ecological systems. Identified opportunities for spatial and temporal community monitoring designed for the Alinytjara Wilur ara region could be of value to other remote rangeland and Indigenous institutions charged with the difficult task of monitoring, learning from, and responding to environmental change.     

Neoliberalism and Suburban Employment: Western Sydney in the 1990s

During the past 15 years metropolitan planning strategies of the NSW state government have done little to address the spatial distribution of either employment or labour market equity within the metropolis. In the fast‐growing outer western suburbs, the government has focused on attracting business investment to increase the stock of local jobs and to improve employment ‘self‐sufficiency’— a dominantly neoliberal policy framework. This paper explores a widening gulf between the reality of outer urban change and this policy framework by considering changes in the location of jobs and in the employment experiences of residents in Greater Western Sydney (GWS). Evidence is drawn from census journey‐to‐work data (1991–2001). While holding a majority of manufacturing jobs in Sydney, GWS also experienced continued growth of jobs in service industries during the 1990s. Yet the relative importance of employment in the city's fast‐growth finance and business services sector still lags well behind that of inner and northern parts of the city. The focus on growing the regional stock of jobs has not addressed problems of labour market access faced by residents of particular localities and the goal of employment self‐sufficiency has not delivered greater equity to outer suburban labour markets. A focus on sufficiency of access to employment for residents of GWS draws attention not only to regional stocks of jobs but also to the provision of social infrastructure and state‐provided services to outer suburban populations as they continue to expand.     

Region‐specific determinants of the foreign direct investment in China

This study revisits region‐specific determinants of foreign direct investment (FDI) in Eastern, Central, and Western China using econometric and spatial analyses. It uses a data set covering 31 Chinese provinces and autonomous regions spanning the period 2005–15, together with panel data regression. Our statistical results show that in Eastern China, FDI is significantly associated with bilateral trade, orientation towards the service industry, industrialisation level, and availability of strategic assets in the region. In Central China, FDI is mainly pulled by availability of the domestic market and strategic assets in the region. In Western China, FDI inflows are mainly determined by natural resource endowment, industrialisation level, and regional innovation and production effectiveness in information and communication technology industries. Our analysis also reveals the impact of FDI in China's regional development and its capacity to hollow out the three Chinese macro‐regions. Our findings for China lead us to suggest that those governments seeking to attract FDI should not solely rely on it to facilitate local economic development and should make use of local circumstances in combination with FDI to boost their economies.     

An alternative policy approach to rural development in regions facing population decline

ABSTRACT

Many rural regions in Europe used to be characterized by weak economic performance and negative population development. While in a long-term perspective this is not any more valid for large parts of Western Europe, a number of rural regions face persistent population decline. By analysing the case of Austria, where approximately one-third of rural areas have experienced such negative population change over the past decades, this paper will examine the impact on economic performance, income levels and well-being patterns. Addressing the crucial and persistent obstacles to positive population trends, new theoretical approaches and perspectives are discussed for overcoming limitations in development. Future approaches for regional development have to go beyond strategies for targeting economic growth, but have to address issues of local participation, social innovation and establishing trust as preconditions to effectively impact well-being dimensions. Such a mobilization effort would be the result of a comprehensive social transition process which would foster an altered narrative for these rural regions compared to the current and predominant focus on compensation and growth policies. Despite strong interlinkages with other regions and actors, the needs of local people would be central and both would be a cornerstone for social innovation.     

Job polarization in the new economy in Danish cities: location,size, and the role of the public sector

ABSTRACT

In this paper we examine the geographic patterns of employment growth and employment polarization in small and medium-sized cities (SMCs) in Denmark during the rise of the new economy. The geography of employment polarization in Danish cities is examined using register-based employment data on occupations and wages divided into the public and private sectors in the period 1993–2006; it therefore covers a long period of transformation and growth in the Danish economy. We conclude that employment growth is characterized by employment polarization combined with growth in low- and high-wage employment and a decline in medium-wage employment. However, these patterns of polarization differ across the public and private sectors, as well as by geography. While local labour market (LLM) size, city position and city specialization influence the geography of private-sector employment growth and polarization, municipal population and composition influence the geography of public-sector growth patterns across wage levels. Finally, public and private employment are positively associated within SMCs, predominantly driven by the positive association between public employment and private-sector low-wage employment. However, public employment is not associated with an increase in private low-wage employment in more remote areas.     

Convergence and Divergence in the Australian Space Economy

Australia's space economy has changed rapidly since the 1970s through processes of globalisation, economic restructuring and demographic change. Trends in population distribution and patterns of employment and investment in economic activity highlight both spatial diffusion and concentration. Migration to ‘sun belt’ regions and suburban growth in the mega metro regions is creating population-led demand for production and services, thus creating investment growth and new employment in some consumer-oriented economic activities. However many internationally linked and national market serving economic functions are increasingly concentrated in the two largest cities at strategically located old and new nodes of agglomeration. No longer can population growth be equated directly with increased economic activity, and there are significant spatial mismatches between the outcomes of demographic and economic processes across the nation's cities and regions.     

Evolution of Innovation Policy in Emilia-Romagna and Valencia: Similar Reality,Similar Results?

This paper examines the evolution of regional innovation policy in Emilia-Romagna and Valencia, two regions with similar economic features that implemented close innovation policies in the 1970s and 1980s. We investigate whether their similarities have led to parallel targets, policy tools and governance developments. We show that innovation policy in both regions suffered from the effects of privatization, budget constraints and changes to manufacturing during the 1990s and we highlight the consequences. Although Emilia-Romagna experienced deeper changes to its innovation policy, privatizations and/or the replacement of public funds promoted commercial approaches and induced market failures in both regions. The worst effects of these policies were the implementation of less-risky innovation projects, the shift towards extra-regional projects and markets, and the favouring of large firms.     

Biros,Books and Big‐men: Literacy and the Transformation of Leadership in Simbu,Papua New Guinea

This article examines local strategies used to build leadership roles and enlist public support in a newly literate Papua New Guinean highlands rural community. The ethnographic evidence presented shows how the relationship between literacy and local ideas about modernisation and development has facilitated a shift in patterns of local political structures. When literacy is viewed as an unequally distributed and novel resource with inherently modernist connotations it becomes evident why male villagers in a contemporary highlands village endeavour to acquire and exploit it in rivalry with others. And while individual villagers market their reading and writing proficiency as a means to bolster their reputations within the existing socio‐political system, this has significance for traditional leadership and authority patterns, given that village leaders have traditionally been unschooled and therefore do not possess these highly regarded skills. To illustrate these processes I examine the political careers of two prominent villagers with particular attention to their respective claims to head two competing village‐based development projects. An analysis of the agendas they use to legitimate their authority roles in these projects makes clear how the quest to be seen to be literate has become a constitutive component of a prospective leader's repertoire of skills.     

The Culture of Agreement Making in Solomon Islands

Current growing interest in mining in Solomon Islands warrants critical reflection on the centrality of natural resources in the post‐colonial formation of state‐society interactions, in particular, as they have been shaped by decades of forestry resources extraction. Since independence in 1978 waves of Malaysian, Taiwanese, Korean, Australian and Japanese investors have developed natural resource extraction projects. Not only have these projects been poorly regulated, they have entwined politicians, leaders and landholders with the state as an economic agent with its own base of economic power. As a result, wealth in Solomon Islands is highly politicised and dependent on the bargaining position of the state and foreign investors (Bennett 1987, 2002). Instead of looking at the failures of the state, as is common in political science approaches to Solomon Islands, we draw on case studies in forestry, mining, and customary land dealings on the island of Malaita and on the Weathercoast of Guadalcanal to highlight the kinds of social networks that enable agreements over the use of natural resources. Challenging common assumptions about the division between state and society, we show that leaders in rural regions of Solomon Islands behave like landlords, that brokers from the communities see themselves as actors equalling the state, and that the state performs like a capitalist actor.     

After central planning: The restructuring of state industry in Bulgaria's Bourgas region

Industrial regions in eastern Europe developed under central planning are now confronting the pressures associated with political and economic transition to market‐focused systems. Using the case of the Bourgas region, on Bulgaria's Black Sea coast, the article examines how state industries are faring in these new conditions, analyzing developments in production, employment, ownership, management, market‐orientation and other factors. Massive financial and human resources were poured into the region's industrial development during more than four decades of state socialism, building a modem industrial infrastructure, but one heavily characterized by the particular features and constraints of central planning which emphasized quantity over quality and large‐scale, integrated plants. As central control collapses, the region's state‐owned firms are in crisis. Production is down, unemployment has risen, and except for a handful of plants restituted to former owners, privatization is moving slowly. The region's industries have been battered by highly unfavorable outside forces, yet have been mostly unable to marshal the necessary management, financial, or technical resources to implement coherently any indigenous strategic initiatives to address the changed institutional environment and new supply and demand conditions.     

Data Integration Issues in Research Supporting Sustainable Natural Resource Management

Current decision‐making in natural resource use and management aims at delivering ecologically‐sustainable development to achieve conservation and economic benefits. The process of guiding natural resource use requires the integration of social, economic and biophysical information on which to base management decisions. This paper discusses the integration of socio‐economic information for natural resource management (NRM) planning and decision‐making in the Australian context. A comprehensive resource of socio‐economic data is the Census, which is undertaken every five years by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) for the whole of Australia. Unfortunately there are qualitative and quantitative issues stemming from the use of ABS census data maps for NRM decision‐making, as they are at a different scale to and the boundaries do not coincide with biophysical information. These issues include the variable shape of collection districts, the use of enumerated data for population‐based statistics, the large size of collection districts in low populated areas, and the averaging of socio‐economic information over the collection districts. Examples highlight these issues and show a way forwards in improving data integration, which includes simple spatial overlay methods and regression modelling.     

THE DECLINE OF CALIFORNIA'S NORTH COAST REDWOOD REGION

The Redwood Timber Region of Northern California has experienced a gradual decline in its natural resource base combined with intensified struggles over preservation and conservation. This region is used as a case study for examining the historic pattern of resource decline, the ambiguous roles of environmentalist pressure, the failure of public regulation, and a range of regional responses to economic decline. In this case, more intense forest management techniques (herbicides, fertilizer, thinning), more public investment in timber regeneration programs, and the emergence of an underground economy in marijuana growing are core elements of the response to resource decline. Theoretical, political, and environmental problems with these approaches are examined.     

Re-thinking non-core regions: planning strategies and practices beyond growth

ABSTRACT

Periods of ongoing growth in the economy and demographics have come to a halt for many European regions for various reasons, challenging their economic development prospects. Despite the heterogeneous nature of stagnation, decline, peripheralization or even stigmatization to be found there, these configurations ‘beyond growth’ have in common that short-term ‘fire-fighting’ policy approaches aiming to foster regional economic growth face some important limitations. We argue that this has to do, among other things, with the overall direction of established and orthodox planning approaches that are predominantly based on growth-oriented paradigms and implicitly or explicitly work with dichotomous categories such as core–periphery and metropolitan versus non-metropolitan spaces; these do, however, not capture local realities in these cases. Using the notion of non-core regions, we plead for conceptualizing non-core regions and their regional economic development trajectories in different ways: thinking ‘beyond growth’. Such alternative ideas should be informed by alternative understandings of growth, development and sustainability in order to influence theories and concepts, but also to support new approaches to planning practice. To this aim, we discuss non-core regions from a social constructivist perspective, elaborating some points of departure for conceptualizing and practising regional planning ‘beyond growth’.     

Building Cross‐Sector Careers in India's New Service Economy? Tracking Former Call Centre Agents in the National Capital Region

This article presents findings from a labour mobility survey of 250 former call centre agents in India's National Capital Region (September 2008) exploring individuals’ employment before, during and immediately after leaving India's high‐profile call centre ‘industry’. These data are combined with forty‐two in‐depth interviews conducted in India's NCR (July 2006 to August 2008) with call centre agents, managers, ex‐call centre agents, labour organizers and economic development officials, as well as representatives from different labour market intermediaries. The study gives a cautiously optimistic account about the call centre work and employment opportunities on offer in India's ‘IT Enabled Services – Business Processing Outsourcing’ (or ITES‐BPO) industry, and their implications for young urban middle class graduates based on: (i) the movement of around one fifth of the ex‐call centre agent sample into further study, facilitated by relatively high call centre salaries; (ii) the movement of ex‐call centre agents into higher paying job roles in a wide range of sectors including banking, IT, insurance, marketing, real estate and telecommunications; and (iii) the development of transferable skills in Indian call centres that are recognized by ex‐call centre agents and their subsequent employers as conferring a labour market advantage in other sectors of India's new service economy relative to colleagues without prior call centre work experience.     

LOCAL ECONOMIC IMPACTS OF NATURAL DISASTERS*

ABSTRACT This research uses time‐series analysis under a quasi‐experimental pair‐wise matching design to examine local economic impacts of the 1993 Midwest flood. The data support the concept of overall local economic resiliency to natural disasters. The flood's impacts on total employment were minimal. Although significant drops in personal income were observed in the year of the event, the long‐run effects seemed to be negligible. This study also finds that the flood's negative impacts on agriculture were significant and long lasting to some Midwestern communities. The findings are quite stable with respect to the number of controls selected for each treated unit.     

我国大学生就业城市选择意愿及其影响因素分析

引导大学生合理的就业流动是促进各类城市协调发展的有效途径。本文以不同类型的就业城市为研究对象,通过全国7个城市的1600余份调查问卷,利用多项Logit模型分析了我国大学生就业城市的选择意愿及影响因素。研究表明,大学生倾向以自身生源地为界限对劳动市场的地域进行二元划分,职业发展机遇和家庭因素在就业地的选择中最为重要,地区特质和自然生态环境的影响最弱,生源地和个人观念都与就业地的选择显著相关。在此基础上提出引导大学生就业流动的政策建议。     

Can a preservationist ideology halt the process of creative destruction? Evidence from Salt Spring Island,British Columbia

For more than 50 years, rural municipalities across the developed world have struggled to redefine themselves in the face of declining primary sector employment. In some places, this struggle has led to the creation of landscapes that provide heritage‐seekers with tangible commodities and intangible experiences reflecting a by‐gone past. Recent research suggests that these post‐productivist heritage‐scapes may evolve into leisure‐scapes of mass consumption, if profit or economic growth are the key motives underlying development ( Mitchell and Vanderwerf 2010 ). This article questions whether a dominant ideology of preservation can prevent this scenario. We studied Salt Spring Island, British Columbia: (i) to determine if the island displays the characteristics of a heritage‐scape, (ii) to discover if a preservationist ideology has contributed to its current state, and (iii) to ponder if this state can be maintained, in light of recent regional and provincial discourse. Our analysis reveals that the creation, and maintenance, of this heritage‐scape has been guided largely by public discourse underlain by a preservationist ideology. This prolonged state, however, may be drawing to an end. Recent provincial directives to double tourist revenues suggest that local (and regional) discourse soon may be overshadowed by the province's mandate to promote economic growth. The response of local stakeholders will ultimately dictate the Island's ability to maintain its present state as a post‐productivist heritage‐scape.