Local Firms and Global Reach: Business Air Travel and the Irish Software Cluster

We study the external linkages of clusters through a typology of forms of temporary proximity (from foreign business meetings to co-located projects). We suggest that here business air travel and information and communication technologies have given significant advantages to small firms. We investigate these arguments through a case study of the Irish software industry in Dublin. Comparing indigenous and multinational corporation (MNC) firms confirms that indigenous firms are as travel intensive as MNCs but are linked to fewer destinations. We conclude that air travel enables small firms to go global without the support of collective cluster institutions.     

Designers' Attitudes Towards Disabled People and the Compliance of Public Open Places: The Case of Istanbul

Although accessibility has become one of the major concerns in both urban design and architecture, many urban facilities are still non-compliant with accessibility standards. This paper aims to assess designers' attitudes towards disabled people in Istanbul and to test their responses by determining the compliance with access standards for Istanbul's public open places. The study used the United Nations implementation checklist on accessibility, which covers 19 items of 4 main groups. Data were collected at four crowded public squares of old and new centres of Istanbul chosen randomly. The highest compliance was found in Kadiköy square (39%), whereas the lowest was found in Be?iktas (26.3%). To assess designers' knowledge of disabled people's needs, a questionnaire was presented to 114 architects and contractors. Data showed that the majority of them did not learn about disabled people's needs in the physical environment during their professional education and that in their projects today, they provide accessible environments only for wheelchair users. In short, due to gaps in the system that educates professional designers and the absence of enforcement, the examined open public squares in Istanbul have accomplished very little in terms of accessibility for disabled people.     

People, Places, and Policy: A Politically Relevant Framework for Efforts to Reduce Concentrated Poverty

This article identifies the persistence of spatially concentrated poverty, reviews the literature on an implicit people-place binary theory of antipoverty policy, proposes a more integrated heuristic for understanding policy, and discusses how the classification can be the basis for a more refined understanding of the evolution of antipoverty policy, how and when politics drive the antipoverty agenda and uses the heuristic to encourage evaluators to refocus research on the multiple aspects of poor peoples' lives. In general, proponents of either people-based or place-based policies have dominated the urban poverty debate. This tension has led to a fragmented and piecemeal approach to spatially concentrated poverty that focuses on either people or places and does not best serve the poor. The new heuristic specifies both the policy targets and the policy mechanisms for major programs, examining the degree to which each focuses on people or places, and the degree to which each relies on supply and demand side assumptions. This reclassification suggests that the assumptions inherent in public policy can provide insight into how antipoverty policy makers and advocates might respond to political cycles and major sociopolitical events, as well as how they might more critically evaluate their efforts.     

从生态系统的角度透视明代的流民现象──以黄河中下游流域的山西、河北为中心

在探究明代中、后期人口大量逃流的原因时,多有强调赋役繁重及地主阶级对土地的大量兼并,这固然是不可忽视的事实。但从全国范围来看,北方的流民以山西为多,而且,山西流民潮发生的时间早,人数也比较多。因此,除上述原因,本文从反映人与生态环境关系的生态系统角度对明代的流民现象进行了分析。     

Challenging Hegemonies through Connecting Places,People and Ideas: Jan Monk's contribution to international gender geography (with particular reference to Spain)

The main goal of the paper is to study Jan Monk's contribution to the development of international gender geography, in particular in Spain. Our aim is also to explain the experiences and numerous connections among places, people and ideas that she has been weaving to foster international scholarship and, in this way, how she has challenged hegemonic approaches in feminist geography. Jan Monk comes originally from the Southern hemisphere and therefore she is well aware of the extent to which ‘Northern’ (or Anglo-American) ways of seeing the world define concepts, theories and ideas in geography (and also in feminist geography). Being an ‘insider’ and an ‘outsider’ as well as her sensibility to the important of place has permeated Jan's contribution to international gender geography.     

Going Places: The Historical Archaeology of Travel and Tourism

This paper briefly introduces the topics of tourism, consumption, and heritage management considered in this special issue. Contributors to the special issue focus on tourism within nineteenth- and twentieth-century America and its connections to industrial capitalism and the creation of a culture of consumption. These issues are addressed in case studies of tourist sites, including archaeological sites.     

India's Energy Security: Challenges and Opportunities

A noted specialist on India's energy security reviews the range of energy-related issues that will have a bearing on that country's ability to sustain the high current rates of economic growth and development into the future. The author explores the multiple challenges India confronts in securing (through domestic production and external sources) an adequate mix of energy supplies (hydrocarbon fuels, nuclear power, renewable energy sources) and describes as well as analyzes a broad front of actions (both government programs and the activities of private companies) taken to address them. The analysis illuminates India's important role in the production and consumption of several forms of energy. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: O130, P280, Q400. 5 figures, 64 references.     

Rural Opportunities: Minimalist Policy and Community-Based Experimentation

Rural America's experiences with federal policies provide lessons on both the benefits and liabilities of minimalist policy attention and community-based policy experimentation. Prior to the New Deal federal rural policies promoted incentives to settle vast territories, subsidize private development of internal market structures, and invest in the benefits of higher education. The New Deal redirected rural policies to more narrow foci on the farm economic and environmental crises. These new, more centralized policies were built upon the rapid expansion of the Department of Agriculture into the first modern federal bureaucracy, politically legitimized on the basis of community-based policy experimentation. The seemingly unintended consequence of these emergency efforts to rescue farming was the marginalization of most non-farm policy concerns. The resulting minimalist federal approach to rural America was due to the absence of a unified national constituency for rural concerns. Understanding rural America's inadvertent experimentation in minimalist policy attention and in community-based policy structures can inform current policy initiatives to decentralize federal authority.     

Detroit Remains: Archaeology and Community Histories of Six Legendary Places

Historical Archaeology -