THE LONG-RUN ECONOMIC IMPACTS OF FEDERAL,STATE, AND LOCAL FISCAL POLICIES IN METROPOLITAN AREAS*

ABSTRACT. This paper uses new estimates of metropolitan factor demand and output supply functions to study how federal, state, and local fiscal policies affect metropolitan economies. We illustrate our work with findings for ten metropolitan areas in five states for changes in state corporate income taxes, local property taxes, the federal corporate income tax, an investment tax credit, interest rates, public capital stocks, output prices, and tax and regulatory policies affecting gross wages. It is clear from these simulations that a policy that is nominally the same everywhere will have repercussions that vary widely across regions and cities.     

GENTRIFICATION AND THE SPATIAL CONSTITUTION OF THE STATE: THE RESTRUCTURING OF LONDON'S DOCKLANDS*

This paper argues that despite recent advances in research concerned with gentrification, the role of the state in this process has not been adequately conceptualised. Existing perspectives largely fail to provide a thorough analysis of the way in which the duality of the states ‘political’ and ‘economic’ functions are related, and how these are represented in concrete spatial situations. Through an empirical focus upon London's Docklands, the way in which the state, through the London Docklands Development Corporation, is spatially constituted and has influenced the gentrification process are examined. First, some conceptual and theoretical questions are discussed. Second, a brief historical context in which gentrification in the Docklands can be situated is provided, followed by an examination of how the restructuring of this area relates to the broader restructuring of state relations. The central role of the state in the gentrification of the Docklands is then considered by looking first, at how the LDDC has aided, through capital subsidisation, the production of a gentrified built environment giving rise to restructured patterns of socio-spatial polarisation. Second, the question of how this action and the inequalities arising from it have been legitimised, through political, ideological and socio-cultural means, is examined. Finally, some of the theoretical and political implications of this analysis are addressed.     

多维邻近性视域下大北极国家能源贸易网络的演进动力研究

气候变化引致北极海冰消融，世界大国的北极能源竞争愈发激烈。厘清各国能源贸易关系，寻求各方利益最大公约数，积极推动“冰上丝绸之路”建设是避免北极地区出现“公地悲剧”的重要路径。本文结合大北极国家概念，运用复杂网络分析方法探究大北极国家能源贸易网络的演进过程及其多维邻近性动力机制，主要结论如下：①网络总体趋向稠密化，其供应重心向西偏移，消费重心向东转移，产销空间高度分离。②网络表现出典型的“核心—边缘”结构，逐步形成以美加俄为主导的“三极”格局。③网络的三大子群日益显现，中国在网络中的地位不断攀升。④网络演进过程受多维邻近性动力驱动，经济差异是主要内生性动力，地理邻近性是重要自然基础，组织邻近性是主要推动力，文化邻近性的作用趋向弱化，制度邻近性的作用愈加凸显。中国需抓住大北极能源贸易网络消费重心东移的契机，加速推进“冰上丝绸之路”建设，与大北极国家建立“三环”能源合作体系和高效稳定的能源合作机制。     

REALITIES OF DOING RESPONSIBILITIES: PERFORMANCES AND PRACTICES IN TOURISM

With the ever increasing popularity of tours, flights and hotels that put ethics and responsibility at the forefront of their operations, what exactly does it mean to be responsible in tourism? Is it really so easy to be responsible? What actually happens on the ground in places where one tries to be responsible? Using fieldwork primarily conducted in/on Thailand, this research aims to unpack notions of responsibility in tourism, and argues that there is a need to go beyond simplistic idea(l)s and discourses about responsibilities, and instead interrogate actual and practical aspects of doing responsibilities. Fieldwork for this article is based on interviews with key decision makers in travel‐related companies, and interviews and participant observation at two case studies, namely Exotissimo Travel based in Bangkok, and the Elephant Camp (pseudonym). It highlights several aspects of the “realities” of doing responsibilities which complicates our ideas of what responsibility is about – that doing responsibilities is not at all easy; involves a continual questioning and negotiation of who is responsible for what; and how responsibilities in tourism can in fact be done to please tourists. This article therefore argues that there is no, and possibly cannot be, a conclusive statement on what responsibility is in practice, or what should or should not be considered as responsibilities. Instead, it brings to light the importance of contextualizing responsibilities and stresses the complex and plural nature in which responsibilities play out on the ground.     

1. INTRODUCTION: MULTIPLE TIMES AND THE WORK OF SYNCHRONIZATION

In this essay, which introduces the History and Theory forum on Multiple Temporalities, I want to discuss how the existence of a plurality or a multiplicity of times has been conceptualized in the historiographical tradition, partly by entering into a dialogue with recent writers, historians, philosophers, sociologists, anthropologists, and literary scholars, partly by returning to the eighteenth century, to the origin of “the modern regime of historicity” (Hartog). In these theoretical and historical investigations I aim to do two things: on the one hand, to explore and discuss different ways of conceptualizing multiple times, in terms of nonsynchronicities, layers of time, or natural and historical times; on the other hand, to trace how these multiple times have been compared, unified, and adapted by means of elaborate conceptual and material practices that I here call “practices of synchronization.” From the eighteenth century onward, these synchronizing practices, inspired by, but by no means reducible to, chronology have given rise to homogeneous, linear, and teleological time, often identified as modern time per se, or simply referred to as “progress.” In focusing on the practices of synchronization, however, I want to show how this regime of temporality during its entire existence, but especially at the moment of its emergence in the eighteenth century and at the present moment of its possible collapse, has been challenged by other times, other temporalities, slower, faster, with other rhythms, other successions of events, other narratives, and so on.