Involving small landlords as a regeneration strategy under shrinkage: evidence from two East German cases

In light of ongoing shrinkage processes affecting a number of cities and regions in Europe and around the world, the planning literature has suggested a need for new planning concepts and strategies, or even a new planning paradigm. This paper aims to contribute to the debate by investigating the adaptation of the process of urban regeneration to shrinkage. Urban regeneration is a common policy in cities facing population and economic decline. However, particularly for inner-city neighbourhoods, it has not been sufficiently documented how urban regeneration responds to challenges related to shrinkage. Looking first at the evolving national policy framework and then at two local case studies, this paper identifies conditions leading to the emergence of new practices of urban regeneration in inner-city neighbourhoods in Eastern Germany. These practices are characterized by the moderate usage of public subsidies combined with ‘soft’ measures like cooperation with individual property owners and potential investors as well as place marketing.     

ON THE PLAUSIBILITY OF THE SUPPLY-DRIVEN INPUT-OUTPUT MODEL: EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE ON JOINT STABILITY*

ABSTRACT. This paper addresses the issue of the plausibility of the supply-driven input-output model from an empirical standpoint. We suggest that requiring production coefficients to remain perfectly fixed during an application of the supply-driven input-output model is unnecessarily restrictive given the extensive use of approximation methods in mathematics, economics and regional science. Simulations with the supply-driven version of an input-output table for a representative region are shown to result in changes in the corresponding production coefficients well within conventional tolerance levels.     

Devolution and Parliamentary Representation: The Case of the Scotland and Wales Bill, 1976–7

For as long as devolution has been debated in the UK, there has been fierce discussion as to the representation of the would‐be affected areas at Westminster. That this has been the case is a consequence of Westminster's dual remit as both a state‐wide and a sub‐state legislature. While this dual remit was relatively straightforward when applied to all nations of the UK, it does, however, raise serious questions about the equality of MPs at Westminster in the face of asymmetric devolution that would carve out parliament's remit in some, but not all, parts of the UK. These questions bedevilled Gladstone's Irish Home Rule Bills in the late 19th century and have been a recurrent feature of debate following New Labour's devolution programme in the late 1990s, culminating in the adoption of a system of ‘English Votes for English Laws’ by the house of commons in October 2015. This article looks at this issue through the lens of the ill‐fated Scotland and Wales Bill introduced by the Callaghan government in 1976. It explores the roots of the bill and how, and why, the idea of referring the question of territorial representation, post‐devolution, to a Speaker's conference, came to secure the initial support of cabinet as the best answer to this problem, and why the government swiftly changed its mind. Parliamentary statecraft considerations served to push a Speaker's conference onto the institutional agenda, before ultimately dooming it to failure.     

Lithic technology and social transformations in the South Indian Neolithic: The evidence from Sanganakallu–Kupgal

Here we examine patterns in stone tool technology among Mesolithic, Neolithic and Iron Age localities in the Sanganakallu–Kupgal site complex, Bellary District, Karnataka, South India. Statistical tests are used to compare proportions of raw materials and artefact types, and to compare central tendencies in metric variables taken on flakes and tools. Lithic-related findings support the inference of at least two distinct technological and economic groups at Sanganakallu–Kupgal, a microlith-focused foraging society on the one hand, and on the other, an agricultural society whose lithic technologies centred upon the production of pressure bladelets and dolerite edge-ground axes. Evidence for continuity in lithic technological processes through time may reflect indigenous processes of development, and a degree of continuity from the Mesolithic through to the Neolithic period. Lithic production appears to have become a specialised and spatially segregated activity by the terminal Neolithic and early Iron Age, supporting suggestions for the emergence of an increasingly complex economy and political hierarchy.     

A note on the dating of the clay smoking pipes collected in the course of two archaeological surveys conducted in Saudi Arabia: the Comprehensive Survey of Saudi Arabia (1976–1981) and Michael Gilmore’s survey of the Darb al‐Hajj

Several clay smoking pipes (chibouks) were recovered during the course of two archaeological surveys conducted during the late 1970s and early 1980s in Saudi Arabia. At the time these projects took place, no published clay tobacco pipe typologies existed, forcing the participants to assign a cursory date of ‘Ottoman period’ to the pipes. Since then, considerable archaeological research has been done on the Ottoman clay pipe. The following concerns the refining of the dates of these tobacco pipes in light of new studies.     

Unintended effects of technology on climate change adaptation: an historical analysis of water conflicts below Andean Glaciers

Climate change adaptation measures can generate long-term unintended consequences, as this paper demonstrates through an empirical case study of water conflicts at Lake Parón in Peru’s Cordillera Blanca mountain range. This decade-long struggle culminated in 2008 when a coalition of local groups (stakeholders) from the Cruz de Mayo and Caraz communities in the Callejón de Huaylas seized control of the Lake Parón reservoir from a private multinational corporation, Duke Energy. This clash over Parón’s water in the Llullán and Santa River watersheds emerged much earlier than climatic-hydrologic models had predicted, and it occurred, this paper argues, largely because of previously successful climate adaptation measures. The drainage tunnel and floodgates originally installed at Parón in the 1980s to prevent a climate-related outburst flood led to unintended or perverse outcomes because these technological artifacts subsequently allowed a diversity of stakeholders—including rural subsistence farmers, urban residents, national park officials, tourism promoters, the state energy company Electroperú, and Duke Energy—to manage water differently depending on their priorities and the existing governance structures. Neoliberal reforms that altered state-society-environment relations in Peru played a key role in these changing stakeholder power dynamics that were reflected in the management of water infrastructure at Parón. Examining this water conflict that emerged from the unintended effects of climate adaptation demonstrates not only how technology and society are mutually constitutive, but also why the politics of technologies must be considered more carefully in the analysis of social-ecological systems, hydro-social cycles, and climate change adaptation.     

Encountering soviet geography: oral histories of British geographical studies of the USSR and Eastern Europe 1945–1991

This paper considers the history of British geographical studies of the USSR and Eastern Europe 1945–1991, presenting material from a research project which has included thirty-two oral history interviews. Oral history is an especially fruitful research methodology in this context due to the distinct issues of formality and informality involved in researching the Soviet bloc. After discussing the nature of the subdiscipline and the Cold War context, including the role of the British state in shaping the field, the paper considers the role of formal academic meetings and exchanges, and the place of unofficial spaces of encounter in the formation of an intellectual culture. The paper concludes by reflecting on the merits of oral history in studies of the production of geographical knowledge.