REGIONAL PLANNING IN THE USSR

The theory and practice of drawing up and implementing regional plans, or “territorial plans,” as they are known in the Soviet Union, has been a matter of considerable debate in the Soviet literature, a debate that has been complicated by differences in terminology. The author discusses various Soviet definitions of “territorial planning” and points out disagreement concerning its nature and scope. The major forms of territorial planning as now practiced in the USSR are reviewed, and two forms in particular—regional economic planning and regional physical planning—are distinguished. It is concluded that territorial planning continues to have a somewhat uncertain status in the USSR, with inadequate official support, although the issue remains a matter of considerable interest to the leadership under the Gorbachev administration.     

‘Cornerstone of the Commonwealth’: The Press Union and the Preservation of the Penny Cable Rate, 1941–67

The article examines the protracted commitment of the Commonwealth Press Union (formerly the Empire Press Union) to maintaining cheap press rates during the post-war period as a means of promoting information exchange and co-operation among commonwealth countries. In documenting the strenuous efforts of the Press Union, ultimately unsuccessful, to resist calls, from the late 1950s onwards, for increased press cable charges, the article demonstrates that the Press Union's ongoing defence of the commonwealth press rate extended beyond its British leadership to include longstanding member countries, such as Australia, which had traditionally been disadvantaged by distance from London and exorbitant communication charges. Consequently, its protracted defence of the penny cable rate constitutes an important, if neglected, episode in understanding the changing character of commonwealth relations in the critical post-war years.     

Political Tourism: Elizabeth Simcoe’s Maps and Views of Canada (1791–1796)

Abstract

Elizabeth Simcoe (1762–1850) travelled from England to Canada in 1791 and returned to her home, Wolford Lodge, in Honiton, Devon, in 1796. She was accompanying her husband, John Graves Simcoe (1752–1806), who had just been appointed Lieutenant Governor of the newly formed province of Upper Canada. Throughout their travels, Elizabeth recorded her Canadian experiences in her diaries and sketchbooks. She drew, corrected and copied maps for her husband. Upon their return to England they offered to the king an album of 32 works and a map, all drawn on birch bark. The map and the album acted as a report to the king of her husband’s political achievements in Canada and her engagement as a cartographer.     

‘A strong and prosperous condition’ — the geography of state building and social reform in Peter the Great's Russia

The point is often made that the rise of the modern state in Europe provided models which have been influential, if not actually copied, across much of the rest of the world. In Russia during the reign of Peter the Great (1682–1725), not only was the tsar aware of the European experience of state building, but consciously strove to base many of his political and social reforms on European models. Peter aimed at sweeping reform of the Russian state and society in the attempt to bring them into the modern world. The paper argues that the reforms were necessarily geographical, involving an attempt radically to reconstruct the country's economic and social geography. The focus is upon the spatial implications of reform, including the founding and development of the city of St. Petersburg as an experiment in social reconstruction. In the event, Peter's success was only partial, and the end product quite different from the models which had influenced his reforms. It is argued that this relative failure derived not only from the widespread resistance to reform but also from geographical, social and cultural circumstances peculiar to Russia. Greater scholarly sensitivity to the social and cultural contexts in which state building occurs might stimulate more cross-cultural and comparative perspectives and enrich this important area of social theory.     

Agenda-Setters and Policy Influentials: Results from the Victorian Agendas Project

The Victorian Agendas Project (1991-93) used a snowball sampling method to produce annual peer-nominated lists of agenda-setters and policy influentials in six policy fields: economic policy, health, welfare, transport, education and the environment. Three hundred and fifty-six interviews were conducted with 214 influentials over the three-year period. Respondents identified high-priority issues and policy options on their current and future agendas. This paper deals with the question of who the agenda setters/policy influentials were. Was there evidence of a dominant elite or elites (e.g. business and banking elites) whose influence ranged across policy fields, or was there a more pluralist pattern in which influentials tended to 'specialise' in particular fields? How substantial was the turnover among influentials when the Liberal-National coalition government replaced Labor in 1992?     

Interactions between urban systems and localized productive systems: An approach to endogenous regional development in terms of innovative milieu

From the 1970s onwards, the regional development suffers a change in its nature: it becomes more and more endogenous. The transition from a perspective of development from above to a perspective of development from below, and the transition from a problematic of redistribution to a problematic of resources creation, need more than a readjustment of the existing regional theories. It turns out to be necessary to focus on the endogeneization of the development mechanism, i.e. on the interactions leading to transformations and adaptations of localized production systems. In fact, it is a matter of building up theories of change that would be able to explain how a region can generate mechanism of wealth creation from its specific resources. Now, these different processes are closely connected to urban organization and their implementation depends on the milieu (i.e. innovative or non‐innovative).     

GEOGRAPHIC IMPLICATIONS OF MEGA-MALLS, WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO WEST EDMONTON MALL

West Edmonton Mall (wem) is an internationally known shopping mall I leisure complex comprising approximately 4 million sq. ft. of leasable retail and service space. It contains more than 600 shops, plus a hotel and leisure and recreational facilities that are unmatched in any previous shopping centre. The superimposition of a single, massive development on a pre-existing urban structure has created both opportunities and problems for Edmonton, while the emergence of such an urban phenomenon, unprecedented in scale and character, should raise new questions and stimulate new thinking among academics. This introductory article provides a context for the articles that follow by outlining the developmental history of wem and assessing its significance as a mega-ma/ prototype, and by identifying themes to be addressed in detail in the subsequent articles.     

STRUCTURAL FEATURES OF WEST EDMONTON MALL

This article addresses the question of how West Edmonton Mall (wem) may be a new and distinctive component of retail spatial structure by analysing the retail and service attributes of the mall in the context of (I) Edmonton's retail structure at the regional shopping centre level, and (2) the internal structure of the mall. It is suggested that wem has added a new level to Edmonton's retail hierarchy, rivalling the downtown as the city's primate centre. The analysis of tenant changes leads to the conclusion that these changes tend to reflect a movement from unconventional to conventional tenant mix, and that wem is not much different, other than in sheer size, from most large regional shopping centres. The only unique structural characteristic appears to be the existence of enclaves not usually found in other malls.     

一顿法餐的秘密

法国美食教皇Bocuse曾说“食欲和性欲一样”。其实,我倒是觉得法国人对美食的热情和执著远远胜过于他们对待情人：法国人可以为了在心仪的餐厅里占据一张桌子,提前半年来预订,经过半年的耐心等待,在某个晚上,盛装赴约。     

Camels in the northern provinces of the Roman Empire

This paper describes the camel bones discovered in two Late Roman contexts from Arlon (Belgium). The morphological and metrical analyses identify the animal as a dromedary.