Modern ideology and the creation of ancient town planning

This paper examines the historiography of ancient town planning and the Roman city, with particular attention to its origin in the town planning debate of the early twentieth century. It questions the existing dichotomies, ‘civilised'/'uncivilised’, ‘classical'/'barbarian’, ‘urban'/'proto‐urban’, that have characterised this history. Finally, the paper examines the effect of the separation of the academic disciplines of classics and archaeology in Britain upon the history of ancient urbanism.     

Economic growth and restructuring in Canada's heartland and hinterland: From shift‐share to multifactor partitioning

The geography of the Canadian economy has long been dominated by heartland‐hinterland contrasts, with manufacturing identified as the dominant function of most heartland cities in analyses of the 1961 and 1971 census data. However, the proportion of employment in manufacturing has been declining in the heartland provinces of Ontario and Quebec over the past fifty years and some geographers argue that the heartland‐hinterland dimension of the regional economy is being overridden by city‐regions that are integrated into global networks of production and trade. The heartland‐hinterland trends are examined using multifactor partitioning (MFP), an advanced shift‐share methodology, for the period of 2001–2006. This is the first intercensal period in which Canadian business has faced the full impact of the removal of North American tariff protection and the increased globalization of the Canadian economy. The data covers employment by eighteen industry sectors for the seventy‐three economic regions defined by Statistics Canada. MFP measures the region and industry‐mix effects, which are interpreted as in the traditional shift‐share model (though they are derived more accurately) and, in addition, an interaction effect. The results demonstrate that the broad heartland‐hinterland differences in the distribution of population and employment growth are increasing not decreasing and that the hinterland is in fact falling further behind the heartland in employment growth. However the Calgary‐Edmonton corridor and the Lower Mainland of British Columbia are emerging as a western heartland. The population size of cities does affect their rates of employment growth, but so too does their location: the growth of heartland cities is outpacing those in the hinterland. The Appendix provides the equations for two‐variable multifactor partitioning.     

On What's Right and Keeping Left: Or Why Geography Still Needs Marxian Political Economy

Recently the value of Marxian approaches to human geography has again been called into question in the pages of Antipode. In this paper I review the reasons as to why geographers re‐discovered Marx and then, from the late 1960s, began to engage with Marxian approaches. I then consider some of the reasons why Marxian approaches in their turn became the subject of critique in geography and some of the alternatives explored in the wake of this. The conclusion is that a pluri‐theoretical human geography is necessary but that Marxian approaches remain of central significance to radical and critically minded geographers.     

The second demographic transition, new household forms and the urban population of France during the 1990s

European household structures and their geography have been transformed in recent decades as a response to the interplay of demographic events and changing lifestyles. The formation of new households generally outstrips the rate of population increase, as more numerous and smaller households result from changing patterns of marriage, child-bearing, divorce and longevity. This paper tests some of the underlying hypotheses of the 'second demographic transition' using data from the most recent (1999) French population census. It provides an analysis of changing national household structures over the last quarter of the twentieth century and highlights the importance of smaller households, with particular emphasis on the rise of living alone. Trends identified in earlier work have intensified during the 1990s. In discussing the geography of new household forms, the paper focuses particularly on the evolution of major central cities and argues for more explicit links between their distinctive population and household structures and wider socio-economic change.     

Poverty and Neo‐Liberal Bias in the Middle East and North Africa

This article examines the definition of poverty and the evidential base for the claims that the region of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) has historically low levels of poverty and relatively good levels of income distribution. It argues that the dominant trend in the literature on poverty in the global south in general, and in MENA in particular, has a neo‐classical bias. Amongst other things, that bias fails to understand that poverty does not emerge because of exclusion but because of poor people's ‘differential incorporation’ into economic and political processes. It also raises the question: if the MENA has indeed had relatively low levels of poverty and good income distribution, does this complicate the issue of autocracy and the western drive to remove political ‘backwardness’ in the region? In particular, the characterization of autocracy and the west's attempt to promote political liberalization is likely to impact adversely on the social contract that autocratic rulers have enforced regarding the delivery of basic services.     

Can South–South Cooperation Compete? The Development Bank of Latin America and the Islamic Development Bank

Southern‐led multilateral development banks (MDBs) play a key role in harnessing global capital to finance the sectors most important to borrowers, especially infrastructure. Two prominent Southern MDBs, the Development Bank of Latin America (CAF) and the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB), have become crucial drivers of regional infrastructure growth. This article explores whether their performance has lived up to their goals of establishing borrower control over bank governance without sacrificing financial dynamism. Using power‐weighted voting indices for member representation on bank boards, the authors determine that these banks offer borrowers much more representation on their boards than do their Northern‐based counterparts, the Inter‐American Development Bank (IDB) and the World Bank International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD). The article also analyses bank operations to determine whether their governance structure impacts their internal performance, as reflected on balance sheets, and external performance — gaining relevance in development finance and particularly in infrastructure lending, including the burgeoning sector of sustainable (climate‐resilient) infrastructure. The authors find that the CAF and IsDB have become major players in development finance, including in sustainable infrastructure. However, important issues remain in relation to their continued internal capacity development, especially with regard to the environmental and social safeguards necessary to oversee lending.