The Regional Impact of EU Eastern Enlargement: A View from Germany

Based on a relational concept of regional analysis this contribution emphasizes that European Union (EU) Eastern enlargement will primarily lead to a restructuring or intensification of interregional economic relations. However, it rejects the widespread view that at first the border regions at the present EU Eastern boundary would be affected by Eastern enlargement. This view relies on the problematic assumption that the regions' transnational relations are subject to a logic of geographical nearness. The most important nodes of transnational economic relations in an enlarged EU are not the border regions, but certain regional development centres in the interior of the European economic space. Thus the regional impact of EU Eastern enlargement should be differentiated with regard to different types of regions: Particular advantages come towards the structurally strong regions in the interior of the present EU as well as the accession countries, whereas the structurally weak regions at the present EU Eastern boundary can gain advantages from Eastern enlargement only to the extent that they manage to overcome their endogenous blockades concerning cross-border economic cooperation and a positive attitude of the regions' population towards European integration.     

Kommunale Wirtschaftsförderung im Umbruch

Städte und Regionen unterliegen einem andauernden und verschärften Wettbewerb um Unternehmen, Arbeitskräfte und Infrastruktureinrichtungen. Der anhaltende technologische und gesellschaftliche Strukturwandel—verbunden mit einer Neubewertung von Standortfaktoren—sowie die fortschreitende Globalisierung bleiben für die Standorte nicht ohne Folgen. Diese Entwicklungen bedeuten für die Wirtschaftsförderung vor Ort sowohl Risiken als auch Chancen. Chancen insbesondere, wenn sich die Sichtweise der Unternehmen konsequent zu eigen gemacht wird. Ausdruck dafür sind Aktivitäten, die sich hinter Schlagworten wie Clustermarketing, private-public-partnership, Benchmarking, Standort- und Netzwerkmanagement, Aufbau von Kompetenzzentren und regionale Kooperationen verbergen. Risiken sind zu vermuten, wenn Lotsenfunktionen wesentlich das Handeln von Wirtschaftsförderung bestimmen. Werden Wirtschaftsräume als Orte der Initiierung, Anwendung und Verbreitung von Innovationen betrachtet, werden die Herausforderungen einer aktiven Wirtschaftsförderung transparent.     

Has it become warmer in Alberta? Mapping temperature changes for the period 1950–2010 across Alberta,Canada

When a Canada‐wide daily climate time series, covering the period 1950–2010, became available, an opportunity arose to analyze the time series for trends of a variety of temperature indices. The 6,833 climate grid cells covering Alberta, each with an area of 10 km by 10 km, allowed the detailed mapping of 30 temperature indices across the province. From each time series, an annual series was computed, which then enabled trend analyses using the non‐parametric Mann‐Kendall and Sen Slope tests. New maps could be created at an unprecedented spatial resolution, and an associated website was developed to access all trends and changes between 1950 and 2010 for all grid cells at albertaclimaterecords.com . The confidence levels of some temperature trends exceed 99%, while others are below 80%. In Alberta's south, annual average temperatures have increased by 1°C to 2°C since the 1950s, but in Alberta's north the increase is 2°C to 4°C. The growing season has lengthened by between one and five weeks since the 1950s, while the number of frost days has declined. The most significant trends observed were increases in mean annual and winter temperatures, and declines in the number of days below ?20°C and heating degree days.     

Rural regeneration strategies for declining regions: trade-off between novelty and practicability

ABSTRACT

Innovation comprises both novelty and practicability. These two dimensions of innovation correlate partly negatively in our analysis of survey data about planning processes in declining rural districts. As argued in the literature, declining regions need innovative concepts beyond traditional counteracting strategies to ‘shrink smart’. Competitions are suggested as feasible-to-initiate innovative local concepts by the state. The German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture invited 39 particularly affected rural districts to participate in such a competition among the best concepts. We address the questions of how the districts dealt with the requirements for novelty and practicability in their concepts and how the rules of competitive bidding procedures influence those concepts. Answering these questions, we conducted a survey and statistically tested hypotheses deduced from governance and innovation theory. Moreover, we analysed the bidding documents. The results show that most districts came up with hardly novel and only partly practicable concepts because the organization of the competition, and local bargaining processes impede innovation. Furthermore, the ministry’s requirements for the competition overburdened local actors with a lack of resources in declining regions. As a policy implication, we propose to integrate external experts in local networks and to accompany declining regions over a longer time instead of short-term competitions and projects.     

‘We are the boys from the Black Country’! (Re)Imagining local,regional and spectator identities through fandom at Walsall Football Club

The Black Country, a region that is only loosely defined geographically, is an area located in the West Midlands of England, which its inhabitants claim holds a distinct geographical and cultural personality. However, despite the territory's perceived uniqueness, popular imaginations of England have often overlooked the Black Country's historical and socio-cultural individuality. Therefore, given those working in a number of disciplines have recognised local football spectator communities to be significant cultural arenas, through which localism is performed and remade, this article explores the role of fandom in imagining, preserving and/or contesting notions of ‘Black Countryness’. Utilising semi-structured interviews, netnography and participant observation, as key methodological techniques, this study explores how local-spectator communities at Walsall Football Club (one of three professional football teams based in the Black Country) continually (re)negotiate a collective sense of local and regional identity. By adopting a critical approach, guided by Hall's notion of ‘cultural identity’, this research, in line with other similar studies, highlights the significant role football fandom plays in imbuing particular locales with meaning. However, more importantly, by understanding football fandom is emergent from complex, productive and interconnected cultural processes, this article is also critical of local football spectator communities and their exclusionary, as well as inclusionary, practices and customs.     

Stimulating spatial quality? Unpacking the approach of the province of Friesland,the Netherlands

The article introduces the concepts of robustness and flexibility into the discussion on spatial quality to unpack the approach adopted by the Dutch province of Friesland in pursuit of their ambition to stimulate spatial quality. The analysis of how robustness and flexibility are manifested in Friesland, respectively the capacity to counteract negative impacts on spatial quality and the capacity to progress to more enhanced forms of spatial quality, reveals a multi-component, dynamic and selective approach. Multi-component refers to the combination of regulations, the building of purposeful organizations and teams and deliberate actions to influence spatial development projects and plans. It is dynamic because the approach is adapted to the dynamics of the multilevel governance system wherein the province and its actions are embedded. It is selective because spatial quality is reduced to a limited set of factors, decision-making is done by a selected set of actors and some measures tend to address a limited set of themes. The findings suggest that stimulating spatial quality strongly depends on how spatial quality is conceptualized and formalized in the arena of politics and planning, negotiated in multilevel decision-making processes alongside decisions on whether to make resources available for this purpose.     

Neocolonial Urbanism? La Rénovation Urbaine in Paris

This paper analyses the programme of redeveloping housing estates in France overseen by the Agence Nationale de la Rénovation Urbaine (ANRU). Under this programme social housing reconstruction is undertaken in a nationally coordinated fashion in order to “valorize”, “secure” and socially “mix” estates. The paper highlights the political and neo‐colonial aspects of this programme and the wider state spatial strategies it is part of. Redevelopment projects not only further gentrifying land‐rent valorization, state rescaling and territorially stigmatizing symbolic violence; they also reorganize territorial relations of domination in multiple, also racialized, neo‐colonial and partly hegemonic ways. In a longer view, they respond to the “urban revolution” of 1968 (Garnier) and to the “anti‐colonial revolution” of independence and anti‐racist movements (Khiari). The paper builds on a framework that articulates marxist (Lefebvrean) and anti‐colonial (Fanonian) lineages while drawing on research on the neo‐colonial aspects of the French state.