Analysing Contemporary Metropolitan Spatial Plans in Europe Through Their Institutional Context,Instrumental Content and Planning Process

This article sets out to propose and apply a qualitative framework for thinking about how to analyse and compare metropolitan spatial plans in a milieu of divergent spatial planning traditions and discretionary planning practices. In doing so, the article reviews and develops an understanding concerning the institutional context, instrumental content and planning processes associated with four contemporary metropolitan spatial plans in Europe, namely those of London, Copenhagen, Paris and Barcelona. Through the results of a multiple case study and a subsequent cross-comparative analysis, the article stresses that contemporary metropolitan spatial plans tend to merge the characteristics associated with project-based and strategy-based spatial plans, thus contrasting with the typical land-use character of municipal plans and the often strategic, growth-oriented pursuit of regional plans in Europe. In this sense, the metropolitan scale is treated less explicitly as a planning scale per se; rather, it tends to emerge as a “concealed” scale between municipal and regional scales and also between local and regional knowledge in planning. Moreover, the analysis suggests that while metropolitan plans seem to converge in terms of their general themes, they cannot be ultimately “typified” in view of ad hoc variations related to their institutional contexts, instrumental contents and planning processes.     

Knowledge Transmission in Industrial Clusters: Evidence from EuroClusTex

Covering the knowledge economy scenario, this article attempts to illustrate the analysis of the employment of knowledge transmission channels in the EuroClusTex, cross-border textile and clothing cluster between northern Portugal and Galicia. Therefore, an exploratory research was conducted. Primary data were obtained through participation in events, from interviews with key informants (entrepreneurs, leaders of cluster support institutions and government representatives). The secondary data were provided by the cluster support institutions, international organizations and the literature review. The results showed that EuroClusTex contributes to the competitiveness of regions, boosting trade relations between Galicia and northern Portugal. The most effective knowledge transmission channels in EuroClusTex were identified as: imitation, relationship with suppliers, public policy and human resources training. Experiences similar to EuroClusTex can be considered and served as examples for the development of clustering policies in other countries.     

Writing up the region: anchor firm dismantling and the construction of a perceived regional advantage in Swedish news media

This study investigates how geographic representations and regional industrial identity in news media are used to mobilize local/regional actors and to attract inward and outward investments by mediating and narrating stories of the recovery and rebirth of a region in distress – that is, how media contribute to economic development in or of the region. The study targets media attention covering the dismantling and relocation of two regionally embedded life science and likewise anchor firms: the Pharmacia and Upjohn merger in Uppsala in 1995 and the closure of AstraZeneca's operations in Lund in 2010. By drawing on the method of framing and content analysis of news articles derived from a public media database, the analysis show that: (a) geographic representation and associations are intensified in times of media turbulence; (b) news coverage follows two subsequent phases (an initial ‘crisis’ phase and a following more optimistic ‘recovery’ phase) and (c) news media (as intermediary actors and arenas) by communicating ideas of a shared regional industrial identity contribute to the construction of a ‘perceived regional advantage’ (as understood and communicated by news media). Thus, regional industrial identity-building and how the region is perceived by internal and external audiences are important for regional development.     

From the Panama Canal to Post‐Fordism: Producing Temporary Labor Migrants Within and Beyond Agriculture in the United States (1904–2013)

In the historical study of modern American capitalism, labor unfreedom in agriculture has been conceptualized as an exception to liberal labor relations in the post‐slavery polity, from debt peonage to the threat of deportation from workplaces populated by non‐citizen migrants. At the same time, state‐enforced labor compulsions and restrictions are increasingly part and parcel of what scholars call neoliberal exceptionalism. This article argues that agricultural and neoliberal exceptionalisms are related, by tracing the historical genealogy and juridical production of a restrictive work status, the deportable temporary labor migrant, across political economies in the modern United States, from imperial construction in the Panama Canal Zone, to agriculture, to the knowledge economy. Contrary to existing notions of temporary work visas as a new form of unfreedom in neoliberalized advanced capitalist states, I show how the threat of deportation is older and rooted in the rise of the liberal regulatory state in a post‐slavery, yet persistently racial capitalist political economy. The import of understanding this history of government intervention increases as the liberal regulatory state's coercive logics and practices intensify and circulate in agriculture and under a post‐Fordist regime of accumulation, reproducing racial capitalism in the labor process.     

Some approaches to traditional Māori knowledge

In this essay I review two books of rather different focus, but with a common thread that is oral tradition: age-old tales passed orally down the generations to maintain the histories and used to educate the young. The focus of the Metge book is traditional methods of education, while McRae’s focus is on the stories themselves.     

接收而不接受--铁路知识的供给与刘锡鸿的选择

无论在理论还是实践方面,刘锡鸿都是晚清较早"接收"铁路知识的官员之一,但他却提出25条理由反对中国修筑铁路,从而以"不接受"铁路闻名于时。他的论据在于中国不具备兴办铁路的政治与社会环境,缺乏相应的经济与文化基础。对此,不能以"保守"简单定性,应当看到刘锡鸿对于西学知识的认真思考和理性抉择,进而理解近代国人在接收与接受西方事物方面的复杂性。     

传统技术、生态知识及环境适应:以明清时期淮南盐作为例

传统技术发展演变有复杂的社会经济与环境背景。通过讨论江苏淮南盐区制盐技术发展的过程及关键影响因素,可以揭示中国传统盐作技术演化机制的复杂性。明末清初各海盐区基本废煎改晒,但江苏淮南盐区仍继续沿用传统煎法生产,成为中国海盐经济发展史上的特殊现象。作为中国传统盐业生产的“特区”,淮南盐区在明末清初至20世纪中后叶也经过数次废煎改晒尝试,但淮南岸段的砂质土壤与低于500毫米的净蒸发量限制了大规模改晒的可能,重煎轻晒的产销政策又使淮南煎法在清代更为巩固,进一步影响了该区域传统制盐技术革新。淮南盐区传统制盐技术演变可为前工业化技术的比较研究提供经验基础,有助于更深刻了解本土技术发展机制及其环境适应特征。