Tourist territorialisation and geographies of opportunity at the edges of mass destinations

ABSTRACT

Geographies of tourism often highlight tourism's tendency to exclude or displace local economic actors. Tourism enclaves tend to be particularly exclusive at destination sites and urban centres. This study looks at the edge of a mass tourism town centre and investigates how landowners, entrepreneurs and employees retain a foothold in the face of tourism expansion. Conducted in 2014–2015, this microgeography of a tourist backstreet in Siem Reap, Cambodia comprises a survey of 73 of the occupants and over 40 follow-up interviews complemented by a photographic record of 135 premises. It found most local landowners retaining their properties, and only engaging strategically and selectively with the tourism economy. Entrepreneurial opportunities were initially taken by migrants from other provinces, and then, as tourism expanded, by foreigners and by local entrepreneurs with experience of employment in established tourism businesses. This study illustrates how tourism's territorialisation of back regions is quite different from that of front regions. Even in relatively impoverished settings, pre-tourism economic activities and business cultures may contribute to local actors being able to achieve relatively secure footholds in hybridised space at the edges tourism booms.     

Smolensk and the Varangians according to the archaeological data

The historical and archaeological sources from the Viking period which concern the city of Smolensk and the large cemetery at Gnyozdovo by the river Dnieper are discussed.

The author examines the most important find groups and grave types and asserts that extremely few specific Scandinavian traits are to be found.

His conclusion is that Smolensk was founded by the Slavs before the Gnyozdovo cemetery was established. The fact that only a few Scandinavian graves are known from the tenth century and none from the ninth and eleventh must mean that only small groups of Scandinavians had settled in the Smolensk area and these were rapidly assimilated with the Slav groups.     

故宫博物院近期对外及港澳台地区的文化交流

故宫博物院作为国内藏品最多、最有影响力的综合类博物馆,一直保持十分活跃的对外交流态势。2008年以来,故宫博物院积极与国(境)外博物馆建立战略合作关系,打造长期交流机制。如举办和参加各类形式的涉外展览,扩大了对外交流空间;开展并深化项目交流与合作,拓宽了国际视野和交流平台;充分利用各种平台开展多层次学术交流,开展有针对性的出访活动;建立了与国(境)外博物馆的沟通联系;完成多项国宾接待任务;接收海外和港澳实习生等。此外,全面推进两岸故宫的交流与合作。将来,故宫博物院将一如既往地积极开展此类文化交流,让世界了解、欣赏和接受优秀的中国传统文化。     

A note on,wind‐stars

There has been a revival of interest in recent years in the relationships between multinational corporations (hereafter MNCs) and the host regions in which they operate. The branch plant thesis which generally views inward investment by MNCs in a negative light — as reinforcing power relations between core and peripheral regions — has been challenged, with the suggestion that such developments can play a key role in linking up local economies to important flows of knowledge and information in a global economy. It has also been suggested that MNC branch plant activities are in practice often upgraded over time, leading to the development of important competitive advantages for host regions. In this paper, such claims are investigated through a case study of the Aberdeen oil region in the north east of Scotland. The changing position of Aberdeen within the oil industry's corporate division of labour is evaluated in terms of the wider theoretical debate.     

Landscapes of Desire in the Poetry of Vittorio Sereni

The article studies trasformismo (party-switching) in Italian regional councils, examining Lombardy, Emilia Romagna, Tuscany, and Puglia from 1970 to 2010. Although lato sensutrasformismo – enrollment in the mixed group and party switches among the electoral lists – also has empirical relevance at regional level, stricto sensutrasformismo – the transition from the majority to the opposition, or vice versa – was quantitatively negligible. In the transition from the first to the second phase of the Italian Republic (after 1994), the regional system was reorganized according to a government model in which there is a clear distinction between the roles of the majority and the opposition, by virtue of the direct election of presidents from 1995 onwards. Thus, the thesis formulated by Giovanni Sabbatucci is confirmed: trasformismo is a pattern of government from the ‘center’ of the political space, which is a very different option from the adversarial model of democracy which has emerged in the regions over the last two decades. As a result, this also seems to confirm the neo-institutionalistic thesis expressed by Robert D. Putnam in his classic Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (1993), according to which ‘institutions shape politics’ and the behavior of its actors.     

Human capital accumulation and long‐term income growth projections for European regions

We propose an econometric framework to construct projections for per capita income growth and human capital for European regions. Using Bayesian methods, our approach accounts for model uncertainty in terms of the choice of explanatory variables, the nature of spatial spillovers, as well as the potential endogeneity between output growth and human capital accumulation. This method allows us to assess the potential contribution of future educational attainment to economic growth and income convergence among European regions over the next decades. Our findings suggest that income convergence dynamics and human capital act as important drivers of income growth for the decades to come.     

Re-thinking non-core regions: planning strategies and practices beyond growth

ABSTRACT

Periods of ongoing growth in the economy and demographics have come to a halt for many European regions for various reasons, challenging their economic development prospects. Despite the heterogeneous nature of stagnation, decline, peripheralization or even stigmatization to be found there, these configurations ‘beyond growth’ have in common that short-term ‘fire-fighting’ policy approaches aiming to foster regional economic growth face some important limitations. We argue that this has to do, among other things, with the overall direction of established and orthodox planning approaches that are predominantly based on growth-oriented paradigms and implicitly or explicitly work with dichotomous categories such as core–periphery and metropolitan versus non-metropolitan spaces; these do, however, not capture local realities in these cases. Using the notion of non-core regions, we plead for conceptualizing non-core regions and their regional economic development trajectories in different ways: thinking ‘beyond growth’. Such alternative ideas should be informed by alternative understandings of growth, development and sustainability in order to influence theories and concepts, but also to support new approaches to planning practice. To this aim, we discuss non-core regions from a social constructivist perspective, elaborating some points of departure for conceptualizing and practising regional planning ‘beyond growth’.     

Smart specialization policies: innovative performance models from European regions

ABSTRACT

This research seeks to identify the factors that best explain the performance of regional innovation in Europe, in the era of smart specialization. Data were collected from the Regional Innovation Scoreboard 2016 and a quantitative methodology was followed using linear regressions as statistical methods. The results allowed us to reach four explanatory models of performance innovation for Innovative Regions Leader, Strong, Moderate and Modest. Some policies have also been suggested as possible regional innovation measures that can help policy makers to clarify and improve the innovation performance of these regions.     

Spatial variations and clustering in the rates of youth unemployment and NEET: A comparative analysis of Italy,Spain, and the UK

We investigate the “determinants” of spatial variations in youth unemployment and NEET rates, and the presence of spatial clusters, for Italy, Spain and the UK. We aggregate Labour Force Survey data for the period 1993–2018 to a “regional” level. We find that youths are sensitive to aggregate labor market conditions and a discouraged worker effect. In the UK and Spain, temporary jobs are more likely to be preferred to part-time jobs, whereas in Italy the opposite occurs. There is evidence of spatial clustering of youth unemployment and NEET rates. We discuss the implications for place-based regional and labor market policies.     

The territorial dynamics of innovation: a Europe United States comparative analysis

The United States and European Union differ significantly interms of their innovative capacity: the former have been ableto gain and maintain world leadership in innovation and technologywhile the latter continues to lag. Notwithstanding the magnitudeof this innovation gap and the political emphasis placed uponit on both sides of the Atlantic, very little systematic comparativeanalysis has been carried out on its causes. The empirical literaturehas emphasized the structural differences between the two continentsin the quantity and quality of the major ‘inputs’to innovation: R&D investments and human capital. The verydifferent spatial organization of innovative activities in theEU and the US—as suggested by a variety of contributionsin the field of economic geography—could also influenceinnovative output. This article analyses and compares a wideset of territorial processes that influence innovation in Europeand the United States. The higher mobility of capital, populationand knowledge in the US not only promotes the agglomerationof research activity in specific areas of the country but alsoenables a variety of territorial mechanisms to fully exploitlocal innovative activities and (informational) synergies. Inthe European Union, in contrast, imperfect market integrationand institutional and cultural barriers across the continentprevent innovative agents from maximizing the benefits fromexternal economies and localized interactions, but compensatoryforms of geographical process may be emerging in concert withfurther European integration.