How Finance Penetrates its Other: A Cautionary Tale on the Financialization of a Dutch University

If any organization ought to be immune to the forces of financialization, it is a publicly funded university in corporatist Europe. Shielded from the intrusion by financial metrics, values and professionals through a strong historically rooted tradition of self‐management by powerful professional guilds, continental universities should largely have avoided the marketization and managerialization of Anglophone universities. Not so, this case study of a Dutch public university suggests. From 1995 onwards, a shift in real estate management—devolving responsibilities from the Dutch state to universities—served as a Trojan horse for financialization, triggering changes in organizational culture and a power shift from teaching and research professionals to accountants, real‐estate developers, financiers and their ilk. This case suggests that the power of finance is such that no societal domain is immune. The paper ends with a call for more non‐metropolitan case studies of financialization and argues that the only hope for salvation is a more self‐conscious defense of traditional academic values by the guardians of higher learning themselves.     

Political geographies of urban demarcation: Learning from Nepal's state-restructuring process

In this paper we use the case of Nepal to advance political geographic analyses of how, during moments of rupture, territory act as an important political technology in state restructuring, and how urban demarcation along with other territorial structures of the state will play a significant role in this process. Nepal has experienced more than three decades of state-restructuring characterized by consecutive political and constitutional crises, including close to ten years of violent conflict. Within the brief period between 2014 and 2017, more than 230 new municipalities were demarcated on top of the existing 58. In our analysis we unpack why and how the number of municipalities is quadrupled at that particular moment of time and how this is shaped by and have implications for re-configurations of Nepal's territorial structures. This is achieved through a historical analysis of how the state's politico-administrative system has been mapped, reasoned and challenged. The analysis is based on official documents, such as census data and reports, legislative acts, public debates and academic analyses of processes of administrative and political reforms and conflicts in Nepal since the early 1990s. It therefore engages with a rich literature on conflict, the post-conflict situation and the restructuring of the state. Based on our findings we argue that urban demarcation is an important part of a states' political technology complex, and warn against trends in studies of urbanization to question the analytical bearing of differentiating the rural and urban. Showing that Nepal's recent urban boundaries have been justified by the need to achieve a better geographical balance, we conclude by arguing for the need for studies of urban transformations that critically examine whether and how the new territorial structures in their implementation contribute to balance geographical and social inequalities.     

Voluntarism and long-term care in the countryside: the paradox of a threadbare sector

This article contributes to the burgeoning literature on the geographies of voluntarism by addressing how voluntary sector providers in rural communities respond to the downloading of responsibilities for health and social care associated with public service restructuring. Drawing on a qualitative analysis of long-term care in Ontario, it focuses on the consequent actions of non-profit organizations, community support groups and volunteer caregivers in three different rural settings. Despite evidence of increasingly disproportionate levels of voluntarism amongst rural communities, the results reveal sector- and place-specific opportunities that allow voluntary sector providers to overcome the limitations of the rural service environment. The findings suggest that in the longer run, however, the growing dependence on local solutions will only exacerbate the uneven geographies of health and social care across rural space. Resolving this paradox remains a critical yet neglected challenge for sustainable rural services and communities.     

Global TransPark: New Competitiveness for Hong Kong and South China Based on Air Logistics

Economic globalization in the past two decades has led to a fast pace of growth of many economies in Asia Pacific, and impacted on the region's growth in air cargo. This paper discusses the future of airport infrastructure and its effect on regional competitiveness in the form of a new type of airport — Global TransPark (GTP). It identifies China's need to forge such a critical infrastructure in the New Economy, and that South China is its best location. The Hong Kong Extended Metropolitan Region (EMR) in South China stands out among competitive regions in Asia in terms of geopolitical and institutional setting under ‘One Country, Two Systems’ as the best general location for Asia's first and potentially largest GTP. Forging a GTP will promote the EMR's overall competitiveness and hastens its economic restructuring. The paper then discusses the advantages of Zhuhai Airport as the site of the potential GTP which will also incorporate the other four nearby airports within the EMR. The GTP is also a new challenge for intra-EMR cooperation in terms of customs and tariff, air rights, ground handling, and land and water transport coordination between its airports and respective local governments.     

Revanchist Urbanism Heads South: The Regulation of Indigenous Beggars and Street Vendors in Ecuador

Abstract: Much of the discussion surrounding neoliberal urbanism has been empirically grounded in the North. This paper shifts the discussion south to focus on the regulation of indigenous street vendors and beggars in the Andean nation of Ecuador. Inspired by zero tolerance policies from the North, the cities of Quito and Guayaquil have recently initiated urban regeneration projects to cleanse the streets of informal workers, beggars, and street children. In this paper, I explore the particular and pernicious ways in which these neoliberal urban policies affect indigenous peoples in the urban informal sector. Grounded in the literature on space, race and ethnicity in the Andes, I argue that Ecuador's particular twist on revanchism is through its more transparent engagement with the project of blanqueamiento or “whitening”. I further argue that Ecuador's “refinement” of revanchist urban policies only works to displace already marginalised individuals and push them into more difficult circumstances.