Government institutions and the dynamics of urban growth in China

Economic growth in China in recent decades has largely rested on the dynamism of its cities. High economic growth has coincided with measures aimed at improving the efficiency of local governments and with a mounting political drive to curb corruption. Yet the connection between government institutions and urban growth in China remains poorly understood. This paper is the first to look into the link between government efficiency and corruption, on the one hand, and urban growth in China, on the other hand and to assess what is the role of institutions relative to more traditional factors for economic growth in Chinese cities. Using panel data for 283 cities over the period between 2003 and 2014, the results show that the urban growth in China is a consequence of a combination of favorable human capital, innovation, density, local conditions, foreign direct investment, and city‐level government institutions. Both government quality—especially for those cities with the best governments—and the fight against corruption at the city level have a direct effect on urban growth. Measures to tackle corruption at the provincial level matter in a more indirect way, by raising or lowering the returns of other growth‐inducing factors.     

Are smart cities global cities? A European perspective

Typical of the 1990s, the global cities phenomenon preceded the past decade’s massive spread of smart cities. Yet the question of how the two phenomena currently coincide remains to be considered, as well as an analysis based on viewing smart cities as global cities. An analysis related to the European scenario is developed in this article, aimed at giving a response to the previous considerations. An index is also proposed; concerning the global character of the cities, it considers the ability of the cities to attract Foreign Direct Investments (FDI). Results of the proposed analysis show that in Europe four main scenarios exist. Two regarding positive and negative correlations between the diffusion of global and smart cities, and another two scenarios demonstrate cases in which the two features are not correlated. The first two cases are respectively related to smart cities that are also global cities. The last two cases deal with the presence of different drivers that are not related to smart urban plans, which could, however, drive the attraction of FDI or which could also promote smart actions without the thrust of FDI. Correlation and regression analyses complement the work.     

Long-term land-use changes in small/medium-sized cities. Enhancing the general trends and local characteristics

Small and medium-sized cities represent the backbone of the European territory, promoting cohesion and an economic base for development. The study compares the spatial and temporal trajectories of land use in three small/medium-sized cities located in central Portugal, between 1958 and 2011. The cities of Viseu, Leiria and Castelo Branco were chosen because they are located in different urban sub-systems and because of the different factors that frame their alterations in land use, occupation and consequent urban development. The research evaluates the transformations, supported by indicators to explain the spatial dynamics of losses and gains and a principal component analysis compares the land-use trajectories for the three cities. The general results reveal an increase from the central part of the study areas to the periphery, contrasting with a continuous decrease of the agricultural parts, illustrating peri-urbanization and rururbanization processes. The study allows identification of the dynamics in the three analysed areas, highlighting the different rhythms of change and relating them to the particularities that exist in each city. The methodology represents an advantage for the analysis and evaluation of territorial dynamics related to land-use change, and made possible the identification of the different forces.     

Rethinking public participation in the smart city

In efforts to become “smart cities,” local governments are adopting various technologies that promise opportunities for increasing participation by expanding access to public comment and deliberation. Scholars and practitioners encounter the problem, however, of defining publics—demarcating who might participate through technology-enhanced public engagement. We explore two case studies in the city of Calgary that employ technologies to enhance public engagement. We analyzed the cases considering both the definition of publics and the level of citizen participation in areas of participatory budgeting and secondary suites. Our findings suggest that engaging the public is not a straightforward process, and that technology-enhanced public engagement can often reduce participation towards tokenism. City councillors and planners need to critically confront claims that smart cities necessarily enhance participation. Moving beyond tokenism requires understanding “public” as a plural category. Municipal governments should seek to proactively engage citizens and communities utilizing helpful resources including, but not limited to, digital tools and smart technologies. This would allow planners to keep a “finger on the pulse” of publics' concerns, better identifying and addressing issues of equity and social justice. It is also important to consider how marginalized publics can best be recognized in order to bring their concerns to the fore in decision-making processes.     

The Unstable Coastline: Navigating Dispossession and Belonging in Colombo

This article explores how residents of a small coastal fishing enclave in Colombo live with cumulative waves of dispossession brought on by exclusionary projects of urban development. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, I introduce the analytic of navigation to describe how people move, plan and live with both present and future threats of dispossession. Navigation offers a unique perspective on questions of agency and resistance in oppressive conditions. Rather than framing subjects as “resisting” projects of world-class city-making, this analysis shows that urban residents instead engage in complex and occasionally contradictory modes of living with uncertainty. I complicate existing understandings of the term “navigation” by describing how questions of nation and belonging are crucial to comprehending how people navigate. Ultimately, I suggest that expressions of belonging and obligation to an imagined community might not only be strategic, but instead reflect some of the broader social forces which structure possibilities for action.     

Where cities fail to triumph: The impact of urban location and local collaboration on innovation in Norway

The role of cities in fostering innovation has for long been taken for granted. Agglomeration and the knowledge spillovers generated in dense urban environments have been considered fundamental drivers of innovation. This view has, however, become challenged by research questioning the returns to physical agglomeration and local networking, placing instead more emphasis on the importance of interregional and international collaboration, and on innovation in peripheral regions. This paper delves into the debate on the role of cities for innovation by examining the interplay between urban location and local collaboration in Norway. It uses data from the Community Innovation Survey for 2006–2010 to map out the geographical dimension of R&D collaboration in Norwegian firms with a view to assessing whether different types of R&D collaboration in urban and rural locations affect firms’ propensity to innovate. The results show that local collaboration is associated with increased process and organisational innovation, while it does not produce higher levels of product or marketing innovation. Conversely, international collaboration is connected with higher probabilities of product, new-to-market and marketing innovations. Furthermore, location in urban or rural areas makes no difference for most innovation outcomes in Norway when other characteristics are controlled for. Location in cities also does not shape the returns to local R&D collaboration. Hence, the role of cities for innovation in Norway, whether in themselves or as sites for dense local interaction, is less relevant than the urban innovation literature would predict.     

Regional inequality in the U.S.: Evidence from city-level purchasing power

Using quarterly data for 42 products over the period from 1990 to 2015, we find that there has been a large and growing dispersion of purchasing power across U.S. cities since 1990 and the dispersion varies widely across products. We also find that total factor productivity shock precedes or predicts the rise in regional inequality of purchasing power. We view that the growing regional inequality found in the purchasing power among U.S. cities might have proceeded after nationwide productivity shocks mainly by the cities with higher share of skilled workers through the products with more flexible price adjustments.     

Pourquoi seules les villes sont-elles qualifiées d'intelligentes? Un vocabulaire du biais urbain

Since 2010, the term “smart city” has become a buzzword, used in a vague way to denote the increasing integration of information technology into city management processes and to describe the social and community processes they enable. The adjective “smart” is, however, only applied to cities: by implication non-cities (i.e., rural and peripheral regions) are not smart. In this paper we describe how the term “smart city” is used, and show that processes similar to those that make cities smart also occur outside cities. Reserving the term “smart” for cities therefore reflects a bias, similar to the bias that associates creativity and innovation with cities. As geographers we have become aware of our colonial and sexist biases: in this paper we argue that our urban bias is alive and well, and call attention to it.     

A Micro Model of Problem Definition and Policy Choice: Issue Image,Issue Association,and Policy Support of Power Plants

Past research on problem definition and public policy primarily focuses on the macro-system level. In this study, we propose a micro model of problem definition and policy choice at the individual level. We argue that while individual citizens' problem definitions and policy preferences are rooted in and filtered through their predisposition characteristics (such as socioeconomic status, political orientation, and informational base), their policy choices also strongly depend on how they define public issues, particularly how they perceive the image of an issue at hand and how they associate the issue with other public issues. Our empirical analyses, based on data from a national public survey on energy and power plant issues, support the key propositions derived from our theoretical model. Key contributions to and implications for policy studies are discussed in conclusion.     

不同类型传统村落脆弱性比较研究

以湘南地区作为研究单元,多元化获取数据,运用“敏感-暴露-适应”分析框架和数理模型评价法对3种类型、6个村落的脆弱程度和致脆因素进行比较研究。结果表明：①务工型强脆弱、工贸型中脆弱、旅游型微脆弱;②旅游型和工贸型属复合E-A致脆类型,务工型属均衡E-A-S致脆类型;③务工型的敏感性远大于其他类型,民俗文化和村落居民是主要敏感因子;④旅游型为强暴露、工贸型为中暴露、务工型为微暴露。城镇化和旅游开发是主要暴露因素;⑤旅游型的适应性最高,工贸型次之,务工型最差;⑥不同类型村落的致脆短板因素差异较大。