Earthquakes,grants, and public expenditure: How municipalities respond to natural disasters

We analyze the response of municipalities to the occurrence of natural disasters in terms of spending behavior, use of upper-tier transfers and recovery, using balance sheet data of about 8,000 Italian municipalities for the period 2000–2015, and the universe of earthquakes events. We find evidence of increasing expenditure for about 12 years after the shocks, with asymmetric responses between earthquake-related and unconditional grants, and heterogeneous flypaper effects across the country. While in northern municipalities expenditure tends to regress to pre-earthquake levels, southern municipalities stick to higher expenditure levels when grants drop. This evidence is coupled with a faster recovery of private income and housing prices in northern municipalities.     

A relational approach to walking: Methodology,metalanguage, and power relations

To better understand walking practices and the power relations informing them, Mattias Kärrholm and colleagues argue for a relational methodology and metalanguage. In the process, they propose a threefold approach: (a) identify different walking assemblages; (b) investigate how diverse types of walking assemblage relate in series; and (c) study how certain objects can gather or bind series together and act as boundary objects. In this article, we explore the worth of that approach, drawing on research interviews held over 2015–16 with residents from Wollongong, Australia, during a period when their municipal government was implementing a walkable city strategy. Here, we analyse participants' conversations with us for what they reveal about walking types, walking assemblages, interseriality, objects of passage, and boundary objects—five terms used by Kärrholm et al. to interrogate urban walking. Our work suggests that participants are adept at gauging the constant transformations that characterise their walks. This narrative evaluative capacity is, perhaps paradoxically, both compelling and mundane and suggests that participants make sense of a range of meanings from complex social and spatial dynamics and do so in ways that highlight privilege and disadvantage in the city. These findings have wider relevance for those interested in walking and mobilities studies and methodologies.     

The ripple effects of large-scale transport infrastructure investment

We analyze the general equilibrium effects of an asymmetric decrease in transport costs, combining a large-scale spatial dynamic general equilibrium model for 267 European NUTS-2 regions with a detailed transport model at the level of individual road segments. As a case study, we consider the impact of the road infrastructure investments in Central and Eastern Europe of the European Cohesion Policy. Our analysis suggests that the decrease in transportation costs benefits the targeted regions via substantial increases in gross domestic product (GDP) and welfare compared to the baseline, and a small increase in population. The geographic information embedded in the transport model leads to relatively large predicted benefits in peripheral countries such as Greece and Finland, which hardly receive funds, but whose trade links cross Central and Eastern Europe, generating profit from the investments there. The richer, Western European nontargeted regions also enjoy a higher GDP after the investment in the East, but these effects are smaller. Thus, the policy reduces interregional disparities. There are rippled patterns in the predicted policy spillovers. In nontargeted countries, regions trading more intensely with regions where the investment is taking place on average benefit more compared to other regions within the same country, but also compared to neighboring regions across an international border. We uncover that regions importing goods from Central and Eastern Europe enjoy the largest spillovers. These regions become more competitive and expand exports, to the detriment of other regions in the same country.     

Inter- and intraregional inequality in a spatial economy

In this paper, we develop a three-region economic geography model with workers of heterogeneous skills and mobility rates to consider how first-nature, regional differences impact both inter- and intraregional inequality. In our model, the skill premium within a region summarizes both the degree of intraregional inequality between mobile, skilled workers and immobile, unskilled workers and the interregional inequality through differences in the welfare of unskilled workers across regions. Regions with the highest skill premium have the greatest degree of intraregional inequality and provide the lowest level of welfare to unskilled workers, relative to other regions. We find that the skill premium will be higher in regions with a greater supply of unskilled labor, lower supply of housing, or are more remote. An increase in a region's housing supply or centrality will lower intraregional inequality and raise the welfare of the local, unskilled workforce. However, the magnitude of these changes are declining in the initial number of skilled workers in the region. The model is extended to consider imperfectly elastic housing supply. The larger the price elasticity of housing, the larger the range of values, such that more populated regions will host a disproportionate share of skilled workers, have lower levels of intraregional inequality, and provide higher levels of welfare for unskilled workers.     

Patterns of exchange and the social production of pigs in highland new guinea: Their relevance to questions about the origins and evolution of agriculture

In recent years, cultural anthropologists have made notable progress in understanding the bewildering variety of material exchange transactions found among the aboriginal populations of highland New Guinea. One of the major findings of this work is that competitive exchange behavior may bring in its wake alterations in agronomic practices involving an intensification of production. That intensification is primarily a product of social behavior, rather than an adaptation to climate change or population pressure, is a significant conclusion that should influence the thinking of archaeologists as they investigate past episodes of agronomic change, including the origins of agriculture.     

Settlement and social change in central Europe, 3500–1500 BC

The chronology of the period is briefly considered in the light of the dendrochronological results which have appeared in recent years. Patterns of settlement history in different parts of the area are then examined, and it is suggested that in some of them the late fourth millennium was a period of population decline which was not reversed until the Early Bronze Age, 1000 years later. Detailed information about specific local occupation patterns is provided by recent work on the circum-Alpine lake villages. Changes in cultural patterns during the period, especially the appearance of the Corded Ware, are discussed and explanations of them reviewed. It is argued that changing patterns of gender relations were a major feature of the period, linked to processes which eventually led to the development of small-scale chiefdoms. The development of copper and bronze metallurgy and its connection to these processes are discussed.     

Place-based innovation policy for industrial diversification in regions

New industrial innovation policies like smart specialization aim at boosting economic growth by diversification towards more complex and higher value economic activities. This paper proposes a conceptual and analytical framework to support the design and implementation of such policies considering place-specific preconditions, particularly the differentiation of the regional system of innovation and entrepreneurship and the degree of current industrial diversification. The paper expands on the links between these preconditions and the barriers and opportunities for industrial diversification. Consequently, it proposes an archetypical place-based policy framework covering overall policy objectives as well as measures at the level of actors, networks, and the institutional and organizational support structures.     

Spatial and sectoral differentiation of support to innovative companies from EU funds in Czechia

This paper aims to introduce a case study of Czechia in distribution of the EU funds and their spatial patterns. EU funds receive plenty attention from both European society and the scientific community. However, there is a lack of detailed evaluations of spatial and sectoral differentiation, which might bring a better understanding to the whole EU funds system. This paper attempts to fill this gap with a method of geographical differentiation analysis of the Czech operational programme Enterprise and Innovations 2007–15, which should increase the competitiveness of industry and develop services for commercial activities. Historically, subsidies often go to peripheral regions at the borderland with Slovakia and Poland, while regions along the borders with Germany and Austria receive only a low level of support. Jurisdictions of the major recipients from hi-tech sectors are mainly in the close vicinity of the largest cities (Praha, Brno), which are natural centres of high technologically demanding sectors, but a high share of high-tech subsidies goes to some peripheral districts as well. These findings can contribute not only to the academic discussion about contradictory developmental impacts of subsidies but to the all-European debate on the EU funds purposes as well.     

Hegemonic power relations in real practices of spatial planning: the case of Turkey

There is a wide gap between planning ideology and planning practice in some regimes. In planning practice, contextual differences and traditional practices affect urban spatial configurations and their related societal dimensions, and also influence the legislative and administrative systems that dictate the process and production of the built environment. This is linked to situations where hidden practices and power relations among key actors may limit democratic participation in the planning process and challenge ethical practice. This paper focuses on the emerging traditions of planning practice in Turkey. We argue that by understanding the role(s) of the key actors in the process and investigating approval processes in detail, it can become evident that planning ‘on the ground’ is often tokenistic and circumvented by hegemonic power relations and tactical actions. These latter in turn side-step a requirement for democratic participation and encourage a ‘loosening’ of planning ethics.     

The white essential subject: race,ethnicity, and the Irish in post-war Britain

This article focuses on the history of Irish migrants in Birmingham in an attempt to enhance historical understanding of race, ethnicity and ‘whiteness’ in post-war Britain. To do so, it will look at two Birmingham histories: the Young Christian Workers’ Association’s report on the Welfare of Irish migrants in 1951, and anti-Irish violence in the aftermath of the Birmingham Pub Bombings of 1974. It will consider the extent to which Irish immigrants were victims of racism, what this meant in terms of discrimination and identity, and, in particular, how Irish experiences corresponded to that of black and Asian migrants.