Book Reviews

Books reviewed:
M. Steiner (ed.), Clusters and Regional Specialisation. On Geography,Technology, and Networks
Denis J.B. Shaw, Russia in the Modern World. A New Geography
Ron Martin, Money and the Space Economy     

BEYOND THE GPN–NEW REGIONALISM DIVIDE IN CHINA: RESTRUCTURING THE CLOTHING INDUSTRY,REMAKING THE WENZHOU MODEL

This article attempts to advance the research on industrial districts and regional development through a study of the restructuring of the clothing industry in Wenzhou Municipality, a regional driver of the Chinese economy. Wenzhou is known for the Wenzhou model of development traditionally centred on family‐owned small businesses embedded in local institutions. The clothing industry is one of the leading industries in Wenzhou, and a cluster with national significance has emerged, where most of the production components can be purchased locally. However, the industry has been scaled up nationally and internationally, with the expansion of sales networks and production facilities across China, and to a lesser extent, abroad. This restructuring has changed the endogenous nature of industrial clusters/districts. The restructuring challenges the orthodox notion of the Wenzhou model and the New Regionalism literature, particularly the orthodox notion of Marshallian industrial districts that overly emphasizes small firms and local assets, and the global production network perspective that highlights coupling with global lead firms in regional development.     

青海古代文化遗址时空分布特征

本文对青海古代各历史时期的文化遗址及文物进行了分析与探讨,提出了青海古代文化遗址有着分布的集中性、石器时代的完整性以及多元结构的民族文化特点;论证了以上特点是由地理环境及历史的各民族文化活动所致。     

乡村振兴导向下乡村发展能力的多维测度及时空交互特征

乡村振兴要求走乡村内生性发展道路,客观认知乡村发展能力的时空分异格局和交互关系对乡村振兴战略实施具有重要意义。本文从农业产业发展、农村基础建设和农民社会生活三个维度构建测度指标体系,并引入面板向量自回归模型识别影响乡村发展能力的敏感因素,以此测度乡村发展能力指数,进而采用探索性时空数据分析方法揭示乡村发展能力的时空交互特征。结果表明：(1)我国中部地区多维乡村发展能力提升,但呈明显的空间异质性,不同维度间差异化显著;(2)中部地区多维乡村发展能力局域空间格局呈现较强的动态性并整体表现出较强的空间依赖关系;(3)邻接地级市多维乡村发展能力的时空交互网络以正向关联为主,局部空间呈差异化的竞合态势。     

The many shades of grey in urban governance: How illegality shapes urban planning,policy and development

Most research on urban planning, policy and development only considers legal practices and actors, and treats illegal ones as insignificant anomalies, unable to structurally affect the governance of urban space. However, this approach is inadequate for explaining urban governance in contexts (e.g. several countries in the Global South, the former Soviet bloc and Southern Europe) where illegal practices such as corruption and organized crime infiltration are widespread in many public and economic sectors. This paper addresses the role of illegal actors and practices in urban governance in the Italian context, using urban regime theory as the theoretical frame of reference. The research centres on the analysis of two case studies in the city of Rome (the In-between world investigation of a criminal network that had infiltrated the local administration and shaped several urban policies, and the investigation of episodes of corruption related to the project for the new A.S. Roma soccer stadium). It shows the existence of two shades of ‘grey urban governance’: firstly, the presence of a dark urban regime, centred on a criminal organisation and parallel to the ‘regular’ one; secondly, the use of corruption as a customary practice with which real estate entrepreneurs influence municipal decisions. Overall, this research contributes to moving away from a rhetoric of ‘gentlemanly’ urban capitalism and politics, and suggests the need to revise several aspects of urban regime theory – as well as other approaches to urban governance dynamics in general – in order to incorporate the role of illegal actors and practices.     

乡村振兴背景下农村基本公共服务与多维贫困的时空耦合特征研究

村级尺度上探索农村基本公共服务与区域贫困之间的关联特征以及二者耦合作用机理,是实现精准扶贫与乡村振兴战略有机结合的重要一环。本文分别建立农村基本公共服务和多维贫困综合发展监测模型,结合时空探索性分析和耦合协调分析方法,综合揭示两者的时空发展分布特征及其耦合关联关系。2015—2018年研究区内58个行政村的实证结果表明：①研究区内农村基本公共服务的发展呈中段高、南北段低的空间非均衡性分布,整体发展差异呈缩小趋势;②研究区内贫困村的多维贫困状况在空间分布上呈现出中北段地区贫困程度较轻、南段贫困程度较深的格局;③农村基本公共服务与多维贫困存在空间负相关性关联与明显耦合,且自实施乡村振兴战略以来,贫困村多转为同步型发展。研究结果可为现阶段乡村振兴战略的实施提供科学的决策依据和参考。     

Exploring the associations between cooling centre accessibility and marginalization in Montreal,Toronto, and Vancouver,Canada

Cooling centres provide respite, safety, and social support during extreme heat events for populations that do not have the resources to own or operate in-home air conditioning. The objective of this study was to measure the spatial accessibility of cooling centres and analyze the associations between cooling centre access and marginalization in Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver, Canada. The potential spatial accessibility of cooling centres within a 15-minute walk was measured at the dissemination area scale using the two-step floating catchment area method. A two-stage modelling approach was used to analyze the associations between cooling centre access and marginalization. Approximately 62%, 58%, and 54% of the populations in Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver had access to at least one cooling centre. In Montreal and Vancouver, high marginalization areas were more likely to have cooling centre access than low marginalization areas. Of the areas with cooling centre access, smaller access scores were observed in areas with high residential instability. Approximately one-fifth of the areas in each city had no cooling centre access and high marginalization, and may be considered for future cooling centres or programs that improve accessibility to existing centres.     

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.     

Outsourcing Patriarchy To and Within India: Intersectional and Decolonial Gender Politics Across Scales

Young caste-class privileged gender justice workers in Delhi navigate several relations of power—with Euro-American feminisms, and with less privileged feminisms and recipients of development work within India. Their experiences reveal that decolonial politics in India cannot be conceptualised without consideration of other axes of inequality including caste and religion. There is thus a need to broaden decolonial and intersectional analyses to include multiple spatial scales, from the transnational to the most granular interpretations of the local. By bringing intersectional analyses into greater dialogue with postcolonial feminist theory, this paper demonstrates that patterns of “outsourcing patriarchy” are observable at many scales, and that these patterns at different scales are co-produced, each in turn shaping the other. Such a framework also explains how young caste-class privileged gender justice workers outsource patriarchy and reproduce “mainstream” feminisms even as they seek to avoid doing so.