Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space

Since the 1980s two separate literatures—one focused on global cities, the other on transnational corporate interlocking—have explored issues of hierarchy and networking within the global political economy. I present an analysis of how major cities and interlocking corporate directorates are articulated together into a global network. Findings indicate that the network is concentrated in the main world cities in a way that reinforces the northern transatlantic economic system. However, the structure of the network is more nationally focused, and more complex, than that predicted by global cities theorizations. To account for the structure, I present a multifactoral framework featuring sociohistorical processes as well as spatiotemporal constraints. In conclusion, I explore implications for sociological analysis of a ‘new network bourgeoisie’, invested with several kinds of corporate power and exercising agency both within and beyond the boardrooms of the world's major corporations.

The local ‘touchdown’ of globalization gives rise to many complex global–local nexuses, and understanding their nature, structure, and consequences presents a major analytical challenge for globalization research. This paper attempts to untangle one global–local nexus by examining the ‘sorting’ of people into residential or neighborhood spaces in globalizing Shanghai as a function of individual demographic and socioeconomic attributes and by examining personal global connectivity as a key relational variable. We begin with an overview of how local residential differentiation in general and particularly in Shanghai has evolved through the current phase of accelerated globalization and through the city's booming decade of the 1990s. Then, using survey data from the Pudong New Area of Shanghai in 2001, we present a statistical account and analysis of the increasingly varied and layered residential spaces of Shanghai into which people are ‘sorted’ by both internal local and extralocal factors. The analysis shows that, net of a number of demographic and socioeconomic variables, personal global connections have an effect on people living in different neighborhood areas, especially in more expensive and exclusive housing estates. Finally, we discuss the implications of the findings for how the individual-level impact of global connectivity could reinforce local spatiosocial stratification in rapidly globalizing cities like Shanghai.

From the perspective of institutional analysis, this paper evaluates the place-remaking process of Niucheshui in Singapore. It is found that the redevelopment of Niucheshui since the 1960s has been substantively shaped by the property rights regime over land and buildings. As property rights are defined by the state in the forms of statutory land-use planning, compulsory land acquisition, rent control, land leasing, and conservation of historical buildings, the free market for land redevelopment is reined in heavily by the state. The built form of Niucheshui before 1960 was by and large the product of many private individuals' and communities' initiatives. Those players have faded from the scene since the 1960s, and the redevelopment of Niucheshui is the result of interactions between the state and market forces, though public participation is practised in the land-use planning process. In view of the urban land market behaving and performing within a framework defined by institutions, and property rights being one of the most important institutions, we argue that, not warranted by rhetoric public participation, pluralism and diversity in the built environment are protected by a diverse structure of land property rights which should be incorporated into the place-remaking process.

Collaborative partnerships—featuring intergovernmental and/or public–private sector cooperation—have been identified as a leading organisational expression of the ‘new urban governance’. The paper examines the Vancouver Agreement—an urban development compact between the governments of Canada, British Columbia, and the City of Vancouver. Signed in March 2000 for a five-year term, and renewed in April 2005, the Vancouver Agreement has been widely acclaimed as an example of successful collaborative working, addressed to the revitalisation of the city's Downtown Eastside. The origins of the agreement are explained in the context of an urban crisis in the Downtown Eastside, where established policies were seen to be failing. High-level political support for a new governance approach led to the adoption of an urban development partnership, and the paper sets out its structure and strategic programmes of action. Benchmarked against conditions for effective intergovernmental working posited in the public administration literature, the paper then analyses five procedural attributes of the partnership: resource sharing, leadership, community involvement, mutual learning, and horizontal accountability. Concluding observations are offered on the long-term prospects for the Vancouver Agreement.

I discuss the recent union renewal strategies adopted by UNITE-HERE Local 75, the union representing a majority of Toronto's organized hotel workers—a fragmented and diverse labour force. Local 75's renewal strategies are multiscalar with knowledge and resources flowing through the organization forming a spatial circuit of union renewal. Conceptualizing union renewal as a spatial circuit maps the interdependencies of different scales of labour organization and the tensions that emerge among such scales. The paper focuses on the hotel union's strategic attempts to (re)create pattern bargaining at local and international scales and organize new hotels prior to their construction. I conclude with a brief discussion linking the recent merger of UNITE-HERE and its departure from the AFL-CIO to broader renewal processes.

Much theoretical commentary over the last decade addressed the likely impacts of information and communication technologies (ICTs) on urban life works by opposing ‘virtual’ spaces and mediated activities to ‘real’ places. Drawing on recent theorising in media studies about ‘remediation’, this paper attempts to move beyond a reliance on such unhelpful real–virtual conceptual binaries. The paper uses such conceptual discussions to consider more fully the multiple, subtle, and interdependent spatiotemporalities which together work to constitute ICT-based urban change. While innovative work has traced the emergence of various online spaces and communities, our interest here is on the intersection of online and offline practices. Through a case study of two contrasting neighbourhoods in Newcastle upon Tyne, the paper explores in detail how social relations and grocery shopping are being affected by ICT use. It suggests that the remediation of everyday urban life through ICTs involves subtle shifts in the spatial, temporal, scalar, and material processes which together help to constitute urban change, and which are all too often overlooked in conventional and binary approaches opposing the ‘virtual’ realm of new technologies to ‘real’ urban places.

This paper uses the location quotient, a common measurement from economic geography and regional economics, to capture the specialization of criminal activity in Vancouver, Canada. Location quotients have barely been introduced into criminological research, yet they provide additional insight into crime analysis not available using crime counts and crime rates. The location quotients for automotive theft, break and enter, and violent crimes are mapped for Vancouver, Canada, and tested using social disorganization and routine activity theory as a theoretical framework. Strong support is found for these theories to predict specialization in criminal activity by interpreting their expectations in the context of crime-specific attractors.

I investigate the mobility decisions of students going into higher education in the UK, and look particularly at the circumstances under which students in one higher education market chose to live at home and their experiences of attending a local university. As more young people from nontraditional backgrounds are encouraged to participate in higher education, and as the financial costs of attending are increasingly borne by students and their families, more students are choosing to stay at home for financial reasons. I explore the advantages and disadvantages of students' decisions to live at home in the context of normative debates which stress the value of spatial mobility to the student lifestyle. While the evidence supports the argument that living at home is an economically rational decision for students from nontraditional backgrounds, it is also steeped in young peoples' emotional attachments to locally based networks of family and friends. Further, the connections between living at home and social and educational disadvantage amongst university students are investigated. The analysis shows that disadvantage is not associated with living at home per se, but is related to students' patterns of working, studying, and commuting.

Geographically weighted regression (GWR) is drawing attention as a statistical method to estimate regression models with spatially varying relationships between explanatory variables and a response variable. Local collinearity in weighted explanatory variables leads to GWR coefficient estimates that are correlated locally and across space, have inflated variances, and are at times counterintuitive and contradictory in sign to the global regression estimates. The presence of local collinearity in the absence of global collinearity necessitates the use of diagnostic tools in the local regression model building process to highlight areas in which the results are not reliable for statistical inference. The method of ridge regression can also be integrated into the GWR framework to constrain and stabilize regression coefficients and lower prediction error. This paper presents numerous diagnostic tools and ridge regression in GWR and demonstrates the utility of these techniques with an example using the Columbus crime dataset.

This paper presents a spatial microsimulation modelling and predictive policy analysis system called Micro-MaPPAS, a Planning Support System (PSS) constructed for a local strategic partnership in a large metropolitan area of the UK. The innovative feature of this system is the use of spatial microsimulation techniques for the enhancement of local policy decision making in connection with the neighbourhood renewal strategy. The paper addresses the relevant data issues and technical aspects of the linkage of spatial microsimulation modelling frameworks to PSS and deals with the wider implications that such a linkage may have to local policy and planning procedures. Finally, the paper presents some illustrative examples of the policy relevance and policy analysis potential of the software.

There remains uncertainty in models of the policy process about how and when radical change takes place. Most policy authors focus on explaining incremental change, and yet in practice a pattern of change described as punctuated equilibrium has been observed, with periods of stability interspersed with periods of rapid, abrupt change. It is argued here that the influence of materials and technologies—the substance of policy—must be incorporated into models of the policy process in order to help further our understanding of radical change. Concepts from science and technology studies concerning the inseparability of social and technical spheres are used to explore how people and materials interact to create opportunities for radical change. These ideas are particularly relevant to policy sectors comprising durable, capital-intensive infrastructure, such as housing. Drawing on examples from the UK housing sector, ideas about policy networks and large technical systems are synthesised to develop a more holistic, interdisciplinary account of policy change.

We document a two-year transdisciplinary project on the transition management processes of regional clusters in textile, timber, and dairy industries in the Swiss canton of Appenzell Ausserrhoden. This canton is a rural prealpine area, which has been historically shaped by traditional industries and which lies in the vicinity of St Gallen in the Greater Zürich Area. Scientists and regional stakeholders collaboratively planned, assessed, and discussed how to realize cooperative business strategies in order to sustain a continued presence in their selected industry. 101 stakeholders participated in a project, which made use of the area development negotiations method. This systematic and analytical method involved (a) the construction of different regional business strategies and clustering variants through formative scenario analysis, (b) a multicriteria evaluation of these variants, and (c) a multi-stakeholder consensus process on different forms of horizontal and vertical cooperation. As a result, a regional learning process with the ultimate goal of moving towards a sustainable development form was initiated between industries, public authorities, and research institutions.