Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space

By way of an extended introduction to a theme issue on the space–times of decision making, this paper pursues two objectives. We first review some of the ways in which geographers—and especially economic geographers—have examined decision making over the past decades, showing that previous engagements with the decision are informed primarily by thinking from economics, psychology, and certain strands of sociology. Drawing on a wider range of intellectual resources, we then outline eight propositions that might guide future research by geographers and others into the space–times of decision making. These propositions help us to move beyond the idea that the decision is a singular moment abstracted from the context within which it takes place and undertaken by a discrete actor or set of actors. Instead the decision is understood as a differentiated, affectively registered, transformative, and ongoing actualisation of potential against a horizon of undecidability in which past, present, and future fold together in complex ways. A number of research questions follow from the outlined propositions: these pertain to the sites and techniques of decision making, its relationships to the governing of life, and our own decision-making practices as academics.

It appears that recent debates within human geography, and the broader social sciences, concerning the more-than-rational constitution of human decision making are now being paralleled by changes in the ways in which public policy makers are conceiving of and addressing human behaviour. This paper focuses on the rise of so-called Behaviour Change policies in public policy in the UK. Behaviour Change policies draw on the behavioural insights being developed within the neuro-sciences, behavioural economics, and psychology. These new behavioural theories suggest not only that human decision making relies on a previously overlooked irrational component, but that the irrationality of decision making is sufficiently consistent to enable effective public policy intervention into the varied times and spaces that surround human decisions. This paper charts the emergence of Behaviour Change policies within a range of British public policy sectors, and the political and scientific antecedents of such policies. Ultimately, the paper develops a geographically informed, ethical critique of the contemporary Behaviour Change regime that is emerging in the UK. Drawing on thirty in-depth interviews with leading policy executives, and case studies that reflect the application of Behaviour Change policies on the design and constitution of British streets, the analysis claims that current strategies are predicated on a partial reading of new behavioural theories. We argue that this partial reading of human cognition is leading to the construction of public policies that seek to arbitrarily decouple the rational and emotional components of human decision making with deleterious social and political consequences.

Though many people around the world now spend much of their time surrounded by bodies of controlled ambient air indoors, we still know relatively little about the subjectivities involved. Some have deployed the idea of air-conditioning addiction. Others emphasise the enjoyable sensations associated with temporary escape. The research described in this paper sought to add some empirical depth to these discussions by combining theories of social practice with a programme of serial interviews to examine how a sample of city professionals felt about the long periods they spent inside air-conditioned offices. The rationale was that, through these means, it should be possible to identify ways of disrupting otherwise habitual indoor existences and thereby discourage people from becoming increasingly reliant upon ambient conditions that are environmentally costly to supply. Describing their passage through a typical working day, this paper focuses on the moments when it might have occurred to them to spend time outside and how certain mental and material elements combined to impede the arrival of this decision. This exercise is used to draw out suggestions about how a better relationship between professional office workers and the everyday outdoors could be encouraged. The broader conclusion is that contextual studies which examine how places and practices produce decisions, instead of assuming individual people merely make them, have their part to play in fostering positive social futures.

Much urban and transport policy is based on a series of assumptions relating to predefined journeys informed by rational decision making. For example, the dominant focus of urban pedestrian policy is how the built environment is the primary influence on a person's decision to walk, with these decisions being made at a specific time and place somehow outside the practice of walking. Little attention is given to the importance of the processual and experiential dimensions of walking itself. This paper considers the ways in which journeys into, and through, the city unfold. Specific attention is drawn to how forms of habitual performance, such as practical knowledge and embodied habits and routines, assist in engaging with everyday urban movements. In the context of in-depth research conducted in London, the paper explores the habits and routines of urban pedestrian mobilities such as the daily commute, and in so doing, highlights the complexity and ongoing reconfiguration of these journeys beyond analysis informed by ‘rational’ intention. In contrast to much transport research that conceives of habit as an external force that somehow obstructs more positive sustainable travel behaviour, discussion focuses on the significance of how everyday urban walking unfolds. It is argued that this form of engagement makes it possible to understand habit as situated and part and parcel of the sequentially organised and occasioned performance of journeys on foot. This, in turn, enables the transformative potential of habitual behaviour to be realised. Throughout the paper consideration is given to specific narratives of everyday urban mobilities; the significance of how such practices are actually ‘talked about’; and how these accounts matter in engaging with the experiential dimensions of urban movement.

What is the relation between security and a decision? How should decisions be taken as events unfold in unpredictable, aleatory, ways? And how are decisions made and constituted in particular and therefore differential security contexts? The paper draws on observations of ‘strategic’ exercises in UK Civil Contingencies, sites in which ‘multiagency’ responders take decisions in relation to the events that make up a range of crises, breakdowns, and interruptions. UK Civil Contingencies has a complicated relation with decision which challenges the predominance of approaches which prioritise the ‘sovereign decision’ as a preemptive act. On the one hand, the dream of emergency planners is of a decentred anticipatory system without the need for the event of decision, in which a distributed set of responders are primed to snap into action at the onset of an event and to follow protocols for how to connect and act together. On the other hand, and faced with the contingency of events and the mutability of the response network, decision is not erased, automated, or deferred but proliferates and, sometimes, is very difficult to make. Decisions have to constantly be taken about who to act with and how to act when faced with what the event could become: that is, when faced by the event's potential and, importantly, the complexity of response. In the paper we explore the relation between security and decision by outlining how the ‘exercise’ functions within emergency planning as a privileged site for the staging and performing of decisions.

Within the urban economic development literature, there has been considerable debate concerning the role of ‘quality of place’ in attracting and retaining talent. Arguments have been polarized, however, between those suggesting that quality of place plays a key role in urban growth, and those arguing that jobs and production networks are more important. In this paper we reconcile the debates by emphasizing the productive function of quality of place. Drawing on a case study of fashion designers in Toronto, we examine the roles of diversity, tolerance, social services, and cultural dynamism in attracting and retaining talent, in fostering aesthetic experimentation, and in mediating some of the risks associated with cultural work.

This paper considers the processes supporting agglomeration in the British television broadcasting industry. It compares and contrasts the insights offered by the cultural turn in geography and more conventionally economic approaches. It finds that culture and institutions are fundamental to the constitution of production and exchange relationships and also that they solve fundamental economic problems of coordinating resources under conditions of uncertainty and limited information. Processes at a range of spatial scales are important, from highly local to global, and conventional economics casts some light on which firms are most active and successful.

Low-wage migrant workers in the United States confront a perilous labor market, where wages are low, the risk of injury on the job is high, and the fear of apprehension by immigration authorities is widespread. There is increasing empirical evidence that civil society organizations are becoming involved in mediating labor-market problems, but work remains to be done in developing a robust theoretical conception of why such organizations are involved in this arena and how we might evaluate the impacts of their interventions. This paper presents a framework for interpreting the role of migrant civil society organizations as labor-market intermediaries, by extending Karl Polanyi's theory of the ‘double movement’ and more recent writing to neoliberalism and precarious work. On the basis of data collected from migrant nonprofit organizations in Chicago, I theorize migrant civil society organizations as part of the creation of a new countermovement that protects the interests of both workers and employers from the destructive nature of an unregulated labor market, as predicted by Polanyi. I catalogue organizations' responses to precarious work and create a generalizable framework for evaluating the contingent outcomes of their strategies. Organizations' work is interpreted as complex and sometimes contradictory: the potential to shield workers and advocate for progressive change is in constant tension with the neoliberal patterns of state and economic restructuring that such organizations can support.

Cultural policy has produced divergent intentions underlying the direction of public art since its advent in Western Europe in 1945. Literature has feebly demonstrated the extent to which differentialities in cultural policy have affected the production of public artworks over time and space. This paper fills this gap as regards Amsterdam and Ghent, cities that are situated in different national institutional contexts. It shows dissimilarity—in that one finds a relatively higher number of public artworks, more spatially dispersed and more diversified public artworks in Amsterdam than in Ghent, which is particularly a result of institutional differences—and similarity between these cities, in terms of initiatives by local communities and arts actors, irrespective of the local policy context. These results provide insight into policy concern with public-art production and the everyday practices and cultural traditions that underpin it.

This paper applies structural decomposition analysis to Chinese input–output tables in order to disentangle and quantify the sources of China's import growth and China's growth in vertical specialization: that is, China's incorporation into the global supply chain. China's exports and the role of processing trade therein have increased substantially in the last decade. Yet, they account for only one third of China's import growth from 1997 to 2005. Instead, the volume growth of China's domestic final demand is found to be most important. Moreover, compared with other countries, the structural change in input–output coefficients and in the commodity composition of domestic final demand turns out to be surprisingly important. Looking only at vertical specialization, it is concluded that more than half of its growth, from 21% in 1997 to 30% in 2005, is due to the growth of China's import ratios.

Large variability and correlations among the coefficients obtained from the method of geographically weighted regression (GWR) have been identified in previous research. This is an issue that poses a serious challenge for the utility of the method as a tool to investigate multivariate relationships. The objectives of this paper are to assess: (1) the ability of GWR to discriminate between a spatially constant processes and one with spatially varying relationships; and (2) to accurately retrieve spatially varying relationships. Extensive numerical experiments are used to investigate situations where the underlying process is stationary and nonstationary, and to assess the degree to which spurious intercoefficient correlations are introduced. Two different implementations of GWR and cross-validation approaches are assessed. Results suggest that judicious application of GWR can be used to discern whether the underlying process is nonstationary. Furthermore, evidence of spurious correlations indicates that caution must be exercised when drawing conclusions regarding spatial relationships retrieved using this approach, particularly when working with small samples.

Proenvironmental behaviour change remains a high priority for many governments and agencies and there are now numerous programmes aimed at encouraging citizens to adopt sustainable forms of living. However, although programmes for addressing behaviour change in and around the home are well developed, there has been significantly less attention paid to activities beyond this site of practice. This is despite the environmental implications of consumption choices for leisure, tourism, and work-related activities. Through focusing on sites of practice as a key framing device, this paper uses data from a series of in-depth interviews to identify three major challenges for academics and practitioners concerned with understanding and promoting more environmentally responsible behaviour. First, attention must shift beyond the home as a site of environmental practice to consider the ways in which individuals respond to exhortations towards ‘greener’ lifestyles in other high-consumption and carbon-intensive settings, Second, in broadening the scope of environmental practice, policy makers need to revisit their reliance on segmentation models and related social marketing approaches. This is in the light of data that suggest those with strong environmental commitments in the home are often reluctant to engage in similar commitments in other sites of practice. Third, researchers and policy makers therefore need to move beyond the traditional ‘siting’ of environmental practice towards a spatially sophisticated conceptualisation that accounts for the multiple settings of consumption through mapping the relationships that exist between sites of practice.