Environment and Planning A最新文献

{"title":"Manning circuits of value: Lebanese professionals and expatriate world-city formation in Beirut","authors":"M. Krijnen, David Bassens, Michiel van Meeteren","doi":"10.1177/0308518X16660560","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X16660560","url":null,"abstract":"Advanced producer services firms and the highly skilled labour they employ are important indicators for world-city formation, as their activities allegedly grant cities the capabilities to exert command and control over global accumulation processes. To ‘stress test’ this central assumption of global city theory, we apply Burawoy’s extended case method to probe world-city formation in Beirut, Lebanon. Observing a tendency in the literature to superimpose distinctions between high- and low-skilled labour and between North and South, the study marshals a more plural conceptualization of ‘professionals’ to include expatriate or transnational Lebanese service workers. The study’s key finding is that Euro-American professionals play a relatively marginal role in Beirut’s human resource base, complicating North–South distinctions. By contrast, domestic and expat Beiruti professionals are far more crucial in manning circuits of value leading to and from the city. These professionals act as intermediaries in unlocking Gulf markets for clients, contribute to institutional change in their host countries and help build command and control functions elsewhere. Relatedly, Beirut has become susceptible to processes of ‘expatriate world-city formation’, where real estate development and the attraction of bank deposits are partly the result of these APS-professionals repatriating their management fees into Beirut’s built environment and Lebanon’s domestic banking sector. Witnessing the growth of Beirut's expatriate world-city functions in absence of financial centre redevelopment, the paper proposes to be sensitive to potential disconnects between the function and location of command and control in global cities more generally.","PeriodicalId":11906,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning A","volume":"42 1","pages":"2878 - 2896"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81148376","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Well connected compared to what? Rethinking frames of reference in world city network research","authors":"Z. Neal","doi":"10.1177/0308518X16631339","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X16631339","url":null,"abstract":"Claims about the strength of cities’ global connections have become commonplace in the world cities literature. Although such claims are inherently comparative, authors often do not specify the reference. London is well connected compared to what? In this paper, I adapt the stochastic degree sequence model from network analysis as a tool to derive a frame of reference that can be used to inform and substantiate such claims. Beyond providing a formal statistical method for deciding when the claim that “X is well connected” is justified, it also addresses a number of other challenges in this literature, including more explicitly casting firms as key agents in world city formation, providing insight into when and where global firms might be expected to locate their branch offices, and helping identify cases that warrant more detailed investigation. To illustrate, I apply the method to data on cities and firms from 2013, examining the results at five different scales, from the individual city and firm to the entire world city network. I conclude by considering how this approach allows researchers to ask different kinds of questions about the nature of world city status.","PeriodicalId":11906,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning A","volume":"16 1","pages":"2859 - 2877"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73578914","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Winners of the Ashby prizes","authors":"F. Knapp, S. Potts","doi":"10.1177/0308518X17734724","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X17734724","url":null,"abstract":"The editors of Environment and Planning A congratulate the winners of the Ashby Prizes, awarded for the most innovative papers published in the journal during the previous calendar year: Freyja L Knapp (Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, University of California-Berkeley) for her paper ‘‘The birth of the flexible mine: Changing geographies of mining and the e-waste commodity frontier’’ and Shaina Potts (Geography and Global Studies, University of California-Los Angeles) for her paper ‘‘Reterritorializing economic governance: Contracts, space, and law in transborder economic geographies.’’ Both papers have been made free to access.","PeriodicalId":11906,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning A","volume":"16 1","pages":"2427 - 2431"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85938716","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Making science suburban: The suburbanization of industrial research and the invention of “research man”","authors":"P. Vitale","doi":"10.1177/0308518X17734855","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X17734855","url":null,"abstract":"In the early 1900s, industrial firms embraced research as a key element of corporate strategy. In order to internalize scientific research, firms constructed laboratories many of which were located away from factories. The development of these laboratories was part of a larger shift in the socio-spatial division of labor – the separation of mental from physical work. These laboratories were sites for developing new technologies and production processes and for creating and reproducing a techno-scientific workforce that allied itself with management. Using the example of Pittsburgh-based Westinghouse, in this paper I argue that industrial firms built research laboratories in order to enlist a skilled techno-scientific workforce that was essential for further profit making. By exploring the longer history of the industrial research laboratory, I expose how the “knowledge economy” and “tech workers” did not originate in the suburbs of the 1950s or the tech-boom of the 1990s, but rather emerged in concert with industrialization, the emergence of corporations, the professionalization of science and engineering, and suburbanization at the turn of the 20th-century.","PeriodicalId":11906,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning A","volume":"620 1","pages":"2813 - 2834"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-10-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77368890","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Weathering the storm: The politics of urban climate change adaptation planning","authors":"Sara Meerow, Carrie L. Mitchell","doi":"10.1177/0308518X17735225","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X17735225","url":null,"abstract":"On 17 August 2017, Hurricane Harvey made landfall in East Texas. Over a four-day period, catastrophic flooding displaced 30,000 people and led to at least 50 deaths. While much of the media coverage of this extreme weather event was concerned with immediate impacts (see, for example, Sanchez et al., 2017), there were also rumblings about the role of city planning, or lack thereof, in the devastating floods experienced in Houston (Boburg and Reinhard, 2017). City officials’ resistance to enacting more stringent building codes; stalled progress on flood-control projects; city residents’ rejection of city-wide zoning; the paving of coastal and prairie wetlands; lack of comprehensive flood planning across the 34 municipalities of Harris County, which includes Houston; and other aspects of physical geography collectively may have facilitated the perfect storm (Boburg and Reinhard, 2017). Houston, however, is not alone in its zeal for rapid, unregulated, urban development. The shunning of state regulation and public sector-led planning in favor of ‘‘neoliberal urbanism’’ is underway globally, albeit in different forms (Harvey, 2011; Peck et al., 2009; Theodore et al., 2011). Scholars have explored this urban phenomenon in American cities for decades (see, for example, Brenner and Theodore, 2002; Hackworth, 2007; Smith, 2002). We see similar political economy patterns internationally. A defining characteristic of contemporary urban development in many Asian cities, for example, is the relative power of the private sector in urban and regional planning and the weakening of existing land development codes (Marks and Lebel, 2016; Shatkin, 2008). Take, for example, the Indonesian property developer, Ciputra, who built a 1200 hectare upscale waterfront development in an area specified in Jakarta’s land use plan as ‘‘protected green zone’’ and ‘‘off-limits’’ for development (Leaf, 2015). In Thailand, weakening of existing land development codes has enabled the overbuilding of Bangkok, particularly in ‘‘green zones’’ and in floodways, with serious implications for urban flooding (Marks and Lebel, 2016). Interestingly, the field of climate change adaptation has, for the most part, developed independently of critical urban studies scholarship and planning theory, despite the placebased nature of adaptation actions. This disconnect may stem from the fact that climate change adaptation research evolved out of studies of the biophysical impacts of","PeriodicalId":11906,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning A","volume":"178 1","pages":"2619 - 2627"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-10-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79972317","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Global cities research and urban theory making","authors":"M. Hoyler, J. Harrison","doi":"10.1177/0308518X17735405","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X17735405","url":null,"abstract":"This paper was accepted for publication in the journal Environment and Planning A and the definitive published version is available at https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X17735405. Reprinted by permission of SAGE Publications.","PeriodicalId":11906,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning A","volume":"1 1","pages":"2853 - 2858"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74391804","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Playing by the rules? New institutionalism, path dependency and informal settlements in Sub-Saharan Africa","authors":"N. Morrison","doi":"10.1177/0308518X17730581","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X17730581","url":null,"abstract":"The scale of contemporary urbanization in Sub-Saharan Africa has culminated in the proliferation of informal settlements, with governments claiming a legitimate right to remove them. Drawing on new institutionalism as a conceptual framework and presenting the case of Old Fadama, an informal settlement within central Accra in Ghana, this paper sheds light on the way in which both formal and informal rules shape these legally unauthorized spaces. Using the analogy of a game, the author devises a novel typology to highlight the way in which different players maximize their personal advantage from maintaining the status quo. The paper concludes that as long as different interests are served by the existing socio-political arrangements then path dependency will endure, with government officials as the dominant playmaker in the locality ultimately controlling the rules and pace of the game.","PeriodicalId":11906,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning A","volume":"35 1","pages":"2558 - 2577"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74025662","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Conceptualising contemporary retail divestment: Tesco's departure from South Korea","authors":"N. Coe, Yong-sook Lee, Steve Wood","doi":"10.1177/0308518X17733265","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X17733265","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, we critically analyse the September 2015 decision of the UK retailer Tesco to sell its highly profitable South Korean subsidiary Homeplus to private investors. For over a decade since market entry in 1999, Homeplus had grown steadily to achieve a market-leading position through a process of strategic localization in which Tesco's global business practices were selectively adapted to meet the specific needs of the South Korean market. Against this backdrop, we explain the exit decision through theorising the dynamic intersection of home and host market factors that developed contemporaneously from 2010 onwards. On the one hand, worsening market conditions and financial pressures in a post-crisis UK domestic market drove Tesco to refocus on its home operations and, ultimately, identify saleable assets to offset mounting debts. On the other hand, steadily growing resistance within the South Korean market from competitors, regulators, labour and consumers caused sales growth to stall and then start to decline. Our analysis contributes to the economic geography literature on retail divestment by conceptualising the relational process of divestment decision-making that encompasses the intersection of home and host market pressures as well as conditions across the wider portfolio of subsidiaries. The research is particularly distinctive in its profiling of this coevolution of drivers, and in distilling the different ‘domains’ of host market contestation. The analysis also has wider significance in the context of the broader literatures on economic globalization that have tended to focus heavily on processes of expansion and market entry and far less on the instances of failure and exit that are an integral and inevitable part of these wider dynamics.","PeriodicalId":11906,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning A","volume":"63 1","pages":"2739 - 2761"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79978362","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Coercive commodities and the political economy of involuntary consumption: The case of the gambling industries","authors":"M. Young, F. Markham","doi":"10.1177/0308518X17734546","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X17734546","url":null,"abstract":"Coercive commodities are those goods and services that promote ‘akratic’ consumption – that consumption recognised by consumers themselves to be contrary to their own best interests, all things considered. The production of coercive commodities has become an increasingly significant economic project of fractions of the capitalist class. As a form of secondary exploitation, coercive commodities facilitate the extraction of surplus profits from the savings and assets of the working classes, thus impeding the accumulation of a workers’ hoard that may act as a potential blockage to value realisation in consumption. We use the example of commercial gambling to illustrate the political economy of coercive commodity production. The gambling production system is driven by a core dynamic between spatially fixed capital, the pressures of competition, and the technological generation of akrasia. The geographical expression of this dynamic is determined by the contingencies of the ‘harm maximisation’ policies of the state and the political efforts of individual capitalists to gain and reproduce monopoly power. Gambling production is effective as a form of secondary exploitation because, in addition to the profits accrued by exploiting labour, it extracts surplus profits by diverging sale price from value, by harnessing monopoly power, and by increasing the volume of consumption through akrasia. It is this extractive power, amplified by the consumer credit system, that forms the basis of the systemic utility of coercive commodities in late capitalist economies.","PeriodicalId":11906,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning A","volume":"18 1","pages":"2762 - 2779"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83282017","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Urban service provision: Insights from pragmatism and ethics","authors":"K. Furlong, Marie-Noëlle Carré, T. A. Guerrero","doi":"10.1177/0308518X17734547","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X17734547","url":null,"abstract":"In their work and life, urban service providers are continually torn between policies and pressures from higher scales and the realities of the cities they inhabit. The ways in which they negotiate these tensions imply the complex adjudication of a range of normative issues, conditioned by the variety of socio-technical, political, and economic factors that are underscored in the literature. In this way, geographical debates on pragmatism and ethics have an important, yet largely overlooked, contribution to make to the study of urban services. These approaches can promote the careful consideration of how people engaged in service provision manage such complexity – including its normative dimensions – through their long-term embodied experience. Pragmatic and related ethical perspectives necessarily contextualize decision-making, taking us beyond ideology or institutional exigencies to debates about practical reason, everyday ethics and embodied practice.","PeriodicalId":11906,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning A","volume":"121 1","pages":"2800 - 2812"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89632360","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}