Refereed articles
Private Security and Public Space: New Approaches to the Theory and Practice of Gated Communities (#22)
Bill Smith Bowers and Tony Manzi
Abstract
This article reviews a range of arguments and some of the evidence on the emergence of gated communities or as they will be described in this article gated residential developments (GRDs). The focus of the article will be the UK context, and it takes issue with the largely negative dominant academic narratives of GRDs, that they are private sector enclaves of high income households. The article argues that interest in GRDs has been limited from both an empirical and theoretical perspective and that this phenomenon requires more complex analysis, situating it within a broader process of ‘securitization’. The article considers a case study of a housing development, comprising gated and non-gated properties and including privately owned and socially rented properties, illustrating the desires of residents for increased security. The analysis uses the concept of ‘club economics’ to consider the critical issues behind the development of ‘private neighbourhoods’ and considers alternative classifications of gating.
17pp (Refereed Articles, November 2006, no 22)
Bowers, B.S. & Manzi, T. (2006). Private Security and Public Space: New Approaches to the Theory and Practice of Gated Communities, European Journal of Spatial Development, 22
The European Spatial Development Perspective Shaping the Agenda (#21)
Andreas Faludi
Abstract
The fact that they have created the European Union (EU) notwithstanding, Member States are suspicious of, and even hostile to it. This creates a dynamic that is often puzzling, and this is also true for spatial planning. The latter is not a competence of the European Community, but there is the inter-governmental European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP) and INTERREG. Also, in this framework, the European Spatial Planning Observation Network (ESPON) has been set up with the purpose of providing an analytical base for following through on the ESDP agenda. Meanwhile, the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe has identified territorial cohesion as an objective of the Union and a competence shared with the Member States. While waiting for its ratification, the European Commission formulated its proposals for cohesion policy for 2007-2013. Against this backdrop, Member States resumed their initiative to give them a presence in a future territorial cohesion policy led by the Commission. In the changed circumstances after the French and Dutch ‘no’ to the Constitution, their ‘Territorial Agenda for the European Union’, due to be Adopted in May 2007, will be even more significant. The Slovenian Presidency of 2008 may put this document before the European Council, which would be the first time that territorial issues had been discussed at this level.
22 pp (Refereed Articles, November 2006, no 21)
Faludi, A. (2006). The European Spatial Development Perspective Shaping the Agenda, European Journal of Spatial Development, 21
A transport network for a City network in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region: linking the performance of the public transport service with the perspectives of a monocentric or a polycentric urban system (#20)
Alain L'Hostis and Hervé Baptiste
Abstract
The objective of this contribution is to establish a method linking the performance of the regional rail transport network and two principles of territorial organisation around a central pole (monocentric option) or in a city network (polycentric option), applied to the Région Nord-Pas-de-Calais in France. The first step here is to define a set of urban centres, on which the spatial organisation principles are applied.
The analysis of the quality of transport service is established from an indicator ex-pressing the possibility to accomplish daily trips between two cities with a ‘fast train at the right moment’ from home and back. The method allows us to analyse the answer of the transport system to expressed or potential demand, but it is also used to analyse the spatial organisation of the system and to link it to spatial planning objectives. From this point of view, the organisation of the Région Nord-Pas-de-Calais appears more to exhibit a monocentric pattern around Lille than to lend significant sup-port to the polycentric idea. The promotion of such a polycentric organisation will then only be possible through a voluntarist regional planning policy.
18 pp (Refereed Articles, October 2006, no 20)
L'Hostis, A. & Baptiste, H. (2006). A transport network for a City network in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region: linking the performance of the public transport service with the perspectives of a monocentric or a polycentric urban system, European Journal of Spatial Development, 20
Backward and forward linkages, specialization and concentration in Finnish manufacturing in the period 1995-1999 (#19)
Timo Tohmo, Hannu Littunen and Hannu Tanninen
Abstract
This study focuses on industrial concentration and regional specialization in Finland in the late 1990s. Our results show increasing specialization and at least for some industries in-creased geographical concentration. Thus, there was no single process driving all industries in the same direction. Our results are in line with previous studies reporting increased regional specialization and industrial concentration in Europe (see e.g. Puga, 1999; Mon-fort and Nicolini (2000); Amiti, 1998; Niiranen, 1997 and 1999; and Koutaniemi, 2003). In addition, our results suggest that the most concentrated industries benefit from high economies of scale or a high level of technology. We also examine the linkages in Finnish manufacturing industries. The most interesting outcome of the study is that the most concentrated industries were found to be more reliant on imports from other countries than on intra or inter industry linkages. This indicates that there was no ‘home-market effect’, meaning that upstream firms are located in areas where there are a relatively high number of downstream firms. This is a particularly interesting result, because linkages are at the centre of location theory (Venables, 1996; Krugman and Venables, 1995; and Tervo, 1999). It may however be that technological change and a shift in economic policy thinking towards research and development, with a focus on technology, and the gravitation towards international trade and collaboration played a more important role than industrial linkages in shaping industrial concentration patterns in Finland during the 1990s.
27 pp (Refereed Articles, April 2006, no 19)
Tohmo, T., Littunen, H. & Tanninen, H. (2006). Backward and forward linkages, specialization and concentration in Finnish manufacturing in the period 1995-1999, European Journal of Spatial Development, 19
Debate articles
Is there no future for planning in our cities?
Shipra Narang & Lars Reutersward
Abstract
The recent focus on improved governance in cities has raised some concerns about the role of urban planning. Questions have been raised on whether good governance is a substitute for planning, and if it is adequate in itself to achieve sustainable development. Is there no future, then, for planning in our cities?
11pp (Debate, April 2006)
Narang, S. & Reutersward, L. (2006). Improved governance and sustainable urban development Strategic planning holds the key, Debate, European Journal of Spatial Development