You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Innovative and creative labour is increasingly recognised as having a key role in regional economic development. The more advanced the processes of innovation-led entrepreneurship are, the more important become highly skilled scientific, engineering, professional and university trained personnel. This has led to the existing concentration in Europe and the US of innovative labour in a limited number of locations (as elsewhere in the world) and the tendency, on both continents for further concentration at these "Islands ...
The role secondary cities play in the global space economy and national urban hierarchies is increasingly receiving attention from scholars and international agencies, most notably the Cities Alliance. Secondary Cities and Development considers the role of secondary cities through the lens of South Africa, a middle-income country with characteristics of both the developed and developing worlds. This book brings together a broad overview of international literature on secondary cities in South Africa and mirrors them against global experience. Chapters emphasize the importance of secondary cities as regional services areas, their potential roles in rural development, the vulnerabilities to which they are prone and their signifcant potential. By means of review, six South African case studies, and an assessment of contemporary policy approaches towards these cities, this unique volume provides insight into a spectrum of globally significant challenges. This book would be of interest to academics and policy makers working in urban studies or regional development.
Does the ‘city region’ constitute a new departure in urbanisation? If so, what are the key elements of that departure? The realities of the urban in the 21st century are increasingly complex and polychromatic. The rise of global networks enabled by supranational administrations, both governmental and corporate, strongly influences and structures the management of urban life. How we conceive the city region has intellectual and practical consequences. First, in helping us grasp rapidly changing realities; and second in facilitating the flow of resources, ideas and learning to enhance the quality of life of citizens. Two themes interweave through this collection, within this broad palette....
The main purpose of the book is to discuss new trends in the dynamic geography of innovation and argue that in an era of increasing globalization, two trends seem quite dominant: rigid territorial models of innovation, and localized configurations of innovative activities. The book brings together scholars who are working on these topics. Rather than focusing on established concepts and theories, the book aims to question narrow explanations, rigid territorializations, and simplistic policy frameworks; it provides evidence that innovation, while not exclusively dependent on regional contexts, can be influenced by place-specific attributes. The book will bring together new empirical and conceptual work by an interdisciplinary group of leading scholars from areas such as economic geography, innovation studies, and political science. Based on recent discussions surrounding innovation systems of different types, it aims to synthesize state-of-the-art know-how and provide new perspectives on the role of innovation and knowledge creation in the global political economy.
There is now a wide spread interest in regions as a key focus in the organization and governance of economic growth and wealth creation. This important book considers the factors that influence and shape the competitive performance of regions. This is not just an issue of academic interest and debate, but also of increasing policy deliberation and action. However, as the readings in this book make clear, the very idea of regional competitiveness is itself complex and contentious. Many academics and policy makers have used the concept without fully considering what is meant by the term and how it can be measured. Policy formulation has tended to rush ahead of understanding and analysis, and the purpose of this book is to close this important gap in understanding. This book was previously published as a special issue of Regional Studies.
Universities are being seen as key urban institutions by researchers and policy makers around the world. They are global players with significant local direct and indirect impacts – on employment, the built environment, business innovation and the wider society. The University and the City explores these impacts and in the process seeks to expose the extent to which universities are just in the city, or part of the city and actively contributing to its development. The precise expression of the emerging relationship between universities and cities is highly contingent on national and local circumstances. The book is therefore grounded in original research into the experience of the UK and ...
Software has become essential to the functioning of cities. It is deeply embedded into the systems and infrastructure of the built environment and is entrenched in the management and governance of urban societies. Software-enabled technologies and services enhance the ways in which we understand and plan cities. It even has an effect on how we manage urban services and utilities. Code and the City explores the extent and depth of the ways in which software mediates how people work, consume, communication, travel and play. The reach of these systems is set to become even more pervasive through efforts to create smart cities: cities that employ ICTs to underpin and drive their economy and governance. Yet, despite the roll-out of software-enabled systems across all aspects of city life, the relationship between code and the city has barely been explored from a critical social science perspective. This collection of essays seeks to fill that gap, and offers an interdisciplinary examination of the relationship between software and contemporary urbanism. This book will be of interest to those researching or studying smart cities and urban infrastructure.
During the 1980s the Marshallian concept of industrial district (ID) became widely popular due to the resurgence of interest in the reasons that make the agglomeration of specialised industries a territorial phenomenon worth being analysed. The analysis of clusters and IDs has often been limited, considering only the local dimension of the created business networks. The external links of these systems have been systematically under-evaluated. This book offers a deep insight into the evolution of these systems and the internal-external mechanism of knowledge circulation and learning. This means that the access to external knowledge (information or R&D cooperative research) or to productive ne...
This consolidation of Wales as a regional/national space of social and economic governance, with increasingly sharp territorial definition has refocused attention on the dynamics of spatial difference within the country. The authors of the book analyse the impact of the changes and the way the Welsh localities stack up against one another, with important conclusions for the economy, policy and governance.
This title was first published in 2000: This volume addresses the prominent role given to institution-building, institutional change and governance in the regional development strategies and policies. The establishment of the Scottish Parliament, Welsh and Northern Ireland Assemblies, and the arrival of regional development agencies in England highlighted the need to put the initiatives into some context, drawing on experience from across Europe on the critical factors in the determination of the potential and success of regions. Central to the discussions presented here by a group of European experts are the question of governance - how does an ongoing process of institution-building affect the ways in which regions and localities are governed, including questions of democracy, participation, regional self-determination, public-private partnerships, networks and accountability; and the consequences of new modes of governance and institutional change for regional development strategies and policies, particularly in the context of large-scale industrial restructuring and city-region and urban regeneration.