European Urban and Regional Studies recent issues

Regionauts: the Transformation of Cross-Border Regions in Scandinavia

Lofgren, O. — 2008-06-16

Many cross-border regions in Europe remain more political dreamscapes than examples of strong transnational integration.The development of the Öresund region through a bridge linking Copenhagen and eastern Denmark with Southern Sweden has been seen as a model for EU region building. Drawing on a multidisciplinary project, this article uses the Öresund case as a starting point, bringing in some contrastive Scandinavian examples. The aim is to discuss how regions try to make themselves visible and attractive for investments and visitors, but above all to what extent they produce regionauts actively creating integration by different border-crossing activities and contacts. The focus is on the cultural dimensions found in everyday practices and symbolic manifestations of these transnational processes. What kind of gaps between regional rhetoric and actual mundane activities emerge? A historical perspective is used to illustrate these changing border dynamics in which cultural, political and economic asymmetries often become an energizing factor.

Reorganizing Cross-Border Governance Capacity: The Case of the Helsinki--Tallinn Euregio

Pikner, T. — 2008-06-16

Different forms of regional politics and network-type coordination are present within European cross-border initiatives. The purpose of the article is to study the changing organizational configurations of interregional governance in the context of the Helsinki—Tallinn Euregio (HTE), and how these new forms of coordination influence cross-border institutional capacity and policy outcomes.The basic empirical material consists of official public documents and eight semi-structured theme interviews conducted with the key actors of the HTE in June—July 2004. `Governance capacity' is used here as a theoretical tool to understand and interpret the reorganization process of cross-border governance. The case-study about the HTE shows the possibility that governance may be practised through dynamic social networks and partly shifting territorial configurations according to interregional interests. The HTE agency creates a flexible intervention frame for the cross-border governance capacity to support regional competitiveness through the policy instruments of the European Union.There are already some results, but several challenges remain for the HTE to create additional scale effects between the Helsinki and Tallinn regions.

Patterns of Social Capital in West German Regions

Blume, L., Sack, D. — 2008-06-16

Social capital is often defined as consisting of trust and postmaterialist values on the one hand, and social networks on the other hand. This article examines how different governance modes such as networks, markets, and hierarchies are related to trust and postmaterialist values in 74 West German regions.A principle component analysis of 40 social capital indicators shows that trust and postmaterialist values do not solely combine with networks but also with preferences for markets and hierarchies. A cluster analysis identifies two dominant types of regional social capital in West German regions. These types are different from the well-known Italian patterns described by Robert Putnam in his seminal work. In the period 1995—2002, the annual economic growth in regions which have combined trust with preferences for strong markets and weak political networks was on average 1 percent higher than in regions with inverted preferences.

Urban Residential Development in Isolated Small Cities That Are Partially Integrated in Metropolitan Areas By High Speed Train

Garmendia, M., de Urena, J. M., Ribalaygua, C., Leal, J., Coronado, J. M. — 2008-06-16

The proliferation of High Speed Trains (HSTs) in European countries has caused small, isolated cities within one hour's distance by HST to become partially integrated into metropolitan processes. These cities may be considered as a combination of small provincial centres and suburban metropolitan districts. Scientific literature suggests that subcentres in polycentric urban regions are becoming more numerous and diverse, that there are doubts whether HSTs are facilitating decentralization or concentration from/to metropolises, and that fewer HST effects are taking place in big cities than small ones, where HST contribution to accessibility amelioration is greater. The article discusses the types of urban residential processes according to temporal relations with HSTs (before and after HSTs) and spatial relations (HST station location). The conduct of household survey and review of building permits and mortgage valuations was done to analyse the urban process which these cities undergo with the development of HSTs. It was found that residence location with respect to the HST station varies with the type of inhabitant (local versus immigrant, tenant versus owner, etc.) and their relation to HSTs (commuter versus non commuter, etc.). It was also shown that the HST (alongside the presence of a university) helps isolated cities to acquire territorial roles of greater importance, by virtue of attracting intraprovincial immigration and familial investment, as well as immigrants and investments from other provinces.

Mapping Corporations, Connecting Communities: Remaking Steel Geographies in Northern England and Southern Poland

Dawley, S., Stenning, A., Pike, A. — 2008-06-16

In recent years, economic geographers have turned their attention to the growing geographical reach and complexity of economic networks to focus on the increasing integration of economies, the geographical organization of economic activity and the social, economic and political relationships within these networks.Within this work, particular attention has been paid to the corporation, allowing for corporate geographies to be rethought using new approaches and new methodologies. Building on these approaches, we seek to develop a holistic economic geography which embeds the globalizing corporation within a broad array of economic, social, political and cultural settings shaped by multiple social agents.We do this in the context of the European steel industry. We argue that refocusing attention on the steel industry is important for two reasons. First, the industry itself has radically changed in the last decade. Persistent global overcapacity and cycles of profitability, ongoing consolidation and privatization, the emergence of new steel regions and of more `globalized' steel producers have all altered the industry's anatomy. Second, the tools of economic geography have changed. New approaches enable us to look again at the steel industry and to rethink its corporate geographies. This article develops these arguments by using an innovative approach, integrating the narratives of two steel corporations and two European steel regions, and focusing on issues of corporate geography, financialization, government and governance, labour and community. In this way, we seek to continue the strong tradition within economic geography of conceptualizing the spatial contexts and consequences of economic change through accounts of the continuous remaking of steel geographies.

Cities, Cultures and Everyday Life

Simonsen, K. — 2008-03-12

Multicultural Living?: Experiences of Everyday Racism Among Ghanaian Migrants in London

Herbert, J., May, J., Wills, J., Datta, K., Evans, Y., McIlwaine, C. — 2008-03-12

Since the 1990s migrants from smaller, legally differentiated and non-citizen immigrant groups have formed the main flows of migration to the UK and yet they have been overlooked in academic and public debates and agendas. While much academic research has been devoted to racism, the new forms of racism which accompany the `new migration' have also received little attention. This article, therefore, demonstrates the continuing importance and changing nature of contemporary racisms as experienced by Ghanaians; a less-established migrant group. The article traces the particular forms of racisms experienced within their working lives as well as their diverse responses to racism: a relatively unexplored dimension of discrimination. The various coping strategies which the workers developed to overcome difficulties are highlighted, at the individual and collective levels, and this reveals the importance of diaspora groups and transnational links. It is argued that focusing on responses to racism is a crucial facet in helping to understand the actual impact of racial discrimination and also avoids portraying minority ethnic groups as the passive recipients of racisms. The article is also an intervention into the current debates about multicultural Britain. It is argued that the current discourse on the failures of multiculturalism should focus less on minority ethnic groups as the principal problem for integration and engage with the issues of racism, exclusion and material inequalities which penetrate the lives of low-paid migrant workers.

Fron `Settlement' to `Integration': Informal Practices and Social Services for Women Migrants in Athens

Vaiou, D., Stratigaki, M. — 2008-03-12

In recent European literature on migration, two main trends characterize the ways in which migrants are increasingly portrayed. The first tends to define migrants in terms of their belonging to `communities' while, in the second trend, migrants and refugees epitomize ideas of diaspora and hybridity, as resistance to constructions of place-bound `communities'. In the context of these trends, women migrants hold ambivalent positions as particular `others'. In our article, we attempt to problematize the `purity' of these approaches. Based on research with Albanian migrant women in Athens, we examine the ways in which they construct very local, but also transnational and imagined communities while they seek to settle and find ways of integrating in the new setting. Using material from focus groups and biographical interviews with women migrants, as well as with women employers, we discuss: (a) the importance of informal practices of support and assistance at the neighbourhood level; and (b) the role of social services (health and child care), as they affect migrant women's efforts to negotiate a place for themselves and their dependents, to forge a sense of belonging and redefine communities and gender relations.

Tracing Multicultural Cities From the Perspective of Women's Everyday Lives

Lykogianni, R. — 2008-03-12

The article discusses everyday life in multicultural cities from a feminist perspective. It aims to engage, theoretically and through empirical research, with everyday life, a concept which brings to the foreground of inquiry a variety of urban experiences and reveals the mutual constitution of gender and place/space. Everyday life is connected to places where different women and men, as individuals, have to live, think and act (in terms of negotiation and/or reconciliation).They construct their everyday life, their personal identities and relations, drawing upon — and, simultaneously, negotiating with — existing macro-level spatial, temporal and discursive structures/meanings.

In the context of geographical debates, the study of everyday life starts from the subject's everyday spatio-temporal practices and experiences, aiming to show not only how they are organized by socio-spatial relations and structures, but also how people's (everyday) actions (re)produce and (trans)-form these relations and structures. In this line of thought, space/place is understood as particular constellations of social relations and practices, with local and supralocal determinants, meeting and weaving together in a particular locality. The article will discuss such relations and practices drawing from research in Athens.

Practice, Narrative and the`Multicultural City': A Copenhagen Case

Simonsen, K. — 2008-03-12

Cities can basically be conceived of as encounters, as spatial formations resulting from dense networks of interaction, and as places of meeting with `the stranger'. In European cities these encounters, due to increased mobility and immigration, have increasingly taken the form of meetings between different cultures and modes of life. This article is concerned with the understanding of the `multicultural city'. It approaches the problem from the perspective of everyday life, from the popular construction of the city in practice and narrative. Urban everyday life, it assumes, is increasingly influenced by transnational relations, in the form of multiscalar practices and experiences, encounters between different cultures and different imaginations of the `multicultural' city. The article starts from a case-study in the city of Copenhagen, using qualitative in-depth interviews with different occupational groups to collect narratives on practices and imaginations of the contemporary city.Theoretically, the interpretation draws upon two streams of literature, on postcolonialism and cosmopolitanism respectively, and in particular two concepts — of `practical orientalism' and `affective cosmopolitanism' — are developed to grasp the everyday, banal and embodied character of the construction of the city.The article concludes on the different spatialities produced in these constructions.

Imagine There's No Rural: The Transformation of Rural Spaces Into Places of Nature Conservation in Portugal

Figueiredo, E. — 2008-03-12

One of the most relevant issues in the growing (social and institutional) identification of the environment, nature and rural regions is the creation of protected areas.This is held to be an important aspect in the conception of the countryside as an environmental reserve. As a consequence of the processes of industrialization and urbanization which have dominated modern societies in recent decades, as well as from global socio-economic transformation, considerable parts of European rural areas (mainly the southern ones and particularly the Portuguese ones) could essentially be considered as marginal spaces or agricultural areas of low income and productivity.This situation led the majority of Mediterranean countries and some peripheral areas of more central countries in the European Union (from the 1970s onwards) to respond to the pressures and recommendations of international agencies, scientific bodies and of society as a whole in order to convert remote rural areas into spaces for environmental and natural conservation and protection. Despite having some advantages, instituting rural spaces into environmental and natural conservation areas can also present important constraints. In this article we will discuss some problems in the conversion of Portuguese rural areas, as well as consequences for the future of rural regions in Portugal.

Cities and Organized Interest Intermediation in the EU Multi-Level System

Heinelt, H., Niederhafner, S. — 2008-03-12

It is argued that European cities gain new room for political manoeuvre because the process of Europeanization implies the opening-up of a new political sphere in which cities can play a new multi-level game or traditional structures of domestic policy making can — at least partly — be bypassed. First, we consider whether there are specific points of access for local-level actors to EU institutions. Cities can enter into the European policy-making process by providing EU institutions with knowledge, legitimacy and ways to monitor the implementation of EU policies. Second, we analyse how cities organize their activities to utilize these access points. Based on an investigation of two pan-European cities' organizations, the Council of European Municipalities and Regions (CEMR) and Eurocities, we consider how different organizational models influence their effectiveness as a part of the EU governance system. Eurocities is a network type of organization whose activities are based on the modus of coordination. The CEMR, however, is a classic international umbrella organization consisting of national sections; its activities are based on the modus of cooperation. Finally, we conclude the article with some reflections about the potentials and the constraints which apply to each type of organization.

European Citizenship and the Regions

Painter, J. — 2007-12-11

This article reconsiders the relationship between European citizenship and the regions in the light of theoretical developments in citizenship studies and empirical research in four sub-nation-state territories in Europe (Scotland in the UK, Catalonia in Spain, the Veneto in Italy and Upper Silesia in Poland).The article begins with an outline of the development of the idea of European citizenship and a review of some contemporary theoretical debates about the spatialities of citizenship. It then considers how European citizenship might be theorized in geographical terms, before turning specifically to the relationship between European citizenship and regionality. Drawing on the case-study research, this relationship is examined through four themes: identity, political rights, social rights and civic engagement. The article concludes with a commentary on the implications of a regional perspective for the future development of European citizenship.

Social Networks in High-Technology Local Economies: The Cases of Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire

Waters, R., Lawton Smith, H. — 2007-12-11

The clustering of innovative industry both demands and creates a highly skilled local labour market. The growth of this agglomeration of labour, it has been argued, benefits both individuals and firms by providing the opportunity for matching labour demand with labour supply,which is crucial to sustaining innovation. Additionally, mobility within the local labour market is argued to be of collective benefit as the movement of the highly skilled within the cluster is a key mechanism for technology transfer and fostering of interfirm links. Social networks (social capital) are argued in the literature to be the medium by which these activities are facilitated and the development of which is key to innovation-based local economic development. This is exemplified by SiliconValley.To examine the universality of these assumptions, this article explores the development of social networks among scientists and engineers in the high-technology local economies of Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire. Drawing on the results of a postal survey of the engineers, physicists and chemists in the local labour markets of these regions carried out between November 2000 and March 2001, the article considers the networking behaviour of the highly skilled, focusing on the composition and spatial reach of their networks. It concludes that the importance of local networks should not be overstated on the basis that there are distinct differences within two seemingly similar locations and within the professional associations.

Explaining Varieties of Regional Innovation Policies in Europe

Prange, H. — 2007-12-11

Since the 1990s the `region' has been widely acknowledged as an appropriate arena for innovation policies. While regional innovation policies and the creation of regional innovation systems and local clusters are highly propagated by the European Union and the OECD, there are still significant differences in regional activities even among nation states which are equally exposed to global competition, and are similarly dependent on technological innovations, such as Sweden, Switzerland and the Netherlands. The article aims to explain this variation in regional innovation policies by arguing that a country-specific pattern consisting of the geographical concentration of the science and research system, the vertical fragmentation of the political system, the degree of Europeanization, and the endowments of the regions shapes the way innovation policies are pursued in the regions.

The Socialist Past and Postsocialist Urban Identity in Central and Eastern Europe: The Case of Lodz, Poland

Young, C., Kaczmarek, S. — 2007-12-11

Cities in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) are creating new urban identities under conditions of postsocialist transformation, Europeanization and globalization. Discourses about postsocialist urban identity frequently attempt to `Europeanize' these cities' identity and to obscure elements of the `unwanted past', particularly the socialist, Soviet and Russian pasts. However, those pasts can return to disrupt dominant narratives of postsocialist urban identity. This article analyses how the past of socialism and relationships with Russia and the Soviet Union are treated in the construction of new urban identities in postsocialist CEE, particularly in the case of Lódz, Poland. After outlining the treatment of the socialist past in Polish society and politics, the article analyses the contested construction of a new identity for Lódz. The analysis focuses on the construction of a past multicultural `European' `Golden Age' for the city to create a new identity for it, and how that identity is contested and disrupted by the re-emergence of the city's socialist past and the history of its relations with Russia and the Soviet Union.The article concludes by outlining the broader implications of the case-study for the understanding of postsocialist urban identity formation.

The Uncertain State(s) of Europe?

Bialasiewicz, L. — 2007-12-11

Recent representations of the European project have, more often than not, characterized it as `uncertain',`weak',and even `indeterminate'. In this article, I look to the political — and geopolitical — ramifications of such understandings, in particular as regards Europe's role in the world. I remark, especially, on the geographical imaginations which underpin such critiques: highly normative assumptions regarding political territoriality and `power' in the international arena. I argue that such geographical imaginations fundamentally miss the radical transformations taking shape at and well beyond Europe's borders, thus failing to recognize the emergence of the EU as a very new sort of international actor.

Book Review: Olivier Kramsch and Barbara Hooper (eds) CROSS-BORDER GOVERNANCE IN THE EUROPEAN UNION: Routledge, Abingdon, 2004, xiv + 236 pp. (inc. index), {pound}70.00, ISBN 0415315417

Harguindeguy, J.-B. — 2007-12-11

Book Review: P. North ALTERNATIVE CURRENCY MOVEMENTS AS A CHALLENGE TO GLOBALISATION? A CASE STUDY OF MANCHESTER'S LOCAL CURRENCY NETWORKS: Ashgate, Aldershot, 2006, vii + 186 pp., {pound}50.00 (hbk), ISBN 0754645916

Gomez, G. M. — 2007-12-11

Book Review: R.K. Ray, A.T. Denzau and T.D.Willett (eds) NEOLIBERALISM: NATIONAL AND REGIONAL EXPERIMENTS WITH GLOBAL IDEAS: Routledge, London, 2007, 346 pp., {pound}75.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780415700900

Hadjimichalis, C. — 2007-12-11

Book Review: Iwona Sagan and Henrik Halkier (eds) REGIONALISM CONTESTED: INSTITUTION, SOCIETY AND GOVERNANCE: Ashgate, Aldershot, 2005, x + 282 pp., {pound}55.00 (hbk), ISBN 0754643611

Deacon, B. — 2007-12-11

Editorial: Securing the City: Urban Renaissance, Policing and Social Regulation

Helms, G., Atkinson, R., MacLeod, G. — 2007-11-01

Space, Governmentality, and the Geographies of French Urban Policy *

Dikec, M. — 2007-11-01

This article seeks to make a contribution to debates around governmentality and urban policy. The main argument is that although there is a governmental dimension to the constitution of spaces through urban policy, there is no inherent politics to such constitutions. Different ways of imagining space have different implications for the constitution of problems and formulation of solutions.This argument is substantiated by an account of French urban policy (la politique de la Ville) between 1981 and 2005, organized around three periods. The first part of the article relates this policy to the contemporary transformations of the French state, and points to the relationship between urban policy and the penal state.The second part presents an account of this policy with a focus on the changing conceptualizations of space, and their varying policy and political implications.

Municipal Policing Meets the New Deal: The Politics of a City-Centre Warden Project

Helms, G. — 2007-11-01

In urban centres across the UK and elsewhere, one encounters an ever-increasing array of uniformed agencies. Often explicitly aligned with efforts for an urban renaissance, these patrols not only give advice and information to users of urban public spaces but, more significantly, are instrumental in securing these spaces and their populations. Drawing on empirical research in the British city of Glasgow, this article argues that, far from being merely designed to minimize risk, such new policing initiatives work hard to establish a new moral order of acceptable activities for revitalized urban spaces. This happens through renewed involvement of the local authorities as municipal policing. There is, however, one element in the debates of an urban renaissance or the entrepreneurial city that tends to get sidelined easily: that of the actual labour and work lying at the heart of such renaissance. Here, the warden project under discussion, in its design as an intermediate labour market programme, forcefully illustrates the meanings of `securing' and `policing' as it reconnects the moral ordering of contemporary labour market policies with the patrolling of new urban spaces.

Securing Sustainable Communities: Citizenship, Safety and Sustainability in the New Urban Planning

Raco, M. — 2007-11-01

During the 2000s spatial and urban policy in the UK has become increasingly concerned with the creation of sustainable communities. The urban renaissance's focus on security through design has been replaced by new, more holistic discourses which emphasize `community safety' and the ways in which the planning process can be reformed in order to achieve this. The new emphasis is on the responsibilization of neighbourhood communities with the police becoming more `citizen-focused' in the design and implementation of their strategies. This article examines the shift towards sustainable community building and assesses its implications for the policing and securitization of places. It argues that a paradox lies at the heart of the government's new agendas. On the one hand, they promote community balance, mix and diversity as a vehicle for the creation of more functional and less crime-ridden places. On the other hand, they simultaneously identify diversity as a threat to community safety. Security policy, the article argues, has therefore become focused on the deployment of new types of relational citizenship, based on top-down conceptions of whose presence or absence is required to make a community sustainable. In this context `sustainability' is being used as a discursive cover for a series of potentially repressive and counter-productive policy measures. Rather than increasing a sense of security within newly built and regenerated places, the new focus of policy may encourage the formation of new governmentalities of insecurity and fear.

From Disciplining To Dislocation: Area Bans in Recent Urban Policing in Germany

Belina, B. — 2007-11-01

In German cities, area bans (Aufenthaltsverbote) are issued against users of illegalized drugs and other `undesirables' to bar them from entering certain central city spaces. Drawing on materialist state theory, the expert discourses that legitimize these area bans are analysed in order to understand why this spatial measure of policing is on the agenda right now. I argue that these discourses reveal that area bans are aimed at dislocating undesirables; that they are based on a spatialization of `danger'; that they are symptomatic of recent developments in policing in that they abstract from the individual and engage in `governing at a distance'; that this very abstraction is made possible by the spatial approach of the area bans; and that the bans are therefore a suitable means to police the consequences of neo-liberalism in the entrepreneurial city.

Difficulties in Revitalizing Public Space By CCTV: Street Prostitution Surveillance in the Swiss City of Olten

Klauser, F. R. — 2007-11-01

This article critically assesses the adequacy of CCTV as an instrument to revitalize urban areas suffering from concentrated social disadvantage. Empirically, it focuses on the video-surveillance of street prostitution in the Swiss city of Olten. This CCTV system was installed at the beginning of 2001 and focuses on an urban `hot spot' used by different types of marginalized social groups. In the Olten case-study, video-surveillance is examined as it is understood and perceived both by the population at large and by daily users of the monitored area. In investigating whether surveillance cameras render monitored areas accessible to people erstwhile excluded from that space because of their negative subjective perception of risks, this article puts particular emphasis on the phenomenon of `distanciation' caused by CCTV. By showing that CCTV is forgotten very quickly and felt to be somehow unreal against the background of everyday social activities in monitored areas, this approach also stresses that CCTV is very limited as an instrument to revitalize public places of fear.

`Plastic Police' Or 'Community Support'?: The Role of Police Community Support Officers Within Low-Income Neighbourhoods

Paskell, C. — 2007-11-01

Since 2002, English and Welsh police forces have been able to employ a new form of staff to assist police with street patrols, transport duties, local monitoring and enforcement. These Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs or, as in this article, CSOs) were introduced in the Police Reform Act 2002 to address lower-level crime and disorder and to reassure the public. This and subsequent Acts designated limited police powers for CSOs, and most forces actually granted even fewer. The CSO role is therefore one of a high-profile, frontline police worker linking between police and the public, but without powers typically associated with policing. This limitation has cast doubt on CSOs' ability to address disorder or to reassure the public. This article argues that CSOs were able to offer valuable support both to police and the areas they serve despite these limited powers. Indeed, the research indicates that having few powers actually enhanced CSOs' ability to engage with local residents, workers and organizations. The article traces how CSOs were operating in low-income areas with low-grade environments and above-average crime rates. These areas are considered because they would benefit most from efforts to address disorder and insecurity. Not only should local quality of life be enhanced in the short term, but such reductions could also help to foster and sustain longer-term renewal. Using evidence from eight low-income areas in England and Wales, the article assesses CSOs' contribution to reducing environmental disorder, promoting order and reassuring local people. The research finds that, although referred to as `plastic police', CSOs were in fact contributing to policing and to the area more broadly in ways which could be expected to aid renewal.

Spatial Disparities and Housing Market Deregulation in the Randstad Region: A Comparison With the San Francisco Bay Area

Cao, L., Priemus, H. — 2007-11-01

Since 1989, Dutch housing policy has been changing to allow more scope for market forces. This article will evaluate the spatial disparities related to these policy changes in the development of the housing market in the Randstad region of the Netherlands. The evaluation is placed in an international perspective by drawing a comparison between the Randstad and the San Francisco Bay Area in the United States. The comparison focuses on three specific aspects: suburbanization, spatial disparity in the distribution of household income, and spatial differentiation in the value of property. The results show that since the more market-oriented housing policy came into force, the Randstad has witnessed faster suburbanization and — to a certain extent — a greater disparity in property value in urban and suburban areas than the San Francisco Bay Area, though the gaps in household income are narrower in the Randstad than in the Bay Area. The comparison draws attention to the policy implications of problems that are likely to be caused by suburbanization and property value segregation in the Randstad and presents a number of policy recommendations. Spatial policy, urban renewal policy, and tax and income policy can play a significant role in mitigating the spatial impacts of housing market deregulation on the Randstad.

Book Review: Max Miller (ed.) Worlds of Capitalism Institutions, Governance and Economic Change in the Era of Globalization

Etherington, D. — 2007-11-01