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This article assesses how the agency of international advisors can provide policy recommendations that, instead of introducing urban policy initiatives for multicultural encounters, sharpen political and spatial segregation within the context of ethnic conflict. The article explores the variegated nature of neoliberalization and argues that the adoption of strategic planning and creativity discourses enables the development of a sophisticated political rationale for governing ethnic diversity. The analysis focuses on a range of advisory practices—including the role played by Michael Porter at the Harvard Business School and Richard Florida at the Creative Class Group in advising former Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat—in order to understand the dynamics of grounding imaginaries concerning a neoliberal role for the state and the depoliticization of the public sphere in a disputed city. By surveying official policy documents, journalistic interviews and two reports submitted by Porter and Florida to Barkat, the author examines how the branding of Jerusalem as a creative city involved managerial practices that classified the city's diverse population according to categories of creative and non‐creative labor rather than political subjects. The adoption of such discourses facilitated a novel approach for enhancing the state‐building ethno‐nationalistic project while at the same time reproducing the dynamics of occupation and annexation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article extends recent examinations of incomplete or disrupted policy mobility by examining the politically volatile case of policies to manage the regional impacts of decarbonization in Australia. The article's extended case study shows how political interests differently incorporated figments of circulating policy into longstanding debates and how more-than-local political networks defeated an antipolitical, technocratic exercise in 'new regional' governance. 'Follow the policy' methods could not have revealed the complexities of this case. The article concludes that mobilities approaches need to be more attentive to institutional arrangements, to the contested politics of policy formation and to the ambiguities of perceived policy likenesses. This case highlights the importance of considering how antipolitical institutional architectures facilitating policy mobility relate to established political power networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article critically examines the expression of global spatial imaginaries in urban policy and planning. Following recent calls to understand how the global is 'made up' in and through cities, we argue for the usefulness of Roy and Ong's concept of 'worlding'. By analysing how strategic spatial plans envisage 'Global Sydney', the article reveals a constitutive spatial imaginary informed by the articulation of three interrelated elements: global city standards, comparative techniques and extra-local policy models. Unpacking how cities are selectively worlded through spatial imaginaries, the article advances an approach to urban globality as actively cultivated and differentially produced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I explore how theoretical metaphors about the contemporary rescaling of the capitalist economy are used by local policy actors to justify an entrepreneurial urban policy. I develop a new theoretical concept (scalar narrative), suggest an analytical approach (cultural politics of scales) and give evidence of a particular case (Bilbao). The article is structured in the following way. First, I briefly review the literature on politics of scales and contribute to the debate with an approach that incorporates elements from cultural political economy and interpretative policy analysis. Within this approach I mobilize the concept of ‘scalar narrative’ that has already been suggested in the literature but not fully explored. I then put this approach into practice with a particular case study, Bilbao, a city in the north of Spain, which has recently gone through extensive urban regeneration, where I describe the appropriation of three scalar narratives by the policymakers. To show this I draw from empirical work done in Bilbao that looks at statutory and strategic planning documents as well as urban marketing literature and interviews with key informants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the adjustment of large firms in France, in particular how they regionalized their production structures in the 1980s. Throughout the ‘Golden Age’, large firms had geographically reorganized their activities: strategic planning remained in Paris, while the actual production was decentralized into the provinces, primarily to address cost and labour conflict issues. When the large firms faced a profitability crisis in the 1980s, and the traditional state-financed way out of the problems was no longer available, they saw in these proto-regional production systems a chance to become more competitive. They relied on the decentralization policies of the governments in the 1980s, and used the second-order effects of the new policies as a means to modernize their own operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on a symposium that analyses the changing geography of auto industry over the course of the coming decade. The importance of the emerging countries, as studied in this symposium, reflects the new global geography of automobile production and the different pathways followed by these countries. The comparison between Thailand and Mexico clearly illustrates this. In the latter country, a U.S. auto company's strategy is the driving force behind the understanding of the development and upgrading of Mexican automotive activities in a scenario of peripheral integration. In Thailand, it is the combination of Japanese corporate strategies and national automobile policies that explains the success of the Thai automotive industry in a pericentral regional integration process. Finally, comparison between Brazil and Europe underlines how it is that the most advanced experiments in modular production have been taking place in emerging countries, where greenfield plants are being built in non-unionized localities, whilst the need to negotiate organizational changes in Europe has led to more hybridized forms.

This article examines cooperative modes of regulation of local economies that in Europe increasingly take the form of concertation (partnership) – i.e. formalized agreement on common goals stated by collective actors with traditionally/potentially contrasting interests. This kind of agreement (‘pacts’) is increasingly institutionalized; ‘institutionalization’ being the process through which certain behaviours are steadily promoted, required, even made obligatory, by actors other than those putting them into effect, who demand conformity to their values and beliefs in return for making resources available. The process in question is particularly visible in EU countries, and it can be interpreted both as an opportunity to construct a model of a social Europe and as an opportunity to defend the features of this model that were subject to rapid erosion during the 1990s. Recurrent forms of partnership are: public–private and public–public partnerships; ‘regionalized’ industrial relations; ‘second–generation’ industrial districts; urban strategic planning; and territorial pacts. To order them, a typology is proposed on the basis of the dichotomy between exogenous/endogenous actors/resources. Three main constraints to an effective working of local concertation are then discussed: local presence of ‘global players’; excessive institutionalization; and lack of adequate implementation structures. Starting from the latter, some working hypotheses are proposed on a new ‘organizational population’, namely, the organizations of local development. Cet article examine les modes de régulation collectifs des économies locales, ceux–ci prenant de plus en plus souvent la forme d’une concertation (partenariat), accord formel sur des objectifs communs énoncés par un collectif d’acteurs dont les intérêts sont habituellement ou éventuellement opposés. Ce type d’accord (pacte) s’institutionnalise progressivement au travers d’un processus grâce auquel certains comportements sont toujours encouragés, demandés, voire exigés, par des acteurs qui, d’une part, ne sont pas ceux qui les appliquent et, d’autre part, réclament le respect de leurs valeurs et convictions en contrepartie de la mise à disposition de ressources. Ce processus, particulièrement évident dans les pays de l’U.E., peut s’interpréter à la fois comme une possibilité de construire un modèle d’Europe sociale et comme une chance de défendre les caractéristiques de ce modèle alors que celles–ci se sont rapidement dégradées dans les années 1990. Les formes récurrentes de partenariat sont: partenariats public–privé et public–public, liens industriels régionaux, districts industriels ‘de deuxième génération’, urbanisme stratégique et pactes territoriaux. L’article propose une typologie basée sur les dichotomies acteurs/ressources exogènes/endogènes. Il déduit ensuite les trois principales entraves à une concertation locale efficace: la présence locale de ‘joueurs de niveau international‘, un excès d’institutionnalisation et un manque de structures de mise en œuvre appropriées. A partir de ce dernier point, sont présentées quelques hypothèses de travail sur une nouvelle ‘population organisationnelle‘, autrement dit des organisations de développement local. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article informs that London, England's Millennium Dome on the Greenwich peninsula is the home for Great Britain's most important millennium festival. It is intended to demonstrate to the world the country's creativity and ingenuity. During its construction the Dome was described as the largest development project in Europe. However, despite its importance, it has been built as an isolated project, divorced from any strategic planning context. As this article will show, this lack of contextual thinking led to considerable difficulties and lost opportunities.

This article presents an argument that the sustainability of the effort to 'fast track' development in the Singapore-Indonesian border zone has yet to be demonstrated. These problems and the slow take off of the other flagship investments partly illustrate the limits of a development strategy that emphasizes fragmented enclaves of improvement. As is the broader pattern across Southeast Asia, there is little willingness to countenance the development of a functionally integrated cross-border economy that might compromise national sovereignty, incidentally questioning interpretations of the growth triangle projects as part of the trend toward a 'borderless' world economy. From both a welfare and employer perspective the development of an independent residential commitment amongst the workforce might be seen as positive. It supports retention of an older and experienced workforce with a preference for staying on the island and provides a monetary commitment that might affect attitudes at work. With respect to the interpretation of Singapore-Indonesian border cooperation as part of the shift toward a borderless world economy, this article suggests that claims about such a trend have tended to indiscriminately label processes producing different outcomes.

The post-Mao development strategy, beginning in 1978, contains two components: economic reform; and the open door policy. Economic reform started in rural China. Its final goal is to reshape the Chinese economy from one that is guided by administrative authorities to one that is market-oriented. The open door policy, on the other hand, aims to attract foreign investment, advanced technology and management skills to the coastal cities and areas. The post-Mao development strategy also recognizes the importance of a well-established system of cities and towns in spatial development, in diffusing benefits from the core to the periphery and in reducing the differences between urban and rural areas. Thus, a small town strategy or 'non-metropolitan strategy' or 'rural-urbanization' strategy for urbanization is advocated, in which the size of larger cities is controlled, medium-sized cities are allowed to develop reasonably and small cities and towns are actively promoted. Emphasis on small cities and towns is also seen as crucial in absorbing the surplus labor force which is released from the agricultural sector as a consequence of improved agricultural efficiency and productivity.

This article presents a case study of urban settlements in Israel. It attempts to answer the following research questions: Do peripheral desert settlements exhibit any long-term development peculiarities as compared with urban settlements located in central non-desert areas of the country? If so, what contributes to the development peculiarities of peripheral desert settlements? Finally, which planning strategies and policies can enhance the socio-economic sustainability of existing settlements in peripheral desert areas and facilitate prospective urban development there? Although the Negev desert contains Israel's largest reservoir of natural resources like copper, phosphates, bromine, magnesia, potash, clays, the quantity and location of these resources, primarily in the Dead Sea area, do not represent a durable economic base for a wide-scale urban development of the entire region. The foundation of new towns in the Israeli Negev desert stemmed, therefore, primarily from ideological and geopolitical considerations establishing a national presence and sovereignty over the territory of the Negev, which constitutes nearly two-thirds of the land area of Israel and re-establishing the nation's ties with its land.

The main objective of this article is to develop a framework for understanding urban restructuring in post-reform China. It is hoped that the framework will reveal how the built environment evolves logically through the urban process defined by the political economy, thus providing a unified explanation for both socialist and post-reform built environments. With the understanding that a wide diversity of local contexts exists, this paper will mainly focus on the experience of post-reform urban China. Urbanization in China has long been a mysterious issue because of the apparent contradiction between state policies and the practical imperatives behind them. Similarly, at the intra-urban scale, the high accumulation strategy was enforced through suppressing urban service employment, constraining labour reproduction costs and promoting self-contained urban development. It was believed that to prevent an increase in the cost of reproducing labour power, the work-unit that employed the workforce should be responsible for its reproduction. The growth of real estate has been accelerated by the stimulative macroeconomic policy and a boom in aggregate demand as well as both domestic and overseas speculative capital.