Search

The article discusses the historical patterns of reaction to urbanism in Great Britain. The article is based on two assumptions. The first is that modern industrialism, as an economic and technological system based on inanimate sources of energy has, or had, an inherent spatial logic, and this logic is expressed in the existence of the industrial city and large-scale urbanization. Second, whilst modern industrialism, as an economic and technological system, results in similar and comparable urban forms, the extent to which the social, physical or spatial forms of such cities differ results from two variables--culture and power. The first part of this article deals with the historical patterns of reaction to urbanism in Britain at the height of the urbanization process in Europe. In the second part, the phenomenon of "temporary escape" from the city and its expression in the institution of the "vacation home," "residence secondaire," "wochenend haus" or "country cottage", a research topic previously monopolized by geographers and conceptualized by one of them as "seasonal suburbanization" is being highlighted.

This article engages with recent debates which assert that community participation and empowerment are place-contingent. The particular nature of localities has regularly been taken to account for success or failure in processes of participation and regeneration. In contrast, this article exposes the failings based in the nature of the process of regeneration in the complex intersection of national agendas of community participation, regional objectives of economic growth and local aspirations of social cohesion and improved amenities. These agendas meet in the seemingly mutual pursuit of the 'active community'. They become manifest in the micro-politics of negotiating and enacting different constructions of community by the different actors 'empowered' in the regeneration process: regional development agencies, local government and local civil society. The article is based on ethnographic research in the Kent coalfield. The coalfields as distinct places have commanded a lasting place in the academic and policy literature: romanticized as the epitome of 'communityness' but demonized as the site of problem groups. This otherness has outlasted the industry the communities were built on. The analysis here shows that the social organization of regeneration in an arguably 'different' place is less driven by local specificities than by a failure to make visible conflicting constructions of community; therefore both the pathologizing of disadvantaged social groups and calls for more 'community' in policy delivery rather than policy reform are called into question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing threat of climate change has created a pressing need for cities to lower their carbon footprints. Urban laboratories are emerging in numerous cities around the world as a strategy for local governments to partner with public and private property owners to reduce carbon emissions, while simultaneously stimulating economic growth. In this article, we use insights from laboratory studies to analyse the notion of urban laboratories as they relate to experimental governance, the carbonization agenda and the transition to low-carbon economies. We present a case study of the Oxford Road corridor in Manchester in the UK that is emerging as a low-carbon urban laboratory, with important policy implications for the city's future. The corridor is a bounded space where a public-private partnership comprised of the City Council, two universities and other large property owners is redeveloping the physical infrastructure and installing monitoring equipment to create a recursive feedback loop intended to facilitate adaptive learning. This low-carbon urban laboratory represents a classic sustainable development formula for coupling environmental protection with economic growth, using innovation and partnership as principal drivers. However, it also has significant implications in reworking the interplay of knowledge production and local governance, while reinforcing spatial differentiation and uneven participation in urban development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of International Journal of Urban & Regional Research is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Much of the recent literature about local governance of Britain’s cities has examined the power of a newly evolving ‘business elite’. However, in trying to understand changing governance forms, these analyses have generally lacked sensitivity to the role of actors (businesspeople) and their representative organizations. Analytical categories drawn from social movement theory (SMT) are introduced to develop a more actor-centred approach to the role of business interests in urban management. While not attempting to claim that business represents a social movement within Britain’s cities, it does illuminate how effectively or otherwise businesspeople develop an identity based around their representative organizations and specific business agendas, define non-business actors as opponents, and deploy and implement the agendas they create. We then use these SMT categories to examine the creation of business agendas in three English towns – Barnsley, Mansfield and Accrington. Dernièrement, la plupart des textes parus sur la gouvernance locale des villes britanniques ont étudié le pouvoir d’une ‘élite économique’ qui s’est récemment dégagée. Cependant, dans leurs tentatives de comprendre les formes évolutives de gouvernance, ces analyses ont généralement ignoré le rôle des acteurs (dirigeants d’entreprise) et celui de leurs organismes représentatifs. Les catégories analytiques tirées de la théorie des mouvements sociaux sont appliquées ici afin d’aborder le rôle des intérêts économiques dans la gestion urbaine en s’attachant davantage aux acteurs. Sans conclure que les milieux d’affaires représentent un mouvement social au sein des villes de Grande-Bretagne, l’article explique à la fois comment les dirigeants d’entreprise mettent plus ou moins... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a study to determine cause and effect of sectoral employment change and to investigate the range of relationships that emerge. The three objectives are: firstly, to explore the diversification process in Britain from 1978 to 1991; secondly, to examine the relationship between diversification and growth in the context of the national economy; and thirdly, to examine specific places in the urban system to determine relationships between diversification and growth. These should provide useful insights into employment structures and the restructuring of the urban system from 1978 to 1991. In previous research on diversity and diversification there seems to have been a special emphasis on the relationship between growth and diversification. These phenomena have been associated because it was considered that as city size increased there should be greater degrees of diversity, thus diversification over time. There are no immediately obvious regional patterns of diversification when one examines the British urban system from 1978 to 1991. Upon closer inspection, however, one finds that most of the largest centres throughout the urban system have diversified at the greatest pace; this is in keeping with the expectation that large cities should be becoming more diverse.