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Information and communications technologies have the potential to address community development issues, but initiatives to connect communities do not automatically ensure benefits. Social inclusion, identity, and power issues must be considered in design and implementation of initiatives. (SK)

A study of the restructuring of indigenous producers and service organizations in the city of Sheffield, UK, reveals the powerful effect of telematics on industrial change. The city became increasingly transparent to external economic forces in the manufacturing and service sectors as indigenous manufacturers were forced by telematics to globalize through collaboration with international firms and markets to survive. Single, integrated, corporate telematics networks increased competitiveness, service quality and real-time monitoring systems and corporate linkages., INTRODUCTION The current convergence of computer and telecommunications technologies into `telematics' and the economic importance of telematics has been widely noted (Thomas and Miles,1988; Robins, 1992). It is also now [...]

The British government attributed the enraged reaction to its decision to shut down thirty-one of the fifty coal mines in the UK, to sentiment rather than to logic. Severe recession prompted the government's decision. The White Paper ignored the recommendations of the Trade and Industry department. The prospect of financial returns from a free market, regardless of the resource costs involved, motivated the Paper. Increased competition from alternative fuels may cause a reduction in the number of mines and miners.

The relationship between transport-led agglomeration and economic performance is evaluated in an English and Welsh context. We examine the effects of scale, i.e., inter- versus intra-city mobility infrastructure, on urban size–cost performance. An additional contribution of this paper lies in its use of power-law scaling models of urban systems, enabling an assessment of optimality in the trade-off between economic output and mobility costs accounting for ease of access within cities coupled with their built density. Findings suggest economic underperformance coincides with inadequate mobility at both inter- and intra-city scales, while overperformance is accompanied by overgrown urbanized area and escalating mobility costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Labour government plans to spend 4.65 billion pounds sterling between 1999 and 2002 on regeneration and there will greater emphasis on efficient use of resources, getting value, forming partnerships and evaluating results. The Single Regeneration Budget is an important part of the strategy. A budget of 800 million pounds will be spent on New Deal for Communities. This money will be used in deprived areas. New Deal for Regeneration programmes will have 2.3 billion pounds to set up 50 projects in these deprived areas.

The UK government's Urban Task Force has published an outline of its terms of reference, the first part of a consultation process aimed at regenerating urban areas. The prospectus invites contributions towards identifying the causes of urban decay and providing practical solutions to revitalize cities, towns and other urban areas. The task force's focus on design excellence, sustainability and social inclusion is laudable but such aims can be too insubstantial to attract support.

This article presents a discussion about an emerging area of evaluation discourse, the 'European spatial approach'. It examines the current policy framework at the European-wide level by exploring the alternative planning and public policy paradigms that underpin the case for rationality within this framework. By using such a theoretical review, the article seeks to argue that the current deployment of evaluation within strategic spatial policy and planning is poorly understood, and further work is needed to develop an understanding of the role of power and knowledge in rationality, and in particular the role they play within the pluralist models of evaluation that are emerging within the wider EU policy processes. This is illustrated by specific evaluation experiences within the EU Trans-European Transport Networks and Structural Funds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]