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The past decade witnessed dramatic grow in the implementation of GPS, smartphones and other tracking technologies for collecting high resolution space–time data. These highly accurate data can be analyzed and displayed by various tools and techniques that bring forth new insights about the space–time movements of people and objects such as private cars or taxis. Those analytical tools allow researchers to undertake more accurate temporal and spatial research, resulting in hundreds of journal articles that report findings using tracking technologies and data. But as was found in a meta analysis we conducted, only a small proportion of these papers were published in geography journals or involve geographers as collaborators. We discuss several possible reasons for this trend and see this neglect of such highly useful geographical tools by geographers as a missed opportunity. We encourage geographers to pay more attention to the new possibilities offered by these technologies in light of their immense potential for the advancement of geography in the future.

Since the 1990s, Vietnam's progressive integration into the global market economy has triggered major economic and social transformations. In spatial terms, these are marked by a massive conversion of agricultural land for industrial and urban development. While this process has attracted considerable attention from media and researchers, much of the research on land conversion has focused on the largest cities. Little attention is devoted to similar processes occurring in medium-sized cities where urban expansion has been rapidly increasing in recent years. In order to identify the issues and consequences, this paper attempts to analyze how the conversion of farmland for urban uses takes place in the medium-sized city of Hue in Central Vietnam. The analysis shows that land conversion for urban development purposes has increased social tensions and complaints from affected people. Two key issues are identified: i) the state uses its extensive powers in the decision-making process while the participation of affected people is passive and weak; ii) land conversion from agricultural to urban uses results from profit-seeking by multiple stakeholders. Data was collected through fieldwork in Hue and secondary sources such as newspapers, legal documents on land policy and urban development.

Policy makers in many Western countries have been battling segregation and its presumed negative effects for decades. Fears that segregation and spatial concentrations of poor and minority ethnic households will negatively impact the individuals living in such concentrations seem to be based largely on the American literature. Fears about the formation of ghettos and the negative image of living in one are transmitted to Europe, where they are picked up by politicians and policy makers. In light of such fears, policy makers seek to create mixed urban neighbourhoods. Their reasoning is logical and straightforward: if spatial concentrations of certain population groups have negative effects, then mixed areas would not. The creation of mixed urban neighbourhoods may prevent problems or even have positive effects – for instance, more social cohesion, social contacts between all kinds of groups or better chances for social mobility (Arthurson, 2012; Van Kempen & Bolt, 2012)...

Using the notion of commuting flexibility, this paper investigates the intra-personal day-to-day variability and flexibility of commuting behavior using a 7-day GPS dataset collected in Beijing, China. Four dimensions of commuting variability are evaluated: space, time, travel mode, and travel route. The results indicate that the commute trip is flexible and complex in a variety of ways. Through 3D geovisualizations we were able to identify seven distinctive commuting patterns based on different combinations of the four dimensions of commuting flexibility. The results call into question the common presupposition that the commute trip is stable and fixed in many respects. Among the four dimensions of commuting flexibility, we found that variation or flexibility in time is more common than variation in the other three dimensions of commuting flexibility. This means that temporal adjustment for coping with commute problems is likely to be the most feasible option for suburban residents in Beijing.

The importance of an historical perspective on the formation of regions is widely accepted. Academics and regional policy-makers use regional history to explain or legitimise the current political position of particular regions, while history is also widely regarded as an important element in the social construction of regions. The dominant evolutionary approach to regions has provided useful insights, but suffers from some fundamental problems, as illustrated here through the example of the present-day Dutch province of Gelderland. We propose to shift the focus from the historical analysis of the evolution of given regions to the comparison of the spatial strategies used by local stakeholders in different historical settings. We identify four logically distinct though empirically interrelated spatial strategies used by local stakeholders to promote their interests through their support of specific regions: (1) the territorialisation of networks to realise economies of scale; (2) cooperation against sub-regional threats; (3) regional territorial defence against other regions; 4) scalar politics against supra-regional control. This framework is then applied to two case studies of spatial strategies: those of urban elites in medieval Nijmegen, and of contemporary bulb growers in the western part of the Netherlands. Historical analysis of the reasons why actors in these widely divergent historical cases sometimes use regions to promote their specific interests can help us to understand the conditions under which regions may become important political entities. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Many international differences can be experienced in shopping spaces on both sides of a national border. Other languages, unfamiliar goods and unknown spatial codes are only a few of the physical-functional and socio-cultural differences that could cause exciting and stimulating situations but could also be perceived as problematic and deterring. This paper analyses perceptions, motivations and practices of cross-border (non-)shoppers and provides insights into ways in which people from cross-border regions deal with differences and the extent to which they interact across borders. The aim is to both theoretically and empirically substantiate the dynamic concept of (un)familiarity by scrutinizing the impact of “push”, “pull”, “keep” and “repel” factors on shopping (im)mobility in the Dutch-German Rhine-Waal Euroregion. These factors are seen as rooted in dynamic processes of constructing, deconstructing and reconstructing differences between places on both sides of the border. In so doing, attention is paid to changing shopping practices and motivations and influencing changing perceptions of international differences. As such, the paper also discusses “familiarization processes” in crossborder regions. The concluding section provides critical reflections on the current European policy approach towards cross-border regional development. In fact, the paper ends with a plea for more instead of less borders, as borders are markers of international differences which could promote cross-border mobility.

This paper deals with path dependence in seaport governance. A central notion in this respect is lock-in. Economic geographers have recently started to reconsider the deterministic perspective on lock-in and developed the concept of institutional plasticity. Such plasticity is the result of actions of actors to purposefully 'recombine and convert or reinterpret institutions for their new objectives or transfer institutions to different contexts' (Strambach, 2010). This concept is applied to seaports, where so far, path dependence and lock-in have not been studied in detail. Our main conclusion is that a process of institutional stretching takes place when port authorities see a need to develop new capabilities and activities. In this process new layers are added to existing arrangements, gradually leading to a formalised governance reform but without breaking out of the existing path of development. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Explanations of spatial clustering based on localization externalities are being questioned by recent empirical evidence showing that firms in clusters do not outperform firms outside clusters. We propose that these findings may be driven by the particularities of the industrial settings chosen in these studies. We argue that in project-based industries, negative localization externalities associated with competition grow proportionally with cluster size, while positive localization externalities increase more than proportionally with cluster size. By studying the survival patterns of 4607 firms and 1229 subsidiaries in the global video game industry, we find that the net effect of clustering becomes positive after a cluster reaches a critical size. We further unravel the subtleties of the video game industry by differentiating between exits by failure and exit by acquisition and conclude that being acquired is best considered as a sign of success rather than as a business failure.

Due to women's increased participation in the labour force, more and more family-households are now juggling paid labour and care-giving in space and time and do so in many different ways. Much research and policy about how households try to establish a satisfactory work-life balance singles out particular coping strategies, such as telecommuting or the mobilizing of informal help by relatives or friends. While insightful, foregrounding single strategies may oversimplify the complex reality of everyday life, in which people often skilfully weave together multiple coping strategies. As well, advances in information and communication technologies (ICTs) have further diversified the arsenal of possible coping strategies, but the academic literature has yet to verify whether ICT usage complements or substitutes the adoption of other coping strategies. Adopting a holistic quantitative approach this study assesses which combinations of coping strategies prevail and which role ICTs play in this regard among one- and dual-earner households in the Utrecht–Amersfoort–Hilversum area of the Netherlands. We also examine systematic variations in strategy combination by socio-demographics, ICT possession, affordability and skills, social network factors, employment and commute factors, spatial factors, lifestyle orientation and other factors. We identify several distinct combinations of strategies and find that ICT-related strategies are frequently adopted by highly educated employed parents in the Netherlands attempting to achieve a satisfying work-life balance and tend to complement other types of strategies. Which combinations of strategies have been adopted depends most strongly on the presence of young children, but also on employment factors and characteristics of the environment surrounding the dwelling and main workplace.

The rapid expansion of biofuel production and consumption has raised concerns over the social and environmental sustainability of biofuel feedstock production, processing and trade. The European Union (EU) has thus balanced its commitment to biofuels as one option for meeting its renewable energy targets with sustainability criteria for economic operators supplying biofuels to member states. Seven voluntary “EU sustainability schemes” were approved in July, 2011 as a means to verify compliance. While mandated sustainability criteria have a strong environmental focus, a number of these voluntary schemes have social sustainability as a significant component of the requirements put forward for achieving certification. As several of these voluntary schemes are incipient, thereby limiting evidence on their effectiveness in practice, this analysis is based on a comparative analysis of the substantive content or ‘scope’ of these schemes and the likely procedural effectiveness of the same. Findings show that while some schemes have considerable coverage of social sustainability concerns, poor coverage of some critical issues, the presence of schemes lacking any social sustainability requirements, and gaps in procedural rules are likely to undermine the likelihood that social sustainability is achieved through these schemes or the EU sustainability policies lending credibility to them.

Over the last 10 years a large set of global environmental assessment studies has been published that include scenario projections. Comparison of these studies shows that there is actually a limited set of scenario families that form the basis of many scenarios used in different environmental assessments. Mapping these scenario families allow a simpler comparison across the different assessments. The fact that many assessments can be positioned within these families gives some confidence of their relevance. It is also noticeable that several recent assessments have been focusing on more focussed policy-scenarios as variant to a single baseline. This is partly a response to a different stage in the policy-making process. While there are clear advantages of both categories of scenarios (explorative scenarios and baseline/policy variants), it might be important to test the robustness of scenario outcomes of the policy-scenario approach against the different storyline scenario-families identified in this paper.

Research has recently questioned the commonly held opinion that travel time is valued as negative, arguing that engagement in activities during travel may make these trips more enjoyable or productive. Satisfaction with travel has to date been assessed using utility-based models or measures of productivity of the trip. The present study is the first to assess the influence of activities performed during travel on public transport users’ subjective well-being. To this end, a survey was conducted in Sweden in 2010 in which activities during the work commute by public transport were recorded and subjective well-being during travel was measured retrospectively using the Satisfaction with Travel Scale (STS). Results show that talking to other passengers has the strongest positive effect on STS, whereas activities related to entertainment and relaxation lead to lower STS, possibly since engaging in these activities reflect unsuccessful attempts to abate boredom. In addition, it is found that activities during travel may have a more positive effect on the commute back home, suggesting that the mindset related to the destination influences travel satisfaction.

Stedelijke ‘borderscapes’ lijken op het eerste gezicht leeg en levenloos maar in hun onbestemdheid ligt juist hun betekenis en kwaliteit voor de stad. Dit vraagt om een alternatieve ontwikkelingsvisie, met stedelijk ‘tussen zijn’ als troef.

Leisure travel makes up a very significant part of daily travel and therefore needs to be considered in any travel demand management or general land use and transportation policy. Yet, research into leisure mobility has tended to ignore important aspects of leisure travel, such as its joint character, i.e. its dependence on the participation of other people and the important part played by characteristics of the sites where leisure activities are conducted, as well as the link between leisure activities and the dynamics in people’s social networks. This paper introduces a relational approach to leisure activities and travel, which studies joint leisure activities and travel within the webs of relations – the assemblages of people, artefacts, as well as ideas, emotions and other immaterial phenomena – in which they are situated. Two such webs deserve particular attention: the social ties that people have with others and particular configurations of elements (buildings, infrastructure, nature, people, etc.) that collectively make up ‘places’. A key idea of our approach is that two-way connections exists between single instances of leisure and the longer term, structural phenomena of the social tie and place. We expand the relational approach in relation to the decision whether or not to engage in joint leisure and the location choice. For each dimension, we review relevant literature and elaborate the relational approach in terms of the relations among people, artefacts, other forms of materiality and the ideas, norms, affects that hold them together and circulate between them.

Using Bigo’s (2002) notion of “the governmentality of unease” this articlereveals a shift in popular discourse around human smuggling in Western Europe andCanada since the 1990s towards increasing criminalization. To analyze this process ofcriminalization we have identified three recurring elements: boat arrivals; high fees and“bogus” asylum seekers; and the involvement of organized crime. The finding thatsmugglers today are generally perceived as “evil criminals” who undermine states’ abilityto manage migration and who need to be punished is contrasted with data derivedfrom interviews with smuggled migrants in the Netherlands and Canada that offer analternative, more socially embedded understanding of human smuggling. We posit thatthis reality check and a more nuanced understanding of human smuggling are needed forthe protection of international migrants. Keywords: criminalization, discourse, human smuggling, irregular migration, security Introduction Framingeventsthroughasecuritylenshasbecomepervasiveinoursociety(Bauman2006). Bigo (2002) and Huysman (2006) caution us to examine the

In 1973, Horst W Rittel and Malvin A Webber introduced the term ‘wicked problem’ in planning theory. They describe spatial planning as dealing with inherent uncertainty, complexity and inevitable normativity. This contribution picks up the concept of wicked problems, reflects on it from a planning-theoretical perspective, and proposes the use of Cultural Theory’s concept of clumsy solutions as a response to wicked planning problems. In discussing public participation processes in spatial planning, it is then shown what clumsy solutions mean for spatial planning. The four rationalities of Cultural Theory are then used to explain why public participation in planning can become wicked, and how these rationalities provide a response that copes with this wickedness.

The importance of geographical proximity for interaction and knowledge sharing has been discussed extensively in economic geography in recent years. There is increasing consensus that it is just one out of many types of proximities that might be relevant. We argue that proximity may be a crucial driver for agents to connect and exchange knowledge, but too much proximity between these agents on any of the dimensions might harm their innovative performance at the same time. In a study on knowledge networks in the Dutch aviation industry, we test this so-called proximity paradox empirically. We find evidence that the proximity paradox holds to some degree. Our study clearly shows that cognitive, social and geographical proximity are crucial for explaining the knowledge network of the Dutch aviation industry. But while it takes cognitive, social and geographical proximity to exchange knowledge, we found evidence that proximity lowers firms's innovative performance, but only in the cognitive dimension.

Over the past years our group has been working on a coherent research program on the relationships between greenspace and health. The main aims of this “Vitamin G” program (where G stands for green) were to empirically verify relationships between greenspace in residential areas and health and to gain insight into mechanisms explaining these relationships. In this article, we bring together key results of our program regarding the relevance of three possible mechanisms: stress reduction, physical activity, and social cohesion. The program consisted of three projects in which relationships between greenspace and health were studied at national, urban, and local scales. We used a mixed-method approach, including secondary analysis, survey data, observations, and an experiment. The results confirmed that quantity as well as quality of greenspace in residential areas were positively related to health. These relationships could be (partly) explained by the fact that residents of greener areas experienced less stress and more social cohesion. In general, residents of greener areas did not engage in more physical activity. The article concludes with a discussion of the practical implications of these findings and identification of areas that need more in-depth research.

In the Netherlands, the diminishing accessibility of locations of consumers, producers and services potentially hampers economic growth. Reducing congestion is therefore one of the pivotal challenges for Dutch policymakers. In this paper we analyze population-employment dynamics in the Netherlands and concurrently decompose total employment into four broad sectors: manufacturing, distribution, business service and personal service activities. We explicitly allow for inter-sectoral relations to capture employment dynamics more accurately. We introduce a model in which endogeneity and spatial autocorrelation are dealt with by a generalized spatial three stage least squares (3SLS) estimator. Our empirical results suggest that population growth primarily causes the consumer service sector to grow. Employment growth in industrial activities and business services are not decisively affected by population growth. Moreover, the inter-sectoral relations appear more important than between employment and population growth itself. Our findings indicate that the existing magnitude and direction of consumer and business trips will be persistent over time, and potentially be even more pronounced in the future. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd.

The authors seek to extend the literature on inequalities and exclusion in the nighttime economy through a rhythmic analysis of visitor presence in public space in nightlife districts in the city centres of the Dutch cities of Groningen, Utrecht, and Rotterdam. Substantial inequalities in visitor presence, based on race/ethnicity and gender, are demonstrated. In the cities considered, racial/ethnic inequalities vary more in spatial terms, and gender inequalities fluctuate more heavily over the course of the night. Overall, however, the findings support the argument that exclusion from the nighttime economy needs to be understood in temporal–ecological terms. Multiple drivers, or pacemakers, of rhythmic inequalities rooted in race/ethnicity and gender are identified, including opening hours and revellers’ collective habits. For advocates of greater diversity among nighttime-economy participants, the analysis suggests that neither a more varied supply of nightlife premises, nor more surveillance and policing, are straightforward solutions: a strong orientation of premises toward university students and urban professionals may promote gender-based inclusion, but deters nonwhite revellers, and more police on the street may empower women to move through a nightlife district unaccompanied yet reduce the inclination to do so among racial/ethnic minorities Keywords: nighttime economy, exclusion, rhythm, gender, ethnicity, Netherlands

The residential sector plays an important role in the energy system of developing countries. In this paper we introduce a bottom up simulation model for household energy use. The model describes energy demand for several end-use functions based on a set of physical drivers, such as floor space and heating degree days. The model also recognizes different population groups: i.e. urban and rural households, each distinguishing five income quintiles. The model is applied to analyze possible future developments of residential energy use in five developing world regions: India, China, South East Asia, South Africa and Brazil. We find that in each of these regions cooking is currently the main end-use function, but that other functions, such as space heating, cooling and appliances become more important. At the same time, energy consumption slowly shifts towards modern fuels. The model also shows that climate policy can reduce residential energy emissions, but could also slow down the energy transition away from traditional fuels in low income classes. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Abstract Contemporary African migration to the European Union (EU) is triggered by global interconnectedness, but at the same time it is opposed by the hard borders of the EU. As a consequence, sub-Saharan African migrants often undertake fragmented and dangerous journeys to the North. These journeys are mainly discussed with regard to the rather linear notion of transit migration (as if migrants depart, go through a transit phase and settle afterwards). In this paper I take a different perspective by approaching migrants’ journeys as open and dynamic phenomena that evolve ‘en route’. I present an analytical lens that takes different mobilities (of people, goods, information, etc.) as the starting point to investigate these migration journeys. With this mobilities lens I analyze in detail three trajectories of African migrants who are moving to the EU. In order to avoid a simple ‘everything is mobile’ argument, I subsequently explore the role of the geographical concept of ‘place’ in the facilitation of these migration journeys. I thereby take into account places as geographical localities as well as migrants’ places in their social networks. Finally, I illustrate how mobilities, in turn, bring their ‘sediments’. This means that they change and give meaning to places. This reciprocal way of relating mobilities to places helps us to go beyond both individualistic and structuralistic explanations of migration.

Brownfields are real property, the expansion, redevelopment, or reuse of which may be complicated by the presence or potential presence of a hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant (USEPA, 2002). In recent years, there have been a rising number of brownfield redevelopment practices in Chinese cities. However, some redevelopment practices have been unsuccessful in spite of cautious planning whereas others have been successful in the absence of any planning. It is largely due to China’s rapid urbanization on one hand, and inadequate information on the locations and conditions of brownfield on the other. To address the gaps, an integrative methodology is devised based on two frameworks, one for identifying potential instead of actual brownfields, and one for establishing priorities for redevelopment. The first framework identifies potential brownfields through four steps: (1) define input sites; (2) verify environmental liability; (3) confirm tax delinquency; and (4) cross-check with industrial classification code. The second framework prioritize the identified potential brownfield sites with a set of criteria which are selected and weighed based on key interviews and the study of local reference cases. The utility of this methodology is exemplified with the case study of Futian in Shenzhen. Local data including land use data, tax and environmental records of 2005 and the development plan for 2006–2010 are utilized. We conclude that this methodology properly responds to the increasing need of urban planners in making proactive plans for brownfield redevelopment in Chinese cities.

A survey of a random sample of 1,330 Swedish residents assessed the relationships between affect associated with performance of routine out-of-home activities, mood, and judgments of life satisfaction (cognitive subjective wellbeing, CSWB). Regression analyses showed that sociodemographic variables accounted for most variance in CSWB (7%) and least in mood (2%). In agreement with previous research, CSWB increased with income, employment, and cohabiting with a spouse, and had a U-formed relationship with age. Affect associated with routine activities accounted for more variance than the socio-demographic variables in mood (30%) and in CSWB (13%). Mood partially mediated the effect on CSWB of affect associated with the activities. The results suggest that future policy-related research should consider the possibility that community-provided resources that facilitate performance of routine out-of-home activities would increase life satisfaction.

This article presents three stories of female migrants who were assisted in their migration process from the Horn of Africa, Iraq and the former Soviet Union to the Netherlands. The stories are contextualized within the results of a wider research project on assisted migration involving 56 interviews and demonstrate the diverse practices and experiences of women’s assisted migration. By ‘assisted’ is meant the assistance certain migrants need in order to be able to cross borders, given the lack of legal channels available to them – a process usually talked about as smuggling or trafficking. The article argues that the policy discourse surrounding these assisted types of migration is highly gendered, reproduces stereotypes and completely ignores the wider context in which these movements take place. The fact that for some women from certain parts of the world there are no other options than to travel in this particular way, and that the risks involved in migration can be relatively low compared to the risks faced at ‘home’, is rarely acknowledged in accounts of human smuggling or trafficking. Moreover, framing assisted female migrants as victims can lead to the generalization that all migrant women are at risk and need to be protected. This, in turn, may lead to protective policy measures that often restrict women’s choices even further.

While most models of location decisions of firms are based on the principle of utility maximizing behavior, the present study assumes that location decisions are just part of business cycle models, in which location is considered along other business decisions. The business model results in a series of location requirements and these are matched against location characteristics. Given this theoretical perspective, the modeling challenge then becomes how to find the match between firm types and the set of location characteristics using observations of the spatial distribution of firms. In this paper, several Bayesian classifier networks are compared in terms of their performance, using a large data set collected for the Netherlands. Results demonstrate that by taking relationships between predictor variables into account the Bayesian classifiers can improve prediction accuracy compared to commonly used decision tree. From a substantive point of view, our results indicate that different sets of urban characteristics and accessibility requirements are relevant to different office types as reflected in the spatial distribution of these office firms.

In this paper we develop and explore an approach to estimate dynamic models of activity generation on one-day travel-diary data. Dynamic models predict multi-day activity patterns of individuals taking into account dynamic needs as well as day-varying preferences and time-budgets. We formulate an ordered-logit model of dynamic activity-agenda-formation decisions and show how one-day observation probabilities can be derived from the model as a function of the model’s parameters and, with that, how parameters can be estimated using standard loglikelihood estimation. A scale parameter cannot be identified because information on within-person variability is lacking in one-day data. An application of the method to data from a national travel survey illustrates the method. A test on simulated data indicates that, given a pre-set scale, the parameters can be identified and that estimates are robust for a source of heterogeneity not captured in the model. This result indicates that dynamic activity-based models of the kind considered here can be estimated from data that are less costly to collect and that support the large sample sizes typically required for travel-demand modeling. We conclude therefore that the proposed approach opens up a way to develop large-scale dynamic activity-based models of travel demand.

This paper offers an introduction to this Special Issue of International Development Planning Review. It uses the concepts of translocal development, development corridors and development chains to secure a better grasp of what development means in the context of globalisation and how ‘local development’ needs to be refined. Rather than producing transnational communities and spaces, globalisation is resulting in translocal patterns of development. Such new types of translocality will create new development opportunities, but will also restrict people’s manoeuvring space to escape from poverty. The six case study empirical papers are set in this overall context and the collection is reviewed both conceptually and in the context of its implications for development planning.

Measuring the innovation performance of regions or nations has been repeatedly done in the literature. What is missing in the literature is a discussion of what innovation performance of a region means. How do regions or nations contribute really to the innovation output of firms? And how can this contribution be investigated in an empirically sound way? We argue that while the literature offers many suggestions, their theoretical foundation is often weak and the under- lying assumptions are rarely discussed. In this paper, we systematize various mechanisms by which spatial units influence firms' innovation activities. On the basis of this, common innova- tion performance measures and analyses are discussed and evaluated. It is concluded that there is no general best way of measuring the innovation performance of spatial units. In fact, the most interesting insights can be obtained using a multitude of different approaches at the same time.

This paper discusses translocal linkages by focusing on municipal partnerships. Through municipal international cooperation, local governments in the Global North are involved in improving municipal performance and enhancing municipal-led local development in the Global South. Local governments in the South increasingly consider their formal international relations with partner cities of strategic value to meet some of their capacity and resource needs and eventually to foster local development. The paper seeks to explore what such formalised municipal partnerships mean for local development opportunities. It particularly aims to identify a number of factors that can be regarded as strengths and weaknesses of translocal linkages in a municipal development context. Based on a comparative analysis of some specific translocal/transmunicipal partnerships, five key determinants are presented: institutional capacity, politics and vested interest, alignment with national development priorities, funding and mechanisms to facilitate knowledge exchange. The paper concludes with a discussion of the extent to which municipal international cooperation can be understood as an extra-local driver of development and how new translocal dependencies are created

Cultural policy has produced divergent intentions underlying the direction of public art since its advent in Western Europe in 1945. Literature has feebly demonstrated the extent to which differentialities in cultural policy have affected the production of public artworks over time and space. This paper fills this gap as regards Amsterdam and Ghent, cities that are situated in different national institutional contexts. It shows dissimilarity—in that one finds a relatively higher number of public artworks, more spatially dispersed and more diversified public artworks in Amsterdam than in Ghent, which is particularly a result of institutional differences—and similarity between these cities, in terms of initiatives by local communities and arts actors, irrespective of the local policy context. These results provide insight into policy concern with public-art production and the everyday practices and cultural traditions that underpin it.

This paper discusses the concepts of translocal development, development corridors and development chains, based on the insights obtained in the preceding case studies. As intermediate theoretical concepts they provide a geographical framework for understanding local development in a context of globalisation. The implications for policy include the need to give more attention to the relational dimensions of local development, complementing territorial policies with more focused management of key flows linking localities with other places.

The procedure proposed by Bai and Ng (2002) for identifying the number of factors in static factor models is revisited. In order to improve its performance, we introduce a tuning multiplicative constant in the penalty, an idea that was proposed by Hallin and Liska (2007) in the context of dynamic factor models. Simulations show that our method in general delivers more reliable estimates, in particular in the case of large idiosyncratic disturbances.

Urban creative clusters are currently a major focus of attention, as their prominent position in both local political and academic circles makes evident. Many authors stress the importance of spatial concentration for creative industries. However, only a few studies have focused on the individual entrepreneur. As a result, empirical evidence of the meaning of urban place as a site for social networks and a space for inspiration is still scarce. This is of some consequence as entrepreneurs provide a crucial link between creative activities and economic change and development. This study contributes to the existing literature by investigating how different creative entrepreneurs choose and evaluate their location. Using qualitative interviews with entrepreneurs in two creative clusters in the Berlin neighbourhoods Prenzlauer Berg and Kreuzberg, this article shows the significance of the look and feel of specific places and explains how and for whom local networks are important.

Many accounts of urban governance emphasize municipal and neighbourhood scales, featuring local participation, social cohesion and the relationship between local government and residents. By contrast, our focus is the vertical governance processes of integrated urban policies. We concentrate on the effectiveness of the steering of urban policies. Using a Dutch city as a case study, we evaluate local stakeholders’ experiences in the vertical governance processes of integrated urban policy and the extent to which their experiences fit in with the theoretical notions of multi-level governance or multi-scalar meta-governance and the EU principles of good governance. The key result is that Dutch urban policy incorporates dominant neo-liberal multi-scalar meta-governance, owing to the simultaneously strong market orientation and state regulation. The legitimacy of urban policy is brought into question when city authorities have very little influence on its contents but are judged on its results. The major lesson learned is that neo-liberal centralistic steering in the core domains of local government that aim to achieve effective and coherent urban governance practices is counterproductive.

Previous research demonstrates an impact on subjective well-being (SWB) of affect associated with routine performance of out-of-home activities. A primary aim of the present study is to investigate whether satisfaction with daily travel has a positive impact on SWB, either directly or indirectly through facilitating the performance of out-of-home activities. A secondary aim is to determine whether emotional-symbolic or instrumental reasons for car use results in higher satisfaction with daily travel than other travel modes. A survey of a population-based sample of 1,330 Swedish citizens included measures of car access and use, satisfaction with daily travel, satisfaction with performance of out-of-home routine activities, and affective and cognitive SWB. The results confirmed that the effect on affective and cognitive SWB of satisfaction with daily travel is both direct and indirect via satisfaction with performance of activities. Percent weekly car use had a small effect on satisfaction with daily travel and on affective SWB, although fully mediating the effect of satisfaction with performance of the activities. This suggests that car use plays a minor role for satisfaction with daily travel and its effect on SWB. This role may be larger if investigated after a forced reduced car use.

Urban environments form the setting of everyday life for most Western young people. This article explores visual representations of cities made by young people in a range of environments within four countries. The findings inform a larger study on urban geographies within geography education. We analyse students’ drawings of cities regarding physical characteristics, activities and issues. There are many commonalities between drawings from the four countries, the majority showing a ‘big, busy city’ representation with skylines, traffic and shopping areas. There are also distinctive characteristics for each set, for example Finnish students tended to emphasise environmental and social issues more than in the other countries. In relation to methodology, we conclude that drawings, supported by contextual information, are a useful source to understand young people’s representations of cities. Further, this research supports thinking about how to merge young people’s experiences and imaginaries with the teaching of urban geography.

The current global land grab is causing radical changes in the use and ownership of land. The main process driving the land grab, or ‘foreignisation of space’, as highlighted in the media and the emerging literature is the production of food and biofuel for export in the aftermath of recent food and energy crises. However, there are several other processes driving the land rush. In this article I argue that an analytical framework that focuses on only one or two processes that drive the global land grab offers a narrow perspective on this complex process. It will be unable to take into account the full range and extent of agrarian and social changes that occur in light of the land grab and their strategic implications for poor people’s livelihoods. An important starting point is to identify the broad processes driving the current land rush, and trace their structural and institutional origins. To do so, I identify and examine seven factors that are giving rise to radical changes in landownership and land use in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Finally, ‘codes of conduct’ as proposed by several quarters in the context of global land grab are unlikely to work in favour of the poor.

Distressed urban areas suffer, by definition, from a number of serious problems. It is often assumed that all relevant stakeholders agree about the character of these problems and the right policy solutions. Reality, however, is more complex. In this paper we investigate how local stakeholders and residents in a Dutch post-WWII neighborhood perceive urban problems and solutions. The findings show the very opposite perceptions about reality and about effective solutions in distressed neighborhoods held by local managers and residents. The main conclusion is that a power-driven narrative of problematic post-WWII neighborhoods within a neoliberal strategic urban agenda has led to a power-driven urban governance arrangement to the exclusion of residents.

Over the past three decades, the use of site-specific, iconic flagship regeneration projects has become a popular tool for urban development. This is particularly true in former industrial cities that have suffered from both economic decline and poor image. Such projects are intended to act as catalysts for further development, to attract inward investment and help produce a new icon or image for the city and, as such, they are often geared to outside audiences of tourists, investors or potential residents. With their high profile and external audience, they strive to become global spaces. However, because they are built into an existing urban fabric, they have a very strong local impact. This paper reviews the development and evolution of flagship regeneration over the past three decades, particularly with reference to how it contrasts with other forms of urban regeneration. It will also review the major criticisms of flagship projects during this time, paying particular attention to their impact on local residents.

Cusmano L., Mancusi M. L. and Morrison A. Globalization of production and innovation: how outsourcing is reshaping an advanced manufacturing area, Regional Studies. This paper investigates the determinants and the spatial and functional dimensions of firms' outsourcing. Based on a large survey of manufacturing firms in Lombardy, Italy, the analysis shows that outsourcing is remarkably wide across sectors and has a clear regional dimension, concerning highly skilled firms at most. Offshoring is still a minor fraction of the deverticalization process, largely related to wider strategies of internationalization by foreign group subsidiaries at intermediate stages of the value chain. The evidence suggests the regional system is inserting onto global knowledge networks, but also points at the risk of ‘branch plant effects’ in high-technology segments. Cusmano L., Mancusi M. L. et Morrison A. La mondialisation de la production et de l'innovation: comment l'approvisionnement a l'exterieur reorganise une zone ind...

Analysis of household activity scheduling has to date been limited to one-day periods. This paper extends the study of household task allocation to a one-week period. Using a one-week time use survey held under couples in The Netherlands in 2003, the paper proposes indicators for measuring task allocation on a daily and weekly scale and investigates to what extent role expectations, work status and indicators of time pressure influence task allocation patterns. The outcomes suggest that egalitarian role expectations and higher female work status lead to a more balanced allocation of work and households tasks between spouses. More traditional role views and increased time pressure lead to more specialisation and inequality between spouses. Interestingly, households under time pressure apply day-to-day specialisation to arrive at balanced weekly allocation totals.

This paper develops a model of activity and trip scheduling that combines three elements that have to date mostly been investigated in isolation: the duration of activities, the time-of-day preference for activity participation and the effect of schedule delays on the valuation of activities. The model is an error component discrete choice model, describing individuals’ choice between alternative workday activity patterns. The utility function is formulated in a flexible way, applying a bell-shaped component to represent time-of-day preferences for activities. The model was tested using a 2001 data set from the Netherlands. The estimation results suggest that time-of-day preferences and schedule delays associated with the work activity are the most important factors influencing the scheduling of the work tour. Error components included in the model suggest that there is considerable unobserved heterogeneity with respect to mode preferences and schedule delay.

The chauffeuring of children to/from school and childcare providers has received limited attention in previous research, although it structures parents' everyday activities in important ways. Combining analytical and cultural perspectives on juggling employment and caregiving, I explore the impact of such factors as household structure, employment and commute characteristics, residential location, and culturally defined norms about parenthood on chauffeuring arrangements for dual-earner households in Utrecht, the Netherlands. Fathers conduct a considerable share of chauffeuring trips, but arrangements are often informed by traditional gender norms. The spatial variability in the gendering of chauffeuring is limited.

Current projects to upgrade public spaces in Western cities seek to produce secured space by improving safety and decrease feelings of fear, and to produce themed space by promoting urban entertainment or fantasy. This study examines how ‘fear’ and ‘fantasy’ influence urban design and management of two public spaces in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. It traces social antecedents for the development of secured and themed public space, such as a growing differentiation of urban lifestyles, and proposes a new technique for analysing public spaces. The case studies differ in design and management: one is secured, the other themed. However, each secured space contains an element of ‘fantasy’, and each themed space an element of ‘fear’.

Social and economic benefits have accrued from medium- and long-distance travel, but at the expense of the environment. Since the travel behaviour literature tends to concentrate on shortdistance trips or trips within daily urban systems, a better understanding of the factors shaping medium- and long-distance travel is needed. Using the 1998 National Travel Surveys for the UK and the Netherlands, the study reported here characterises medium- and long-distance travellers in terms of socio-economic attributes, time availability, day of travel, and land-use related factors. The results suggest that, in both countries, males and individuals with a higher socio-economic status are more likely to engage in medium- and long-distance travel. The analysis further shows that the overall structure of the urban system in combination with the size of the country and the local population density affect the participation in medium- and long-distance travel. Such factors should be considered explicitly in future studies of medium- and long-distance travel.

Problems in distressed neighbourhoods in Western European cities are nowadays often linked to a decline in social cohesion. Recently, some authors have discussed the link between the concept of social cohesion and the concept of urban governance. One of the important questions they raise is whether the process of urban governance can create more social cohesion in a neighbourhood. We contribute to the discussion in this paper. Our specific perspective is the unintended effect of urban governance processes. Three different types of cohesion are introduced: horizontal, vertical, and institutional. Our aim is to ascertain to what extent aspects of urban governance, such as cooperation among different partners, affect these types of social cohesion. The paper is based on a research project that has recently been carried out in two early-post-WWII neighbourhoods in the Dutch cities of Utrecht and The Hague. Both neighbourhoods are subjected to urban restructuring policies.

Why consumers shop via the Internet, is a frequently asked question. As yet, the impact of spatial variables on e-shopping has received little attention. In this paper we report our investigation of the spatial distribution of Internet users and online buyers in the Netherlands for the time period 1996–2001 and the impact of spatial variables (residential environment and shop accessibility) on e-shopping. Two hypotheses are tested empirically. The first is that e-shopping is a predominantly urban phenomenon, because new technology usually starts in centres of innovation (innovation-diffusion hypothesis). The second is that people are more likely to adopt e-shopping when their accessibility to shops is relatively low (efficiency hypothesis). Our findings indicate that Internet use and online buying are still largely urban phenomena in the Netherlands, but that there is a trend towards diffusion to the weakly urbanised and rural areas. Not only the innovation diffusion hypothesis, but also the efficiency hypothesis is confirmed by our findings. People living in a (very) strongly urbanised area have a higher likelihood of buying online, but people with a low shop accessibility buy more often online. The analysis also shows that the support for the two hypotheses depends on the type of product. Airline tickets are still mainly bought in very strongly urbanised areas, whereas compact discs, videos, DVDs, and clothing are bought relatively more often in weakly urbanised areas. In conclusion, geography seems to matter for e-shopping.

For most of us, weather is more than a trivial concern in our daily life. Consider how often we watch the weather forecast and since when we did not discuss pertinent weather elements (e.g., the rain, the snow, the wind, or the hot/cold temperatures). While the influence of weather on our daily life is pervasive, there has been relatively little debate on how weather may shape our everyday life to date. However, while travelling we are continuously, but in different degrees, exposed to various weather conditions, which might have differentiating impacts on individual travel behaviour (e.g., people’s daily choices for outdoor and indoor activities, destinations and transport modes; see Bocker et al. (2013) for an extensive review). This relative silence is curious in the light of recent climate changes which, in spite of uncertainties, will have profound effects on societies (IPCC, 2007; National Research Council, 2010).

While many studies of the duration of shopping episodes have considered the impact of sociodemographic variables, such as gender or income, few if any have considered spatial variation in the duration of shopping activities. This paper reports a study seeking to establish how the duration of shopping episodes varies with characteristics of the built environment in addition to other factors that are claimed to influence the duration of shopping episodes––temporal constraints, the monetary budget available and the activity/travel context of the shopping activity. The data used are derived from working male and female heads of household included in the 1998 Netherlands National Travel Survey. The results indicate that shopping duration on workdays is affected by temporal constraints, the activity/travel episodes conducted before or after the shopping activity, and the urban setting in which they are executed. Shopping episodes on workdays tend to take more time as the degree of urbanization of the urban setting is higher; the magnitude of this effect varies, however, with the time of day and gender.