Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space

Land-grant universities are distinctly American institutions of higher education in two respects. First, the establishment of a land-grant university was an independent act by the US federal government that endowed specific counties across the country with a university. Second, their mission of inclusion, with an emphasis on the agricultural and mechanic arts, was designed to educate the industrial class for professional life. Despite these institutions' unique founding and mission, however, land-grant universities have received little specific attention in the broader literature on university impacts. Given the comparatively little attention devoted to these institutions, the goal of this study is to use a descriptive and exploratory quasi-experimental analysis to evaluate the potential impacts of land-grant institutions on their local communities. The results of this analysis suggest that land-grant universities do impact their local communities, but that these impacts did not begin to appear until approximately sixty years after their initial founding.

This paper examines the geography of talented people using educational and occupational measures and its relationship with creative industries in French local labour systems. The link between talent and the creative economy has recently generated interest in the economic development literature as well as among policy makers. Previous studies have shown that spatial concentration of talented people in an area may bring about externalities generated by the exchange of new ideas between individuals, and this may foster the clustering of activities. Correlation and regression analyses suggest that creative industrial concentration is associated with talent as well as with tolerance and technology measures. This paper offers the empirical basis for the design of policies related to talent concentration in France. This type of policy may boost the capacity of territories for creativity and innovation, in line with the objectives set out by the European Commission.

The recent change in funding structure in the UK higher education system has fuelled an animated debate about the role that arts and humanities (A&H) subjects play not only within higher education but more broadly in the society and the economy. The debate has engaged with a variety of arguments and perspectives, from the intrinsic value of A&H, to their contribution to the broader society and their economic impact, particularly in relation to the creative economy, through knowledge exchange activities. The paper argues that in the current debate very little attention has been placed on the role that A&H graduates play in the economy, through their work after graduation, and specifically in the creative economy. Using Higher Education Statistical Agency data, we analyse the performance of A&H graduates (compared with other graduates) and particularly explore how embedded they are with the creative economy and its associated industries. The results highlight a complex intersection of different subdisciplines of the A&H with the creative economy but also reveal the salary gap and unstable working conditions experienced by graduates in this field.

The extensive literature on academic entrepreneurship has focused almost entirely on science and engineering, while little is known about the extent of it in other disciplines, most notably the creative arts. We analyse the context, motivations, and variety of academic entrepreneurship in the creative arts using a recently completed survey of UK academics, providing microdata on 1108 academics. The data are complemented using institutional data taken from the Higher Education–Business and Community Interaction Survey, and data on individual submissions to the Research Assessment Exercise 2008. We highlight four characteristics of academic environment in the creative arts that strongly influence the nature of the entrepreneurship in the field: the practice-based nature of the research; the role of networks, particularly networks linked to teaching; the importance on nonmonetary rewards; and the role of geography. Our results indicate that academic entrepreneurship in the creative arts is varied and extensive, and that it could be better supported by policy.

With this paper we explore how institutional changes have influenced the regional development of Yiwu City, East China. The regional development in Yiwu City can be regarded as constituting a specific model in transitional China, which revolves around the establishment, growth, and internationalization of the local commodity trading market. The success of the Yiwu model lies in the interaction between globalization, local institutions, and commodity trading markets. However, we argue that the strategic coupling perspective has its limitations in explaining the development trajectory of the Yiwu model. We develop an integrated paradigm of regional development located between new regionalism and global production networks by synthesizing Scott's institutional framework. We identify a pronounced and long-established cultural–cognitive element in the entrepreneurial spirit of local people, which led to the establishment of a commodity trading market at the beginning of 1980s. However, the sustainable development of the Yiwu model needs to be supplemented by normative and regulative institutional pillars. We further argue that the developmental local state remains critical to the regional development in developing countries in terms of correcting market failure, encouraging entrepreneurship, and creating a competitive business environment to accommodate globalization.

In this paper I set the emergence of ‘coinquiry’ approaches to public engagement in the context of the apparent inability of conventional arrangements to contribute effectively to the transition to environmental sustainability. I explicate characteristics of coinquiry, which is distinguished from ‘upstream engagement’, in so doing developing criteria with which to evaluate its application. Examining documentary sources, I identify and critically review projects funded by the UK Beacons for Public Engagement on the topic of environment and sustainability. The conclusion highlights the factors limiting the capacity of the Beacon initiative—and possibly that of similar national initiatives to be undertaken in the future—to attain stated objectives relating to public engagement with environment and sustainability matters and the practice of coinquiry.

In this paper we develop new insights on science governance at a time when an emphasis on public engagement in responding to questions of trust in science is giving way to a more systemic and networked perspective. In a meta-analysis across seventeen UK public dialogue processes we identify five spheres of public concern about the governance of science and technology relating to: the purposes of science; trust; inclusion; speed and direction of innovation; and equity. Forty in-depth interviews with senior UK science-policy actors reveal highly partial institutional responses to these concerns and help explain the underlying processes that close down, and at times open up, reflection and response on public values. Finally, we consider the implications of this analysis for the future of science governance, prospects for more anticipatory, reflexive, and inclusive forms of governing, and the roles for critical social science inquiry.

The relationship between governance and representation is examined using the development of river basin management plans (RBMPs) in Scotland as a case study. We used a longitudinal ethnographic approach to explore the (1) remit and rationale for representation choices; (2) representative characteristics and claims; and (3) influence of nonparticipating interests on representatives. The invite-only ‘advisory group’ members represent a network of state, private, and third-sector interests. The members make claims to represent others on the basis of authority, accountability, shared identity, and epistemic values. These claims are made for specific although often multiple and overlapping constituencies. These representation claims suggest that representative, rather than traditional, legitimacy is being defended. However, members were also concerned about how the RBMP advisory groups coexisted with traditional and direct democratic processes. The results need to be considered within the overall system of environmental governance within Scotland, the UK, and Europe. The findings are relevant to multiple fields of environmental management, including protected area management and coastal management.

This paper evaluates the extent to which the introduction of four new regional planning and land policy instruments in the Netherlands improves the delivery of regional planning objectives. On the basis of case-study research, we identify why and to what extent the Dutch regional authorities—the provinces—have adopted these new instruments and assess whether or not the instruments offer opportunities for improving the delivery of regional planning objectives. The study shows that regional policies and plans are often implemented without consideration of their consequences for national or local planning objectives. As a result, the instruments may not address current policy delivery needs, and may even compound local policy failures. We conclude that the use of such instruments should be accompanied by a more thorough discussion of regional planning tasks and objectives, and a debate on the role of regional authorities within the multilevel governance setting.