Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space

The California Air Resources Board has mandated that by 1998 2% of new vehicles sold in California must be zero emission, effectively, electric vehicles. This requirement is largely responsible for the electric vehicle development programs run by almost every global automobile manufacturer that does business in the United States. At present, no single electric vehicle technology, from battery type, to propulsion system, to vehicle design, represents a standard for a protoelectric vehicle industry. In this paper competing electric vehicle technologies are reviewed, leading public and private electric vehicle research programs worldwide are summarized, and the barriers faced by competing technological systems in terms of manufacturing and infrastructural requirements are examined.

Southern California's manufacturing economy is currently facing a major crisis of deindustrialization and job loss. The emerging electric vehicle industry represents a possible new growth pole for the region, and a number of private and public initiatives have already been taken to encourage the development of the industry in the local area. I argue that policy can significantly enhance this development process by focussing on specifically regional sources of industrial productivity, innovativeness, and competitive advantage. I argue also that the existing industrial assets of Southern California, combined with policy of this sort, could indeed foster the growth of a major cluster of electric vehicle and parts producers in the region. To be successful, policy needs to be concentrated in particular on fostering flexible and collaborative manufacturing systems together with various services (for example, in the areas of technological research, labor training, venture capital provision, and so on) that enhance the region's overall stock of external economies. I conclude by suggesting that there are significant parallels between the growth of the aircraft industry in Southern California before World War 2, and the development of the electric vehicle industry in the region today.

In this paper the potential for electric vehicle production and the likely economic impacts of developing an electric vehicle industry in Los Angeles are examined. An historical overview of the automobile industry in Los Angeles suggests that a fully fledged automobile complex was never really developed. Rather, automotive firms have focused on the production of components for a variety of aftermarket and specialized uses. The small size of most auto firms and their custom orientation bodes well for the nascent electric vehicle industry. The region's industrial base, with the diverse range of products and labor skills offered, is well equipped to meet the needs of electric vehicle producers. After specifying a generic electric vehicle technology, input-output analysis is used to examine the employment effects of shifting production from conventional automobile technology to electric vehicles.

In the United States, industrial pollution and hazards are analyzed only after specific plans for new facilities are proposed. The environmental impacts of new projects are rarely evaluated and compared with existing facilities. In this paper I argue that industrial development and environmental decisions must be closely linked. A framework for characterizing and assessing the environmental impacts of various stages in the life cycle of consumer products is proposed. I use this framework to examine the environmental costs of electric vehicle production in Southern California. Special attention is given to spatial variations of hazards within individual regions and the need to incorporate clean technologies in the design of manufacturing processes.

The Southern California economy is at a crossroads. The end of the Cold War has meant significant reductions in defense investment and the downsizing of the region's aerospace-electronics industrial complex. Although the region is technology rich, it lacks the institutional support and corporate know-how necessary to develop new markets, new industrial relations, and new production systems. To remedy these failings, a rare mix of institution building and policy initiatives is tending to cohere around advanced-ground-transportation technologies and in particular the development of an electric vehicle industry. In this paper we examine federal, state, and local policy efforts to develop an electric vehicle industrial complex in Southern California.

In this paper I question the likely development trajectory of electric vehicle (EV) manufacture and related advanced-transportation systems in Southern California. The large base of labor skills, technical expertise, and research and development organizations that are found in the region in the aerospace, electronics, and metalworking industries provide a solid foundation for the EV industry. These sectors also provide a legacy of industrial organization that is oriented more towards flexible production than mass production. The technological immaturity of the EV and the uncertain market it faces, combined with the existing industrial atmosphere in Southern California, suggest that early production of EVs will be organized flexibly in an industrial district uniting firms and technologies in the production of components for an advanced ground-transportation industry.

The restructuring of local government finance in Britain is increasingly being viewed as part and parcel of a broader transformation in the capacity for local welfare provision and scope of local governance. The ways in which local authority budgetary processes and strategies have been affected by these changes are examined. It is suggested that, despite strong elements of continuity, significant new developments in local budgeting behaviour are emerging. However, such changes are not universal. The paper incorporates a comparative case study analysis of two local authorities in central southern England in order to illustrate the geographically uneven way in which local circumstances have mediated the experiences of and reactions to increasing fiscal austerity.

In analogy to the exact distribution of the Durbin—Watson d statistic for serial autocorrelation of regression residuals, the exact small sample distribution of Moran's I statistic (or alternatively Geary's c) can be derived. Use of algebraic results by Koerts and Abrahamse and theoretical results by Imhof, allows the authors to determine by numerical integration the exact distribution function of Moran's I for normally distributed variables. For the case in which the explanatory variables have been neglected, an upper and a lower bound can be given within which the exact distribution of Moran's I for regression residuals will lie. Furthermore, the proposed methodology is flexible enough to investigate related topics such as the characteristics of the exact distribution for distinct spatial structures as well as their different specifications, the exact power function under different spatial autocorrelation levels, and the distribution of Moran's I for nonnormal random variables.

In this paper some of the issues raised in researching the ‘problematic’ of rural life-styles are discussed. It is argued that traditional normative approaches to the study of deprivation and poverty need to be supplemented by an understanding of varying social and cultural constructions of reality, community, living standards, and welfare. The importance of such social and cultural constructs is illustrated in a discussion of the discursive transformation of previous codes, symbols, and concepts of welfare and poverty during the Thatcher and Reagan eras in Britain and the USA, respectively. In a series of contested transformations, the relationship between individual, society, and state in the provision and receipt of welfare has been redefined. Moreover, it is suggested that there are important spatial differences between the urban and the rural within this discursive context, with the urban construction of ‘underclass’ contrasting with rural constructions of ‘idyll’, the latter suggesting codes and symbols of self-help which negate the need for state intervention in welfare.