Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space

Economic geography is a discipline encompassing diverse scopes and approaches. As such, it is not easy to achieve well-founded dialogues between economic geographers from different countries, though such dialogues are necessary for establishing a well-developed platform of discussion. The authors attempt to help scholars from other countries understand the development of economic geography in China by showing how such development has been affected by the country's institutional and economic conditions. They first introduce the context in which economic geography has developed in China and discuss changes in the definition of economic geography in the country. They then examine post-1949 development of economic geography in China in terms of research orientations or tasks, funding, and organization. The authors argue that the development of economic geography is embedded in a broad socioeconomic and institutional context and that this context is key to understanding the development of economic geography in different countries.

In this paper I explore the key elements of the mode of regulation operating at the urban scale in Toronto's postwar period to learn what it was that inspired an entire generation of scholars to call Toronto the ‘city that works' in this period. Despite the significant amount of literature discussing the general character of regulation operating at the city-region scale in the Fordist or managerial period of urban development, it is argued that surprisingly little empirical research has actually documented what allegedly made these Fordist metropolitan regions ‘work‘. Drawing on archival research in addition to insights from Canadian applied regulation theory and from an analysis of Canada's changing fiscal federalism, I argue that, although Toronto did develop within the context of a Fordist regime of accumulation, the particular elements of the mode of regulation it developed at the urban scale were distinctive and important in providing the conditions underlying the economic success of the region. Toronto may have benefited disproportionately from national regulatory policies. However, its economic dynamism also constituted one of the cornerstones of the nation's economic and social viability. Further, its more localized regulatory structures and social context had a specific institutional and cultural richness, which, in concert with its highly developed economic structure, served to stave off many of the crisis tendencies being felt by other industrial regions in the 1970s and 1980s. One of the principal and unique institutional innovations was the Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto (’Metro'), which can be regarded as a key (although hitherto underemphasized) component of the Canadian Fordist regime of accumulation. More than just a conduit through which nationally driven Keynesian welfare programs were delivered, Metro was also an innovator of unique urban-based postwar development policies. I conclude by demonstrating what this story of postwar Toronto can tell us more generally about urban government and governance under Fordism, and about the managerial paradigm and the regulation approach.

Within the debate about positive effects of foreign multinational branch plants on host regions in less developed countries questions of technological learning and upgrading rank at the top. This paper describes forces and mechanisms which, under favourable conditions, promote dissemination of know-how through the dynamics of regional cycles of learning. Enriching earlier insights into the local embedding of subsidiaries and processes of cumulative causation, it emphasises why and how agglom-erating branches of globally operating technology companies engage in upgrading their less developed locality: effects are triggered by a combination of increasing regional labour-cost pressure and corresponding reactions of firms which relate to their branch activities and affect the institutional framework. Two models of regional cycles of learning are introduced which depict crucial distinctions between spatial clusters of technology firms with and without foreign affiliates. Empirical evidence is provided by comparing two technology regions in developing Asia: Bangalore, India, and Bandung, Indonesia. Both are well endowed with universities, research institutions, and firms in technology sectors, but differ with regard to the presence of foreign firms, and accordingly, display divergent qualitative developments.

In this paper we analyse the reasonings that people deploy in explaining and rationalising their behaviour in relation to the collective environmental and health-risk problem of urban air quality. We draw on an empirical study of public perceptions of air pollution to identify a range of ‘vocabularies of motive’ or discourses that serve to move responsibility to act away from the individual and onto other groups. We consider how far each of these ‘vocabularies' can be interpreted as a mode of blaming, and draw conclusions linking our analysis to wider relational and moral tensions. Our analysis suggests that blame, although conceptually powerful, falters under empirical scrutiny. On this basis we argue for a more sensitive reading of responsibility discourses in academic debate and enquiry. Conclusions and policy implications are developed, linking our interpretation to the (confrontation of) wider relational and moral tensions, which characterise collective-risk situations.

The hypothesis has been formulated that spatial clustering of transport line infrastructures might generate higher risks in terms of higher probability of accidents and/or more severe consequences of accidents. The risk increase is assumed to be the result of interference between transport flows. No systematic research has been performed so far to test this hypothesis. This paper therefore presents the results of an empirical study on this subject based on accident data from the Netherlands. It is concluded that clustering of infrastructures has not caused a higher probability of accidents in the past. However, impacts of accidents in terms of the number of casualties are significantly more severe. This generates new discussions on the spatial planning of infrastructures on the one hand and the organisation of emergency response capabilities on the other.

Residential development in fire-prone wildlands is occurring at an unprecedented rate. Community-based evacuation planning in many areas is an emerging need. In this paper we present a method for using microscopic traffic simulation to develop and test neighborhood evacuation plans in the urban–wildland interface. The method allows an analyst to map the subneighborhood variation in household evacuation travel times under various scenarios. A custom scenario generator manages household trip generation, departure timing, and destination choice. Traffic simulation, route choice, and dynamic visualization are handled by a commercial system. We present a case study for a controversial fire-prone canyon community east of Salt Lake City, Utah. GIS was used to map the spatial effects of a proposed second access road on household evacuation times. Our results indicate that the second road will reduce some household travel times much more than others, but all evacuation travel times will become more consistent.

This paper examines the Australasian breakfast cereal commodity chain and the processes of value creation in the industry. The paper has two points of entry to the commodity chain; first, a productionist perspective aimed at revealing how the material commodity is constituted, and, second, a consumptionist viewpoint, intended to show the construction of symbolic elements of the commodity. The value of the breakfast cereal commodity includes both its utility (food) value, and the semiotic and moral narratives associated with it—its symbolic value. To maintain these value dimensions the breakfast cereal companies have fashioned relationships with other organisations to legitimise prod-ucts in the eyes of the consumers. Both governmental and nongovernmental organisations are drawn into the commodity chain, and along with consumers, they actively participate in the recreation and redescription of the commodity's value. Through adhering to the analytical strategy of delineating both production and consumption dimensions the case study was able to establish the multiple layering of meanings that are associated with breakfast cereals—meanings that continue to be aligned with the industry's founding principles.