Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space

This paper deploys several propositions from Amin and Thrift's recent theoretical work to map emerging geographies of the postapartheid city. Using Cape Town as a case study, the focus is on urban planning and informal sector retailing. After a discussion of the informal food sector, three parameters of urban space that are often apprehended separately are held together: an imagined geography of planning for the efficient and postapartheid city (‘dreams’); a material geography of marketplaces for the developmental transformation of informal retailing (‘bricks’); and a socioeconomic geography of what local officials call “pre-entrepreneurs” (‘bodies’). The author argues that these three geographical features of the postapartheid city are of an emerging and mutually dependent piece; that is to say, they are cocreating each other across scales and domains of reality. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the broader implications for understanding the prospects of the postapartheid city.

The analysis and discussion of local labour markets as social outcomes of local structures and processes are now well established in the literature. However, much of the work has focused on the rich world and/or on modern activities. This paper examines how traditional labour regimes in rural areas of two poor(er) countries, Thailand and the Lao PDR, are changing as their respective local and nonlocal economies evolve. The paper highlights the importance of a historical perspective in any interpretation of the present and considers the remnant role of the ‘moral’ economy in structuring labour relations. Consideration is also given to the complex ways in which the modern and the traditional interrelate and the role of cultural change in profoundly reworking local labour practices. Building on this, the paper addresses the degree to which the ‘social’ in labour markets is being fundamentally reworked as transition proceeds.

For over two decades British public policy has been fuelled by the notion that markets are the most effective way to accumulate and distribute resources. Such markets are driven by price, respond to ability to pay, and are not, for the most part, seen as having a welfare role. Using the example of housing, and drawing on lay experiences of ill health, the authors suggest that British households do, nevertheless, look to markets (in this example, to owner-occupation) to meet some welfare needs. Households value, in particular, the qualities of flexibility and security which they associate with homeownership and which promise both practical and psychosocial gains. However, there is a notable gap between what people aspire to and what they can achieve. This arises not because markets cannot care but because, so far, there has not been sufficient political imagination to make them do so.

In this paper I argue that a neo-Gramscian strategic relational approach (SRA) offers the relational and constructivist perspectives necessary to enhance our concrete and theoretical understandings of urban governance. Moreover, I argue for the utility of using discourse as a productive entry point for neo-Gramscian analysis. Taking a discursive approach to a case study of the governance of ‘global Sydney’ since the mid-1990s, I explore how engaging a neo-Gramscian SRA can connect theoretically informed explanation of the practical accomplishment of urban governance to its broader politico-economic embeddedness and to the territoriality of the state. I explore how the activation of Sydney's governance via the hegemonic project of producing the ‘competitive city’ is shaping a contingent and scaled state form—with a specific (and scaled) institutional form, regime of representation, and range of interventions. Additionally, I consider how counterhegemonic claims and currents shape this process. The relational and constructivist perspectives of the neo-Gramscian SRA ensure that, at all times, urban governance is understood both as a multiscalar production and as a political construction. The result of neo-Gramscian analysis, then, is more theoretically informed and theoretically informative studies of the situated practice of urban governance.

Recent changes in the coal mining industry of Appalachian Kentucky have entailed a widespread economic restructuring with profound effects on the character of the social relations that constitute place. As the traditionally male-dominated mining industry has seen a reduction in employment, there has been a parallel rise in service sector employment, in which women dominate many jobs. Drawing on in-depth interviews with fourteen women living in one coalfield community, we discuss how this economic restructuring has produced a series of struggles between men and women over appropriate gender roles relating to waged work and household work. We also show how these gender struggles—which we suggest are most evident in the microsites of the body and the household—influence the character of networks of social relations at the scale of the locality and, therefore, have an important impact on the production of place and scale. This case study contributes to ongoing discussions of the social production of place and the politics that surround this process. It draws on a feminist theoretical framework to argue that understandings of the production of place cannot disregard the role social relations shaped at the microscale play in shaping place and that our understandings of the politics of place and scale must include the gendered struggles of everyday life.

Within Europe and North America the integration of environmental concerns into agriculture has become a domain almost exclusively defined by public policy. In this paper it is contended that we are currently witnessing a new direction in attempts to reconcile agricultural production and environmental protection, in which the market is playing an increasingly important role. The paper takes as its focus the rapidly expanding number of what are termed ‘market-oriented initiatives for environmentally sustainable food production’ (MOIs), in which the incentive for food producers to manage the environment positively comes directly through the market. The number of MOIs, in both Europe and North America, has proliferated recently, although some have been established for many years. However, both older and newer forms of these MOIs appear to be the focus of a new rural development, food quality, and sustainable farming agenda. In an attempt to make a contribution to this emergent debate, this paper sets out to address the extent to which these MOIs are capable of contributing to the development of more environmentally sustainable food production. In this paper we consider the drivers of this new approach, review the various types of MOI that are emerging in both Europe and North America, and examine the different approaches to environmental management that MOIs adopt. The paper also offers a reflection upon the potential contribution of MOIs to the delivery of environmental goods in food production and the implications of this for public sector approaches.

Geographic information systems (GIS) offer attractive tools for modelling recreational behaviour. In this paper GIS is combined with a discrete choice modelling approach to investigate the importance of landscape attributes for determining forest recreational choices. A new large Danish national dataset (28 947 recreational trips) is used in conjunction with an area information system and information on other site attributes to estimate a recreational choice model. A wide set of landscape characteristics influencing recreational choice is identified. These are the size of the forest patch and adjacency or distance to other land-cover types. The area of the forest patch was found to have a positive marginally declining effect. Adjacency to other seminatural areas was found to have a positive effect. The results show that the parameter estimates depend critically on the choice-set specification and that the size of the choice set needs to be considerably larger than previous research suggests.

This paper anticipates the release of a series of new household classifications as part of the standard output from the 2001 UK Census. It contains essential background information for census users interested in using these classifications. In addition to describing the classifications, we outline the background to the classifications, and the consultation undertaken to ensure that each classification reflects real user demand.

This paper suggests a new stated adaptation response format to measure bifurcation points in choice behavior. The method assumes that individuals attach bifurcation points to critical attributes beyond which they change their behavior. Fibonacci numbers are used to identify these bifurcation points efficiently. The resulting data are analyzed using hazard models. The suggested new methodology is illustrated for a sample of 335 travellers who were about to travel by train from Hong Kong to Guangzhou. Respondents were asked to state whether they would retain the choice of train if the travel cost by train were increased by certain amounts, varied according to the Fibonacci principle. Experience with the implementation of the suggested methodology showed that most respondents found the experiment quite interesting. We were able to identify successfully the bifurcation point for all respondents who agreed to participate in the exercise. It took each respondent only a few minutes. The method was thus proved to be effective and efficient. By and large, the estimated coefficients seem consistent with findings elsewhere and in the anticipated direction. This suggests that the data collected by the proposed methodology have face validity.