Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space

In this paper we explore the practice of interdisciplinarity by examining how the UK research councils addressed the problem of the sustainable city during the 1990s. In developing their research programmes, the councils recognised that the problems of the sustainable city transcended conventional disciplinary boundaries and that an interdisciplinary approach was needed. In practice, however, initially radical proposals to research the city as a complex combination of science and technology and society contracted into more cognate collaborations that emphasised either science or technology or society, with the result that interdisciplinarity came to be located within research councils rather than between them. This, in turn, led to the development of a third kind of interdisciplinarity as the responsibility for making the connections between the research programmes was outsourced to the user communities—the local authorities. Unfortunately, local authorities struggled to find the resources to conduct this work so that the radical interdisciplinarity recommended at the start of the decade remained unaccomplished at the end. In describing these events we emphasise roles of paradigms and epistemic cultures in shaping research approaches and the complications they raise for the triangulation between approaches that is assumed in the idea of interdisciplinarity. We do not wish to be entirely negative, however, and conclude by suggesting some ways in which the quality and success of this much-needed interdisciplinary work could be increased.

In the quest for sustainable development, numerous examples of ‘best practice’ have been created and circulated in national and international arenas. Yet despite the vast array of examples, demonstration projects, case studies, and the like, little is known about the ways in which best practices are produced and used, and their role in processes of policymaking. Focusing on best practice for urban sustainability, the author argues that, rather than conceptualising its role and impact in terms of policy transfer or lesson drawing, the creation, dissemination, and use of best practice can be better understood as a discursive process, in which not only is new knowledge created about a policy problem, but the nature and interpretation of the policy problem itself are challenged and reframed. Drawing on insights from concepts of governmentality, the author argues that best practices are at once a political rationality and a governmental technology through which the policy problem of urban sustainability is framed and defined. Illustrations of the practice of best practice show how contradictions emerge between claims for general applicability and the need for policy actors to understand the contingencies of the process of urban sustainability, in order to enrol it for their own struggles over sustainability. The local stickiness of best practices points to the very real struggles that the rationalities of urban sustainability have in competing with other governmentalities which seek to shape urban futures.

The authors draw upon survey evidence of expert conceptualisations of the value of public knowledge in environmental decisionmaking. In the context of local air quality management in particular, they consider how experts understand the potential benefits of technological citizenship, and what status they accord to lay knowledge relative to their own roles. Evidence suggests a continuing expert-deficit model of lay knowledge, with suspicions that the public misunderstand environmental issues. Although the need for public ‘buy-in’ to the solutions to problems such as air pollution is supported, this does not translate to a more proactive engagement of lay knowledge in the assessment of such issues. Experts seem to be personally challenged by such notions. The authors discuss the need for a cultural shift in expert understanding of the value of lay knowledge, supported by a move away from an oversimplification of the need for, and value of, public participation.

In this paper we examine the role of nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) in debates about environmental science and knowledge, using empirical evidence from in-depth interviews with a range of NGOs involved in the waste debate in the United Kingdom. We discuss theoretical issues of scientific boundary-work and the construction of expertise and socially distributed knowledge, and then apply these to our empirical evidence. Our conclusions are that NGOs continue to subscribe to the notion of the preeminent authority of science in environmental debates, but also work partly in a more diverse, highly networked world of knowledge production which requires them to be pragmatic and versatile in how they legitimate knowledge from various sources. Hence, scientific knowledge is highly contingent in its authority, and dependent upon continual (re)negotiation.

In this paper we examine, in two separate analyses, actual and planned residential moves. Although we now have robust models and substantive empirical analysis of residential mobility, especially of the role of housing consumption and the variables that trigger residential moves, we are less clear about how the model applies to minority households and in diverse ethnic settings. We use data from the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Study—a longitudinal study of mobility and neighborhood change in the Los Angeles region—to contrast the mobility outcomes for white and Latino households. In a separate analysis we examine planned mobility and extend the analysis of the role of neighborhood variables in explaining expected mobility. Through the incorporation of measures of neighborhood satisfaction and dissatisfaction we find, as hypothesized, that low levels of satisfaction and whether or not the neighborhood is perceived as ‘close-knit’ are modest predictors of the likelihood of future moves. However, the additive effect of neighborhood variables on intentions, beyond the structural effects of age and housing needs, is quite small.

In this paper I examine older people's attachment to place in rural Wales. The sample includes 406 people aged 70 years and over living in diverse rural communities of North Wales. Respondents were asked to divulge the main reason for wanting to stay in their present community. 522 individual verbatim statements were examined and seven key areas of attachment to place were identified: general locational satisfaction, historical perspective, aesthetic and emotional components of location, social support, social integration, appropriateness of the environment, and relocation constraints. Each of these areas is explored with reference to different theoretical perspectives. I conclude that the multifaceted nature of place attachment requires a multidisciplinary approach to the study of people and their environments. A four-domain conceptual scheme of attachment to place is developed that takes into account the interrelationship between physical, social, temporal, and psychological factors. These domains of place attachment are closely intertwined, and strongly related to each other.

Rising housing costs and lack of affordable housing in London are affecting labour recruitment and retention, particularly in the public sector—the ‘key-worker problem’ of recent government statements. But housing and labour-market problems are not confined to London. In this paper we highlight the extent and nature of affordability, recruitment, and retention problems in a high-cost location outside the capital: Surrey in South East England. We suggest that changes towards a more professional and managerial workforce have impacted on housing demand and hence prices. Planning and physical constraints have contributed to housing shortages and exacerbated rising housing costs. High housing costs are linked to recruitment and retention difficulties not only for public-sector employers but also for certain types of private-sector employers in Surrey. This raises problems for the sustainability of the local economy. Measures introduced to address these difficulties are helping ‘key workers’ to access housing locally, but this simply bids up house prices rather than increasing the overall supply of housing that is affordable.

A major challenge for any decentralizing regime is to develop more inclusive and participatory decisionmaking processes and to be responsive to conflicting demands from diverse constituencies while maintaining its governing capacity. Using Taiwan's experience in managing groundwater overextraction and land subsidence in its coastal areas, in this paper we demonstrate how democratization at its early stages may create added difficulties for the political system to face when trying to solve environmental problems. Yet in the long run, democratization may lead to an increase in participative and integrative governing capacities, bringing about more effective and equitable solutions to complex environmental problems.

Clear-cut definitions of strategic spatial planning are rather exceptional. Therefore in this paper I use building blocks from literature (planning and business) and my experience in practice to construct a workable normative definition of the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of strategic spatial planning. Five main characteristics (selective, relational annex inclusive, integrative, visioning, and action orientated) that constitute the hard core of the ‘strategic’ in the normative view are confronted, in a first broad scan, with nine so-called strategic plans from different planning traditions in Europe (Italy, France, Spain, the Czech Republic, Belgium, and the Netherlands) and in Australia (Perth). The confrontation highlights some hesitant shifts towards the normative view but also makes it clear that there is still a long way to go.

The regional-growth literature emphasises the importance of positive network externalities as determinants of the long-run competitiveness of region, highlighting their role in reducing spatial transaction costs and facilitating collective learning and innovation. In this paper we contribute to this literature by presenting new evidence from a firm-based survey within three Turkish industrial centres about the causes of differentiated network activity. Using multivariate analysis, we show that locational rather than sectoral differences explain local-linkage intensities, but this is not the case for global links. Second, there is an important relationship between firm size and local-linkage and global-linkage densities; the density of local networks decreases with increasing firm size, whereas the density of global networks increases with firm size. Third, there is a positive relation between globalnetwork density and firm productivity. We argue that the comparative and quantitative analysis we employ is a useful adjunct to case-study analysis, which could help avoid misconceptions and lead to a more realistic theory.