Creative communities and the cultural economy — Insadong,chaebol urbanism and the local state in Seoul

Creative communities that arise in a cultural milieu of place-based social relationships are being targeted for cultural economy strategies to revitalize cities in Asia. The dominance of a small number of family owned conglomerates, chaebol, in the economy and politics of South Korea represents an extreme case of the corporatization of citymaking that drives cultural economy policies. The experience of the historic district of Insadong, Seoul, illustrates the resulting loss of vernacular heritage, gentrification and commodification of creative community life-spaces under the cultural economy banner. At the same time, democratization and the rise of civil society have provided openings for grassroots organizations to seek to protect and support local cultural spaces as sites for creative engagements in urban life. Recent success of grassroots mobilizations in countering corporatization by electing an activist as mayor of Seoul points to the need to give greater attention to role of the local state in sustaining creative communities.     

Determinants of state diesel fuel excise tax rates: the political economy of fuel taxation in the United States

Ever-escalating gasoline and diesel fuel prices in the United States (US) are prompting some states to temporarily suspend the collections of gasoline, and in fewer instances, diesel fuel, taxes. The focus of this paper is on the determinants of US state excise taxes levied specifically on diesel fuel. Among other things, we find the freight trucking industry’s contribution to total state employment is a highly significant determinant of a state’s diesel tax rate, consistently suggesting that the greater this contribution, the lower the tax rate, ceteris paribus. We find little evidence that the degree of freight transportation usage on state highways impacts diesel tax rates. These two findings taken together suggest that state legislators, when determining the diesel tax rate, exhibit behavior consistent with Stigler’s (Bell J Econ Manag Sci 2: 3–21, 1971) economic or positive theory of regulation. Moreover, state law makers appear less concerned over the impact that heavy freight transportation has on highway infrastructure, which appears to be at odds with the public interest or normative theory of regulation as articulated by Posner (Bell J Econ Manag Sci 4: 335–358, 1974).     

The political economy of housing policy in Norway

By comparative standards, Norwegian housing policy has been successful when viewed from principles of choice, economy, rates of production, and the social use of housing as a (limited) equaliser. This article discusses the reasons for the success, with particular focus upon the saving‐investment foundation of policy and the ways housing credit and housing allowances have been used to express social idealism. As a study of political economy, this article draws upon interdisciplinary social science in economics, politics, history, and social administration. Cause and reason is given for the post‐1973 impacts of stagflation upon the Norwegian housing system, and we are able to draw conclusions in which we specify useful housing theory as a set of operating guidelines.     

The political economy of renewable energy policies in Germany and the EU

In this paper, we employ a public choice perspective to analyze the development of policies for renewable energy sources (RES) in the EU in general and in Germany more specifically. In doing so, we explain the main characteristics of current RES policies by reference to the self-interest driven motivations of voters, stakeholders and political actors. One important puzzle, which we address, is the following: How could effective RES-policies be introduced against the political opposition of fossil-fuel interest groups in the past? Via analyzing the German example in more detail, we show how over time a self-reinforcing interplay of ideological and financial RES support has emerged. Moreover, we argue that observed specific design choices for RES policies in Germany, such as largely riskless remuneration schemes and high degrees of technology differentiation, as well as decentralized decision-making across EU Member States, can be traced back to politicians' need to balance a variety of partly opposing interests. A major benefit of the presented analysis is that it provides a realistic assessment of the challenges for RES policy reform – any reform effort critically depends on its ability to balance stakeholder interests.     

建设现代企业 服务地方经济

从一个市场经济大潮中的落伍企业,到沈阳市经济发展和城市基础设施建设的重要支撑力量,沈阳市煤气总公司用短短的几年时间,就完成了这样的跨越。     

Martin Wagner in America: planning and the political economy of capitalist urbanization

Martin Wagner’s contribution to planning thought and management during the Weimar Republic is widely known, but he recedes into obscurity afterwards. However, he maintained a tenacious intellectual activity in his American exile, conducting teaching-oriented research as Associate Professor of Planning at Harvard Graduate School of Design and prolonging these explorations until his passing in 1957. Working with students and other colleagues – most prominently Walter Gropius – Wagner devised comprehensive proposals for an alternative regional urbanization pattern that combined radical city-core renewal for conspicuous services and high-end residence with a massive suburbanization of middle- and working-class housing and industrial activities. This scheme exacerbated his earlier conceptions and simultaneously incorporated new inflections stemming from a critical engagement with contemporary debates in the US, which allow a better understanding of his German period and the transatlantic transfer of planning ideologies. At Harvard, Wagner reinforced the political-economic perspective of his work, following a contradictory imperative to secure the implementation of proposals by assimilating capital’s spatiality in design strategies. Taking the dynamics of profit-oriented urbanization to their logical conclusion, the American Wagner envisioned a dark albeit consistent ‘diagram’ of the potential reach of a stark capitalist approach to territorial restructuring, prefiguring major urban shifts in subsequent decades.     

芝加哥中国城的规划问题和战略性建议

介绍了芝加哥中国城的基本情况,针对其发展过程中存在的问题进行了分析,从区位优势和交通系统、人口数量、中国文化传承等方面,提出了战略性的规划实施建议,从而使芝加哥中国城实现可持续发展。     

在区域经济发展框架中规划小城镇

任何一个城镇的形成和发展都不能孤立于其区域之外,需要有区域社会经济发展的支撑,小城镇也不例外。一方面,小城镇处于由农村形态向城市形态转化的阶段,其建设和发展过程以聚集为基本特征,难以离开区域社会经济发展这个基础。另一方面,小城镇一般是其周围农村地区的政治经济和文化中心,随着小城镇的逐步发     

浅议市场经济条件下的高校政治辅导员工作

本文从市场经济条件下高校政治辅导员工作的重点、方法、提高辅导员自身素质等方面提出了相关思考。     

关于冰蓄冷空调的几点浅见

指出影响冰蓄冷经济性的主要因素包括蓄冷量比例、蓄冰装置的形式、供水和送风温度等，提供了几个经济性比较方案，认为在冰蓄冷空调系统设计中应注意合理确定蓄冷比例，尽量采用低温送风，保证合理和高精度的控制管理。建议加强宣传和政策引导，通过工程实例和产品开发等手段促进冰蓄冷空调的应用。     

Planning for Uncertainty: The Case of local Disaster Planning

Adoption of good disaster preparedness practices (practices) can mitigate recurrent problems in community disaster management. However, there are obstacles to adoption of such practices; these obstacles include lack of experience with disasters (experience) and lack of an effective planning process (planning). Since the uncertainty that results from insufficient experience is a given, while planning reflects an organizational choice, this study investigates whether effective planning compensates for lack of experience in promoting the adoption of good practices. Analyses of survey data reveal that jurisdictions with the most experience tend to have effective planning and to have adopted good practices. Among jurisdictions with little experience, those with effective planning are significantly more likely to have adopted good practices than those without it. Process-oriented planning activities, such as multidisciplinary simulations and task forces, are more effective than technical activities, such as writing standard procedures. Public agencies can therefore undertake planning activities that increase opportunities to prepare effectively for uncertain future events.     

Changes in the political economy of Vietnam and their impacts on the built environment of Hanoi

The most important changes in the political economy of Vietnam began with the Doi Moi (Renovation) reforms of 1986. The changes in the national economic system have been reflected almost immediately in urban development patterns, where the diversification of capital investment (especially the influx of foreign direct investment), the creation of a property market (dealing with land use rights), and the commercialization of the housing sector have created significant changes, while the planning system has not been sufficiently adapted to the new political reality. This article shows how the changes in the national policy framework have transformed the urban development patterns of Hanoi. Industrial development in the rural fringe areas, the new dynamics of the private housing sector, and the commercial redevelopment of the inner city are described and quantified. While the formerly rigid command-and-control system of urban management has already been simplified to some extent, inappropriate bureaucratic attitudes persist. This has resulted in a lack of authority, communication, and competency, while a thriving informal sector of urban development has emerged. In conclusion, there is an urgent need for building new forms of public involvement to ensure social equity goals and to avoid market distortions. The policy reforms at the national level need to be mirrored by a more capable urban management system.     

校园环境的形态与感染力——知识经济时代大学校园规划

本文主要论述知识经济时代大学校园规划的新理念。空间的感染力将有助于知识的创新与共享，有助于文化的体验，有助于价值观的倡导。环境与约束条件之间在形式、情态与结构方面的对应是作者提出的三种对策。     

Planning of an environmental-impact statement: a scientific and political dilemma

The consistent and predictable progression of larger and more complex projects is often disrupted by conflicts of interests. Major confrontations during the realization of a project can obstruct the economic allocation of resources, and push a well managed project into a state of being ‘thrown-together’ and reactive. Therefore, the management of the unmanageable, i.e. the conflict of interests, requires more than just good management tools. The paper describes different aspects of ‘dialogue management’, and illustrates this by the planning of an environmental-impact statement (EIS).The planning of larger projects that require an EIS is not a major planning problem, because the procedure of creating an EIS is well defined by legal regulations. Nevertheless, as the goal of a well prepared EIS is that of winning a broad acceptance for the project, the reliable management of an EIS includes the planning of dialogue and the understanding of the counterparts involved. Under these circumstances, an unusual project-management strategy is required that is based on a philosophical understanding of human intentions, reactions and interests. The strategy must take into account the fact that the establishment of opinions follows rules that are different from those of normal working operations.     

The student expenditure impact of a university on the local economy

This article focuses on the problem of estimating student expenditures in university economic impact studies. Student spending patterns are characterized by a large variance and thus statistical estimation of population expenditures are often imprecise. Most of the literature on the economic impact of a university has not treated the estimation of student spending properly. Conceptually the error introduced at this point in an impact study could lead to either over or under-estimation of student spending. Existing evidence suggests that the former is most likely.In this note the appropriate statistical concepts are reviewed and incorporated into a university impact model. Empirical evidence is presented to illustrate the magnitude of the error introduced by failing to properly specify a sampling design.The research on which this paper is based was supported in part by a grant from the University of Tulsa Faculty Research Program. The author is indebted to Professor Richard Raymond of Kent State University for his very helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.     

山岳风景名胜区规划管理应注意的问题

作者阐述了山岳风景名胜区规划管理工作注意的几个问题,从规划的选址、建筑方案的审查、临时设施管理及建立健全管理法规、依法治山等方面介绍了黄山风景名胜区在规划管理工作上的做法。     

Rethinking cities in the Middle East: political economy,planning, and the lived space

Urbanisation is an economic, political, and socio-cultural complexity, and so is its interaction with cityscapes. However, this truism rarely finds an expression in academic research. It is obvious that economic transitions would determine the quality and volume of the built environment. Municipal and state decision making further shape the nature of urban spaces, and socio-cultural transformations influence perceived notions of the lived space and, in turn, reshape the physical landscape itself. Nevertheless, research on cities in the Middle East and elsewhere remains fairly limited in scope, with little cross-discipline ‘conversation’ among scholars in different fields which attempts to account for such complexity. This is all the more surprising as life in cities has become, over the past half century or so, the most significant form of human collective dwelling; in the Middle East over half the population currently lives in urban settings and the numbers are forecast to grow in the future.1 1. The authors thank Kerem Oktem and Kobi Peled for their insightful comments on an earlier version of this article.

This review article is the result of a dialogue between an architect and an economic historian in response to the foregoing. We have united in an attempt to offer a more integrative approach to Middle East urbanism, accounting for the interactions of the political economy of this region, planning, and the lived space. The key questions on which we focus are why and how do state transformation and economic structural change impact upon urban space. In seeking the answers we examine the long-term trajectory of cities as they went through the first period of globalisation under imperial intervention and/or direct colonial rule; gradually came under independent, inward-looking, national regimes; and presently experience the second wave of globalisation and the opening of local economies to international markets. Such a narrative explores common themes in the historical trajectories of cities' lives.

Our long-term, geographically extensive overview (Map 1) is bound to miss some specific developments that have made a significant impact on the transformations of cities in the region; our aim is not to totalise Middle East experiences and reduce a variety of narratives to a simplistic linear model of change. Even more so, our study of the Middle East is mostly focused on Egypt, the Asian Arab countries (the mashraq), Israel/Palestine, and Turkey, the geographical unit which roughly corresponded with the Ottoman Empire, the last state to control the Middle East before the age of nations. We acknowledge that any bird's eye view perspective is bound to do some injustice to historically specific contexts, and city transitions that occurred in such contexts. We would welcome any future work that brings our suggestion here, namely to integrate political economy with the study of urban development and city life, to bear on more specific research on urbanism in the Middle East.