Most recent papers:

• Place Image Formation and Cross‐Border Shopping: German Shoppers in the Polish Bazaar in Słubice.
  Bianca B. Szytniewski, Bas Spierings.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. September 29, 2017
  This study focuses on differences in place image formation between cross‐border shoppers who visit the bazaar in the Polish part of the border‐crossing town of Frankfurt–Oder/Słubice. By examining the German–Polish border context and the historical and regional particularities of this shopping destination, our qualitative analysis reveals differences in place image formation between two groups of German border crossers: locals from Frankfurt–Oder and visitors from other parts of the borderland. It turns out that the locals regarded the border‐crossing town as part of daily life and had lost interest in the bazaar, while cross‐border shoppers from further afield visited the bazaar regularly, were motivated by leisure, and assessed the bazaar more positively. These differences in place image formation between the two groups resulted from differences in mind‐set and motivation, influencing not only the knowledge and experiences of the border crossers, but also the likelihood of visiting this specific shopping destination again.

  September 29, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12283   open full text
• Contextual Effects on Crowding Perception: An Analysis of Antwerp and Amsterdam.
  Bart Neuts, Dominique Vanneste.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. September 29, 2017
  Crowding studies have a long history in urban geography and environmental psychology, although results are mixed at best. While crowding is found to influence residential quality and visitor experience and crowding perception models show some agreement on influential determinants, research is typically limited to a single setting, therefore minimising generalisability. To account for contextual effects, this paper tested a crowding perception model in two study areas: Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and Antwerp, Belgium. The results confirm that while most variables from earlier studies are significant, their effect on crowding perception depends largely on environmental context, with elements such as street layout, primary functionality of the area, and local culture affecting strength and direction of the relationship. The study reveals the importance of a case based approach to crowding perception, while demonstrating the overall applicability of the methodology and the possibilities of comparative analyses to suggest policy recommendations for specific areas.

  September 29, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12284   open full text
• The Electoral Geography of the Left in Western Europe Since 1945: Permanencies and Changes.
  Gilles Van Hamme, Christian Vandermotten, Pablo Medina Lockhart.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. September 15, 2017
  This paper interrogates the stability of relative geographical patterns of electoral results in Europe since World War II in a context of the dramatic socio‐economic changes and the deep transformations of the European geography. To do so, we propose a theoretical model in which regional political orientations along the Left vs. Right cleavage dates back to the end of the nineteenth century or even before, related to the land tenure, the familial structure, the time of the industrial take off or the impact of religion. Specifically, we show that the current electoral map is still partly related to such old structures, long after they vanish. To explain this hysteresis, we refer to the role of social networks and institutions embedded in places, allowing the transmission of electoral behaviour from one generation to the other. However, the West European electoral map has not been frozen, and, in the last part of the paper, we explain how major political and socio‐economic changes alter political behaviour of places.

  September 15, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12280   open full text
• Power Dynamics, Supply Network Restructuring and Modernised Retailing in China: A Comparison of Two Food Staples.
  Yue Wang, Neil M. Coe.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. September 05, 2017
  This paper seeks to compare the processes of supply network transformation in China resulting from the market entry of retail transnational corporations (TNCs) across two food products, fresh milk and edible oil. The analysis demonstrates significant variations in both retailer management practices and strategic responses by suppliers between the two products. These variations, in turn, are seen to derive from the inherent nature of the commodities concerned, the relative balance of supply and demand, and the pre‐existing competitive and structural conditions in the different sectors before retail TNC entry. Overall, the paper calls for a nuanced and dynamic approach to retailer power and its impacts that recognises the complexity and unevenness of supply network restructuring in emerging markets.

  September 05, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12281   open full text
• Trust Building or Vested Interest? Social Capital Processes of Cross‐Border Co‐Operation in the Border Towns of Tornio and Haparanda.
  Fredriika Jakola, Eeva‐Kaisa Prokkola.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. September 05, 2017
  During the recent decade, scholars have started to pay more attention to how the local socio‐institutional environment affects the outcome of regional cross‐border co‐operation (CBC) programmes and projects. This paper studies the social capital processes of CBC, particular focus being on how power and trust relations are manifested in project networking and implementation governed by public authorities. The examination focuses on the border towns of Tornio (Finland) and Haparanda (Sweden) which share a common cultural history and a long tradition of co‐operation. The results, based on document analysis and 16 interviews, show that the CBC at Tornio‐Haparanda is not unproblematic but contested by different interest groups and actors. It involves practices of inclusion and exclusion that influence mobilisation, engagement and trust building between different actors. The social capital processes are intertwined with the local norms and values as well as with the strategic networking and pursuance of specific development objectives.

  September 05, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12279   open full text
• Approaching the Relational Nature of the Port‐City Interface in Europe: Ties and Tensions Between Seaports and the Urban.
  Markus Hesse.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. August 30, 2017
  This paper explores the broader setting of urban and economic development that links ports and cities in Europe and aims at enhancing our understanding of the port‐city interface. A relational view is taken for linking local developments and policies with overarching, more remote spheres of influence and impact, which can be considered both beneficial and critical for the port and the city. In order to illustrate the argument, a framework of three issues is applied to discuss the port‐city interface: first, the role of ports as economic engines of their wider region; second, the cruise ship industry as a market segment that re‐connects port and city; third, semi‐political bodies and institutions that play key roles as intermediaries and knowledge brokers. The paper finally discusses the implications of relationality for governing the port‐city interface.

  August 30, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12282   open full text
• Start‐up Communities as Communities of Practice: Shining a Light on Geographical Scale and Membership.
  Marijn A. Van Weele, Henk J. Steinz, Frank J. Van Rijnsoever.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. July 09, 2017
  The development of start‐up communities is seen as critical to the successful development of entrepreneurship in a region. However, it remains unclear what exactly start‐up communities are and how they can be facilitated. Ambiguity concerning the geographical scale and membership of start‐up communities leads to different conceptualisations. In this paper, we apply communities of practice (CoP) theory to understand how conceptualisations of start‐up communities work and how they can be facilitated. To this end, we qualitatively study start‐up communities in Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra, Australia. Our results show that start‐up communities that are confined to a particular workspace strongly resemble a CoP. Furthermore, many elements of CoPs can also be found in regional start‐up communities. Finally, we find that workspace communities have more direct and top‐down facilitation activities, while regional start‐up communities have more indirect and bottom‐up facilitation activities.

  July 09, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12277   open full text
• Much Ado About Something? An Appraisal of the Relationship Between Smart City and Smart Specialisation Policies.
  Andrea Caragliu, Chiara Del Bo.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. July 06, 2017
  Smart policies at the urban (smart city initiatives) and the regional (smart specialisation Strategies, S3) level, both fostered by the need to better spend the reduced budget available for EU policy‐making, have recently gained much attention. While some attempts have been made to explore the growth potential of the two policies separately, no empirical analysis has considered their joint contribution to regional growth. This paper identifies two types of development (measured as 2008–2010 GDP growth) effects associated to smart policies: one, short‐run, associated to urban smartness initiatives, and a second, long run, linked to S3. Instrumental variables estimates are used to support the conceptual framework suggested for the link between these two types of policies, which are both found to have a positive impact on regional economic performance.

  July 06, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12272   open full text
• Related Variety and Innovation: Evidence from the Tourism Industry.
  Hilal Erkuş‐Öztürk.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. July 06, 2017
  Evolutionary economic geography literature claims that firms with ‘related variety relations’ are more innovative than firms with only intra‐industry relations and relations of ‘unrelated variety’. This paper aims to explore this claim for tourism companies in Antalya. The main question is whether innovative hotels, restaurants, and tourism‐oriented shops have stronger relations with firms of different but related sectors than with firms of the same sector and firms of different but unrelated sectors. This paper differs from previous research: (i) by bringing a tourism dimension to evolutionary economic geography literature and (ii) by employing a quantitative method of analysis (correspondence and chi‐square) based on a firm‐level survey. The findings show a significant difference in the relationship between company innovations and the two proxies for related variety, unrelated variety and intra‐industry relations, namely investment behaviour and recruitment of personnel.

  July 06, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12275   open full text
• Does Socio‐Spatial Segregation Matter? ‘Islands’ of High Romany Fertility in Slovakia.
  Branislav Šprocha, Branislav Bleha.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. July 06, 2017
  The level of fertility in the majority of European countries is deeply below the replacement level. On the other hand, in the case of some ethnic groups, fertility continues to be on an above‐average level. One such example is the Romany population of Slovakia, especially those in very poor, segregated settlements. Very likely, there are strong interconnections between regional disparities, social and cultural segregation and reproduction of Romany. The study tries to discover them. We perform factor and cluster analyses in order to identify major factors which differentiate and create clusters in the set of 79 Slovak local administrative unit (LAU‐1) districts from the view point of above‐replacement fertility levels. Using the transversal and cohort approaches, another aim is to identify major specificities of Romany reproduction and the range of lag behind the majority population in terms of demographic transition. The concept of ‘high fertility trap’ is presented in this respect.

  July 06, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12270   open full text
• Economic Transition, Urban Hierarchy, and Service Industry Growth in China.
  Yun Zhong, Yehua Dennis Wei.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. June 30, 2017
  The service industry in China has been undergoing rapid growth, especially since the early 1990s. However, little research has been conducted regarding its characteristics, spatial patterns and dynamics. Based on the theories of economic growth, economic transition and urban hierarchy, this paper develops an analytical framework for elucidating the growth of the service industry in China. We find that cities with a high increment in the service industry tend to be located in coastal areas, and mainly constitute megacities and large, highly developed cities. Cities with higher administrative rank, such as centrally administrated municipalities, cities designated in the State Plan and provincial capitals, maintain relatively high growth in the service industry. It is concluded that China's economic transition and urban hierarchy play significant roles in the growth of the service industry, suggesting that service industry growth in China does not strictly adhere to growth patterns observed in Western countries.

  June 30, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12276   open full text
• The Spatial Structure of High Speed Railways and Urban Networks in China: A Flow Approach.
  Haoran Yang, Martin Dijst, Patrick Witte, Hans Van Ginkel, Weiling Yang.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. June 28, 2017
  The high speed railway (HSR) has played a crucial role in the regional integration of urban networks in China. This paper analyses HSR passenger flows instead of commonly‐used time schedules for measuring different polycentricity in urban networks. Using 2013 origin/destination (O/D) passenger flow data, we analyse the spatial configurations of 99 HSR cities at the national scale in China. In addition, we compare the spatial configurations of three regional urban networks: the Pearl River Delta, the Yangzi River Delta and the Bohai Rim. The outcomes show that the three functional regions connected by HSR are the most dominant polycentric regions in China and that the Bohai Rim is less hierarchical than the other two. We conclude that the comprehensive Chinese HSR networks are largely polycentric, especially in the central and eastern regions.

  June 28, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12269   open full text
• Production of New Creative Knowledge in a Local Developing Economy: The Case of Puerto Vallarta.
  Marcos Valdivia, Ricardo Macip.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. June 22, 2017
  This paper proposes an agent‐based model (ABM) that combines ethnographic and economic methods to analyse how the social interaction between creative actors generates new creative knowledge. The chosen case of study is Puerto Vallarta, a sun and beach international destination in Mexico. Puerto Vallarta contains, potentially, many of the key elements that are discussed in the literature on creative economy. Our methodological strategy identifies ethnographically types of knowledge that are associated with a standard typology of creative industries in a city. The model is evaluated by simulations of agents engaged in producing ideas based on these types of knowledge either collectively or individually. Among the main findings are the presence of ‘elevated common knowledge’ between creative agents (which can be an important constraint for rising creativity) and that mixed behaviour of knowledge production (collective and individual) can boost better the production of ideas in Puerto Vallarta. Finally, we claim that the proposed methodology can be extended to and implemented in other similar contexts.

  June 22, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12271   open full text
• Heterogeneity and Geography of the World Trade Collapses of the 1930s and 2000s.
  Peter A.G. van Bergeijk.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. April 17, 2017
  This paper analyses drivers of imports during the major world trade collapses of the Great Depression (1930s; 34 countries) and the Great Recession (2000s; 173 countries). The dependent variable is the peak to trough distance of the volume of imports in the first year and 3‐year‐period of these episodes, respectively. The paper develops a succinct empirical model that shows a significant impact of the peak to peak distance of GDP, the share of manufacturing goods in total imports and the political system. The 3‐year‐period distance for the volume of imports is significantly different for the 1930s and 2000s, but this is not the case for the 1st year of the two trade collapses. Importantly, the analysis uncovers significant heterogeneity with respect to regions.

  April 17, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12265   open full text
• Carriers of Change and Continuity: New Restaurants in Amsterdam.
  Pieter Terhorst, Hilal Erkuş‐Öztürk.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. April 17, 2017
  This paper analyses new firm formation in the Amsterdam restaurant industry, on the basis of an in‐depth research of 37 new restaurants, through the lens of the theory of evolutionary economic geography. The findings show that restaurateur‐chefs largely replicate the kitchen of their parent firms whereas restaurateur‐managers can more easily switch to a different type of kitchen. It means that replication of individual knowledge and skills are more important than replication of routines. Restaurateurs who came from other related industries did not bring something special from their former jobs in their restaurants. In addition, new restaurants benefit differently from extra‐firm relations (with respect to attracting capital, monitoring other restaurants, finding chefs and cooks, relations with suppliers and media) during their start‐up process and thereafter. Those extra‐firm relations are found at the local, national, and global scale.

  April 17, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12266   open full text
• Who Moves Into what Kinds of Neighbourhoods: Spatial Sorting and Integration.
  William A.V. Clark.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. April 04, 2017
  This paper asks the question – who moves into what kinds of neighbourhoods and what kind of residential sorting is occurring in the ethnically diverse metropolitan region of Los Angeles. The study examines residential selections across a typology of neighbourhood types in the Los Angeles metropolitan region using residential mobility data from the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey (LAFANS). Similar to recent work in the UK and Canadian contexts, ethnic groups demonstrate moderately strong relationships between their socio‐economic statuses and their neighbourhood contexts. Both behaviour, that is, actual moves and preferences, are consistent with a tendency to increased mixing and declining segregation in the residential mosaic. In particular, the expressed residential preferences and the choices of these households provide an explanatory context for the overall decline in segregation.

  April 04, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12264   open full text
• Identifying and Classifying Small and Medium Sized Towns in Europe.
  Antonio Paolo Russo, David Serrano Giné, Maria Yolanda Pérez Albert, Fiammetta Brandajs.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. March 24, 2017
  This paper provides a first attempt at the construction of a unified, homogeneous inventory of different classes of urban settlements in the European space, building on the approach of international institutions such as OECD and the EU in relation to larger urban areas and extending it to the specific challenge presented by smaller settlements. Its objective is twofold. The first is to address the fundamental empirical problem that was central to the development of the ESPON 2013 project ‘Small and Medium sized Towns in their Functional Territorial Context’ (TOWN), that is the proper geographic identification of different classes of urban settlements. The second is to introduce one basic classification of urban settlements, and two more refined typologies of small and medium sized towns (SMST). These typologies are used to provide a first impression of territorial structures of urbanisation throughout Europe, further elaborated in functional terms in the TOWN project.

  March 24, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12251   open full text
• Spatial Trends of Towns in Europe: The Performance of Regions with Low Degree of Urbanisation.
  Loris Servillo, Antonio Paolo Russo.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. March 16, 2017
  The paper contributes to the understanding of socio‐spatial trends and urban systems in Europe, with a specific focus on smaller settlements. First, a morphological delimitation of urban settlements as geographical base is used to identify the different settlement structures that characterise regions across Europe. Secondly, an analysis of population and GDP performances of NUTS 3 regions for the 29 countries of the European space (growth rates in 2001–2011) provides evidence of the variety of territorial phenomena that characterise smaller‐settlement regions across Europe. Finally, the paper highlights the diversity and complexity of urbanisation structures in Europe and how general trends observed at larger scale are articulated locally according to prevailing structures of urbanisation. It shows the character of ‘embeddedness’ of smaller settlements within urban systems and territorial structures and how the socio‐economic performances of smaller‐settlement regions are defined by a combination of macro trends, national contextualisation, local dynamics and regional path dependency.

  March 16, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12250   open full text
• Transnational Behaviour of Ukrainian Remitting Migrants.
  Eva Janská, Karolína Pauknerová, Markéta Koropecká.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. February 27, 2017
  In connection with the growing trend of transnationalism in international migration flows, the number of transnational communities has been increasing. The aim of this study is to describe the transnational dynamics and processes using the example of remitting Ukrainian workers in Czechia. The research was conducted with immigrants in Czechia and their families in Ukraine. More than 50 interviews were analysed using qualitative content analysis. Based on the remittances sent, marital status, gender, mobility and locality of immigrants, a typology was created, in which the specifics of transnational processes were assessed. We argue that different behaviour of transnational migrants is a reflection of their socio‐demographic characteristics (e.g. family status, education or number of children), which may change over time.

  February 27, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12243   open full text
• What Drives Built‐Up Area Expansion on Islands? Using Soil Sealing Indicators to Estimate Built‐Up Area Patterns on Aegean Islands, Greece.
  Thanasis Kizos, Georgios Tsilimigkas, Sofia Karampela.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. February 27, 2017
  The dispersion of built‐up areas in peri‐urban zones is considered an important, almost irreversible environmental threat, especially in coastal zones and islands. In this paper, we use soil sealing datasets derived from the European Environment Agency in order to estimate the expansion of built‐up areas in the North and South Aegean islands in Greece. We examine these differences in relation to socio‐economic features of the islands, especially tourism development, second home development and size and geographical position of the islands. The findings show divergent levels of soil sealing and a variety of spatial configurations, such as scattered growth of built‐up land in coastal areas and peri‐urban growth in rural areas. Higher cover of the total area of islands by sealed soil is related to tourism, but it seems that second homes are also an important driver, especially for smaller islands located relatively close to Athens. From a planning and management perspective, these findings can assist local or regional administration to assess the effectiveness of land use management plans and manage flows and processes.

  February 27, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12244   open full text
• Why Do People Hike? Hiking the Israel National Trail.
  Noga Collins‐Kreiner, Nurit Kliot.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. February 27, 2017
  The main aim of this study is to better understand why people hike the Israel National Trail (INT) and the behavioural, experiential, and spatiotemporal phenomena that accompany this activity. In this explorative study, we assumed that hiking the INT encompasses both universalistic aspects of hiking, in its capacity as a mobility system shared by hikers of long‐distance trails worldwide, and particularistic aspects of hiking, that can be identified through the scientific research of hiking using concepts such as ‘place attachment’, ‘sense of place’, ‘state and nation building’, and ’socialisation of civic consciousness’, within the particularistic framework of Israeli nationhood, culture, and history. The first stage of our research was the formulation and distribution of a questionnaire aimed at assessing hiker motivation and the nature and features of their hiking mobility on the route, including spatiotemporal dimensions, experiences and behavior, and place identity and sense of place. Altogether, 210 questionnaires were completed by hikers on the INT over a one‐year period, from March 2013 to March 2014. Overall, our analysis of the findings through the lens of Parson's particularism vs. universalism pattern variable revealed hiking the INT to be a mobility system characterized by many of the general, universalistic aspects of hiking, but also, and perhaps most notably, by a number of particularistic aspects that are key to understanding the unique role of hiking in Israeli society.

  February 27, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12245   open full text
• Small and Medium‐Sized Towns in Europe: Conceptual, Methodological and Policy Issues.
  Loris Servillo, Rob Atkinson, Abdelillah Hamdouch.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. February 27, 2017
  Despite that small and medium‐sized towns (SMSTs) have been, and continue to be, a central part of the history of Europe, these places have largely been neglected by urban research. The ESPON TOWN project, on which this Special Issue builds, sought to redress this neglect performing a comparative analysis of their position and role across Europe. In this introductory paper we discuss some of the theoretical and methodological challenges when it came to identifying, studying and analysing SMSTs and the theoretical framework developed to inform our understanding of SMSTs. In particular, three themes are discussed. The first one is about the ontological problem of defining a town. Administrative, morphological and functional perspectives are considered. The second one reflects on a wide array of interpretative approaches about the relationship between towns and their regional context. The third one is about the thematic and multi‐scalar perspectives that can characterise the policy approach to towns.

  February 27, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12252   open full text
• Territorial Arrangements of Small and Medium‐Sized Towns from a Functional‐Spatial Perspective.
  Luděk Sýkora, Ondřej Mulíček.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. February 27, 2017
  This contribution applies a functional‐spatial perspective to the study of small and medium‐sized towns. A methodology for functional analysis is developed and tested to identify towns, distinguish towns from cities, and detect town positionality within urban territorial arrangements, focusing on whether they are autonomous, networked with other towns or agglomerated with large cities. The methodology is used to compare settlement systems in two regions and two countries in Europe by looking at the existence and nature of networks between towns and cities and how towns perform in terms of population and jobs in respect of their belonging to different types of territorial arrangement.

  February 27, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12249   open full text
• Embodied Emotions in the Geographies of Sexualities.
  Andrew Gorman‐Murray.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. February 27, 2017
  This commentary responds to the papers comprising the themed issue ‘Geographies of Sexualities: Bodies, Spatial Encounters and Emotions’. I position the themed issue at the intersection of geographies of sexualities, embodied geographies and emotional geographies, and suggest how the papers collectively contribute to geographies of sexualities and to human geography more broadly. The themed issue entwines the themes of ‘the body’ and ‘emotions’ to advance understandings of embodied emotions in geographies of sexualities and beyond. I identify three ways in which embodied emotions are taken forward in geographical thinking. First, the capacity for emotionally embodied fieldwork generates insights into collective embodiment and communities of practice, at the same time contesting masculinist objectivity and detachment in knowledge production. Second, new spaces of encounter – such as online forums and social media – are not distinct from everyday geographies, but instead are part of a virtual‐physical emotional landscape that extends embodiment across material and digital environments. Third, the innovative combination of different elements of feminist geographical thinking – such as intersectionality, the body and emotion and affect – generates new understandings of inequality across and between social identities.

  February 27, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12260   open full text
• Tolerance, Intergroup Contacts and Municipal‐Spatial Organisation: The Case of Jews and Arab Palestinians in the Tel‐Aviv Metropolitan Area.
  Itzhak Omer, Ran Goldblatt, Michael Romann, Rassem Khamaisi.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. February 27, 2017
  The paper examines the willingness of Israeli Jews and Arab Palestinians for intergroup contacts during daily activities in diverse functional spaces and spatial organisational contexts within the metropolitan area of Tel‐Aviv, Israel. Semi‐structured interviews were conducted among visitors to public spaces in three mixed Arab‐Jewish areas: a mixed city; two adjacent Jewish and Arab suburban townships; and two relatively distant Jewish and Arab towns. The research findings indicate that higher‐order functional spaces (e.g. shopping mall), municipal separation and relatively large geographic distance between Jewish and Arab towns enhance willingness for inter‐group contacts, feelings of comfort and security and a shared ethnic identity of sites. We relate this tendency to the unique geographic distribution of Jewish and Arab localities in Israel which allows the separation between functional and residential spaces and thus a reduction of feelings of threat and discomfort experienced upon inter‐group exposure and contact.

  February 27, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12259   open full text
• Demographic Change in European Towns 2001–11: A Cross‐National Multi‐Level Analysis.
  Ian Smith.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. February 27, 2017
  The unique contribution of this paper is to empirically compare and contrast demographic change in settlements with a population between 5,000 and under 50,000 (defined as towns) across different national urban systems in Europe with common definitions for the first time. The analysis uses a new data set based on harmonised small area data and harmonised morphological definitions of what a town is. The paper hypothesises first that a general model of demographic growth can be applied across national urban systems and secondly that regional demographic change is a significant predictor of demographic change in towns nested within those regions within this generalised model. A fixed effect multi‐level regression analysis tests the importance of town‐level and regional factors among towns from five national systems but also within two individual national urban systems. The findings suggest that national context still matters and within some national systems, regional context also strongly predicts demographic change in towns.

  February 27, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12255   open full text
• The Socio‐Economic Profiles of Small and Medium‐Sized Towns: Insights from European Case Studies.
  Abdelillah Hamdouch, Christophe Demaziere, Ksenija Banovac.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. February 27, 2017
  This paper is part of the research on functional roles of European towns conducted by a group of researchers gathered around the ESPON project ‘TOWN’. Building on the systematic analysis of the socio‐economic dynamics of 31 European small and medium‐sized towns (SMSTs), we identified three profiles of their local economies. The first profile is defined as a dominant ‘residential’ economy that mostly relies on local activities that satisfy the needs of people in an area (residents, commuters or tourists). The second profile corresponds to a dominant ‘productive’ economy based on the production of goods and services to be mainly exported and consumed out of its area. The third profile is the mixed type that is characterised by an important share of activities in productive and residential sector with a complementary ‘creative‐knowledge’ dimension, based on entrepreneurship, creativity and collaboration in innovation. Moreover, we analysed the economic performance and the shift in profiles in order to detect in which way towns make choices between residential economy, competitiveness and innovation for their local development.

  February 27, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12254   open full text
• Drivers Behind Farmers’ Willingness to Terminate Arable Land Use Contracts.
  Jia Gao, Dirk Strijker, Ge Song, Shiping Li.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. February 27, 2017
  The shortage of land resources has become a serious problem in China's rapid urbanisation. A recognised method for solving arable land resource shortage problems is to encourage marginal farmers to terminate their arable land use contracts with the government so that they can be transferred to farmers with better prospects. This paper analyses the drivers behind farmers’ willingness to terminate their arable land use contracts based on survey data from agricultural households in Guanzhong, Shaanxi Province, China, using a multivariable logistic model. Results show that households led by male householders, with large families, fewer agricultural labourers, more plots of land, including family members with non‐agricultural skills training and including family members who are covered by rural residents’ health insurance, are more likely to terminate their contracts.

  February 27, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12261   open full text
• Policies for Small and Medium‐Sized Towns: European, National and Local Approaches.
  Rob Atkinson.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. February 27, 2017
  This paper addresses the ‘policy dimension’ of the TOWN project drawing on the implications of the case studies for policy(ies) for small and medium‐sized towns (SMSTs) across Europe. It first considers approaches at European and national levels to SMSTs arguing in recent years there has been limited recognition that SMSTs have a significant role to play in the European territory. The paper provides an illustrative selection of towns from the ten case study countries. The research shows that the category SMSTs contains a varied and often dissimilar group of towns in a wide variety of regional contexts. This is true not only between countries but within them. The results indicate that while there are actions to support SMSTs that can be done at European level a prescriptive ‘one‐size fits all’ approach should be avoided. Policy approaches should be developed within particular national and regional contexts supported by the European level.

  February 27, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12253   open full text
• Deprivation and the Rural‐Urban Trap.
  Mirek Dymitrow, Jadwiga Biegańska, Elżbieta Grzelak‐Kostulska.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. February 27, 2017
  Departing from the idea that cultural mechanisms are capable of allowing for conceptual dichotomies to create oppression, this paper challenges the engrained tradition of using ‘urban/rural’ as guiding labels in societal organisation when seen through the prism of deprivation. Two Polish deprivation‐ridden estates – one ‘urban’ and one ‘rural’ – were investigated. Having taken account of the residents’ everyday lives in the socio‐economic, material and discursive dimensions, our findings indicate that the notions of rurality and urbanity imbricate and leapfrog meaningful territories at the local level. Realising the danger of deploying stereotypes as beacons in governance, from this richly contextualised account we draw that many problems today are space‐independent and cannot be attenuated by following development paths reinvented in the name of empirically questionable yet culturally sustained and politically ontologised spatialities. This, then, calls for rethinking both the discursivity and the elusiveness of rural‐urban thinking in the context of deprivation.

  February 27, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12263   open full text
• Bisexual Safe Space(s) on the Internet: Analysis of an Online Forum for Bisexuals.
  Emiel Maliepaard.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. February 21, 2017
  Discussions on bisexual safe space(s) and online bisexual spaces are limited. This paper explores the potential of an online forum for bisexuals, their partners, and people who are interested in bisexuality to function as an online safe space. To understand whether the analysed forum is successful as a bisexual safe space, as conceptualised by Jo Eadie, I focus on the practices, as manifold of doings and sayings, that create the forum as well as on the embodied experiences of the participants. I conclude that oppressive regimes that are rooted in offline practices, that is, mononormative ideals, value, and orthodoxies, are repeatedly introduced by participants in their stories, questions, and replies. At the same time, sharing experiences and empowerment are core practices and have an impact beyond the forum itself. Finally, by focusing on emotions, moods, and ends we can understand why people take part in the practices that constitute the forum.

  February 21, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12248   open full text
• The Political Economy of Hydropower in the Communist Space: Iron Gates Revisited.
  Remus Creţan, Lucian Vesalon.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. February 03, 2017
  This paper proposes a critical discussion of the political economy of hydropower construction in the communist space. We use political economy, economic history and political ecology literature in order to reveal the economic and political relations in which hydropower is embedded in socialist states. The case analysed is the Iron Gates, a joint Romanian‐Yugoslav project which raises specific questions about the techno‐political framework of the new ‘hydraulic landscape’ and its place in socialist economies and societies. The case reveals important transformations in the political and economic relations within the Soviet bloc and provides a description of the complex institutional setting used in the construction of the hydropower system. In parallel, the paper explores the contribution of political power in the construction of the Iron Gates and especially its use in connection with the ideological production of the new communist regime.

  February 03, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12247   open full text
• Intra‐Eu Migration and Crime: A Jigsaw to be Reckoned with.
  Anika Ludwig, Derek Johnson.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. February 03, 2017
  The expansion of the EU has generated vast interest and debate about an alleged crime–migration nexus. The gradual disappearance of borders within the EU has created opportunities for easier people movement, and potentially for offenders to commit criminal offences in other countries. The authors have found that little work has been undertaken to understand the general nature of criminal activity by intra‐EU migrant populations. Data on localised offending by foreign nationals can be used to inform intelligence by national and international police agencies, to generate effective cross‐border information exchange, aid investigatory techniques and significantly inform crime reduction activity and policies. However, where such information is not collected and available for analysis within member states, informed knowledge within and between member states is difficult to achieve. In order to begin to address these discrepancies, the authors suggest a multi‐disciplinary and mixed methods approach that seeks understanding at the EU level.

  February 03, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12246   open full text
• Feeling Bodies of Knowledge: Situating Knowledge Production Through Felt Embeddedness.
  John Paul Catungal.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. February 03, 2017
  This paper argues that emotionally cognisant geographies not only write emotion into research products, but also examine emotional encounters during research as embodied and felt instantiations of scholars' entanglements in broader political geographies of communities, norms and institutions. It makes this argument by describing and analysing some of the authors' emotional experiences in the process of becoming a geographer of sexuality during PhD research. Taking felt embeddedness seriously in our writings moves us away from simply describing how research made us feel, to examining how these feelings and our negotiations of them generate more complex understandings of the impact of positionalities, political commitments and institutional situatedness on the conduct and indeed the feel of research processes. In this way, emotion does not simply liven up how we report our research, but is itself treated as a key ingredient in the production of geographical knowledge.

  February 03, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12229   open full text
• Economic perspectives on the European Neighbourhood Policy: An introduction.
  Ron Boschma, Simona Iammarino, Raffaele Paci, Jordi Suriñach.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. January 20, 2017
  There is no abstract available for this paper.

  January 20, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12228   open full text
• Strongholding the Synagogue to Stronghold the City: Urban‐Religious Configurations in an Israeli Mixed‐City.
  Moriel Ram, Meirav Aharon Gutman.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. January 11, 2017
  This article explores the geopolitical significance of public religious institutions and the ways in which it has corresponded to changes in their urban environment. Based on a spatial analysis and ethnography of urban synagogues in the northern Israeli mixed city of Acre that were established and constructed by communities of Jewish immigrants from North African countries, we demonstrate how significant shifts in the city's demographic pattern and landscape have affected these institutions' ascribed functions and meanings. We theorise this dynamic as ‘strongholding’, or, more specifically, strongholding the synagogue as a means of strongholding the city. The formation of the synagogue as a stronghold is enacted through a dual configuration process by which the religious legitimacy, which the synagogue bestows on those who maintain it, is interwoven into a broader urban sociopolitical struggle to claim a presence in the city.

  January 11, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12231   open full text
• The Governance of Local Productive Systems: Co‐Ordination Problems Regarding Pyrotechnic Production in Tultepec, Mexico.
  Víctor Manuel Velázquez Durán, Rocío Rosales Ortega.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. December 14, 2016
  This paper examines the governance of local productive systems by articulating two fundamental concepts from geographical institutionalism: path dependency and contingency. We identify internal and external contingencies that have significantly impacted the development trajectory of pyrotechnic production in Tultepec, Mexico, giving rise to governance dynamics characterised by a lack of co‐ordination among local producer associations. Consequently, the main local institutional arrangements are controlled by particular interest groups. This limits the participation of local actors in defining national regulations relating to pyrotechnic production, resulting in a vertical/centralised law mainly defined by the state. We argue that improving the governance of the pyrotechnic productive system in Tultepec requires the co‐ordination of private and public actors at different territorial scales, in order to build up an inclusive regulatory framework which can take into consideration the diversity of local producers.

  December 14, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12230   open full text
• Affective Inequality and Heteronormative Discomfort.
  Maria Rodó‐De‐Zárate.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. December 14, 2016
  Focusing on empirical research carried out with young lesbians in two small cities, Manresa (Catalonia) and Ponta Grossa (Brazil), I explore their feelings of comfort and discomfort in public space from an intersectional perspective that takes into account their different positions. Besides the differences regarding the contexts, they permanently negotiate whether they show affection in public space or not, engaging with different practices to avoid discrimination such as ‘passing’ as heterosexuals. I argue that the deprivation of engaging in affective relations in public space is an instance of affective inequality, and that the relation between the private and the public space in small cities is a fundamental factor in the constitution of this inequality. By providing a distinction between systematic and circumstantial discomforts, I show how an emotional and geographical approach can provide new insights on how we address inequalities.

  December 14, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12234   open full text
• Shutting the Gates in South Africa: National Identification and Popular Attitudes towards Closing Borders to Immigration.
  Steven Lawrence Gordon.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. December 14, 2016
  More than a hundred thousand people crisscross South Africa's international borders annually. Public opinion on this cross‐border migration is decidedly hostile. According to a 2013 opinion poll, more than three‐fifths of the adult population would favour closing the border. Can civic and ethnic identifications with the nation explain this opposition to immigration? Using data from the 12th (2013) round of the cross‐sectional South African Social Attitudes Survey (N= 2,739) this paper was able to investigate individual attitudes towards border control. This paper investigates different dimensions of national identity. The results revealed that ethnic national attachment was an important determinant of attitudes towards border control. Such attitudes were also associated with attitudes towards immigrant assimilation and the effect of nationalism on society. For those aiming to ameliorate public sentiment on border control, this study provides a test of multiple determinants of public opinion on the issue, examining the comparative strength of each.

  December 14, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12232   open full text
• Affects, Bodies and Desire: ‘Queering’ Methods and Methodologies to Research Queer Migration.
  Cesare Di Feliciantonio, Kaciano B. Gadelha.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. December 14, 2016
  In this paper we discuss the main methodological issues raised by a research project we carried out between 2012 and 2013 about Italian queer ‘creative’ migration in Berlin, focusing on the tensions among mobility/movement, desire, bodies, affects and fieldwork. Following an increasing international debate on the topic, the contribution discusses the (im)possibility to develop a queer method or methodology. We stress how ‘queering’ methodologies and methods is not an ontological position pre‐assumed when conducting research with queer‐identified subjects, but is a process of dismantling taken‐for‐granted, stable, monolithic categories and identities. In order to do so, the paper discusses positionalities, situated knowledge and the different interactions – with both human and non‐human actors – shaping the field. Through analysing body performances in the terms introduced by Taylor, ‘a politics of becoming’ emerges as a way to consider the relation between sexualities and spaces. The ‘objects’ of our research, that is, queer migrants, can thus be reframed following Braidotti's conceptualisation of the ‘nomadic subject’ and Deleuze and Guattari's ‘desiring machines’. Since they are shaped by affects, personal trajectories are exceptional and unique, composing new territorial materialities.

  December 14, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12235   open full text
• Contesting ‘Traditional’ Masculinity and Men's Sexuality in Kwadukuza, South Africa.
  Kopano Ratele.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. December 14, 2016
  In this paper I examine the question of how masculinities and men's sexualties challenge, seek to become, and are resisted from becoming, part of tradition, as well as how such a confrontation is contigent on space. I employ the case of a famous ‘traditional’ gay wedding that took place in the relatively small township of KwaDukuza in KwaZulu, South Africa, and mediated responses to the wedding, to consider how we might better understand this question. In pointing out men's genders and sexualities and their traditions as discursive practices connected to specific places and temporalities I hope to raise the possibility of finding spaces for transforming gender relations and liberating masculinities.

  December 14, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12233   open full text
• Knowledge Search Pattern and Product Innovation of Firms in Low and High‐Technology Industrial Clusters: A Knowledge Relatedness Perspective.
  Aiqi Wu, Cassandra C. Wang.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. November 28, 2016
  Geographical knowledge search and innovation have attracted much attention in recent years. Yet the existing literature placed much emphasis on the way firms search for new ideas and knowledge as well as the geographical dimensions of knowledge sourcing without taking accounting into the nature and characteristics of knowledge per se. We examine the relationship between knowledge search and product innovation in both low and high‐tech industry with a survey data from China. While both internal and external knowledge search are conducive to product innovation of high‐tech firms, only external knowledge search is valuable for low‐tech firms. External unrelated knowledge is significant for innovation of high‐tech firms whereas external related knowledge search is significantly enough for low‐tech firms. It highlights the importance of knowledge relatedness in innovation and appeals a shift of theoretical focus from ‘how to search’ and ‘where to search’ to ‘what to search’ in the process of innovation.

  November 28, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12226   open full text
• Regional Determinants of Exit Across Firms’ Size: Evidence from Argentina.
  Carla Daniela Calá, Miguel Manjón‐Antolín, Josep‐Maria Arauzo‐Carod.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. October 24, 2016
  We analyse the determinants of exit in a developing country using Argentina as an illustrative case. We focus on regional determinants but estimate panel count data models for firms of different size, thus indirectly controlling for a major firm‐level determinant. We find that most of the determinants used in previous studies analysing developed countries are also relevant here. The fit of the model improves, however, when variables that proxy for the specificities of developing economies are considered. We also find that while the exit of micro‐small firms seem to be mostly driven by factors that are commonly found in developed countries, large firms are more influenced by factors that are typically not considered in developed countries’ studies. These results raise doubts about the usefulness of public policies based on evidence from developed countries and show the importance of a differentiated analysis across firm size.

  October 24, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12218   open full text
• Heritage in New Town Extensions: Recent Dutch Experiences in the use of Heritage in Large New Building Estates.
  J. Renes.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. October 20, 2016
  Heritage has become a major theme in Dutch spatial planning. A number of recent Dutch urban extension projects offer interesting case studies on the integration of heritage into planning. The projects were part of a large housing programme, known as the Vinex programme, which was initiated by the Dutch national government but executed by local authorities. They therefore provide interesting cases for comparison. This paper presents a number of these projects, focusing on the use of heritage, which allows us to classify different ways of incorporating heritage into plans: integration, embeddedness and isolation. Another classification involves different views and interpretations about heritage, and describes diminishing degrees of authenticity entailed in preservation, transformation and inspiration. Combining both types of classification may offer a framework for further research on the relationship between heritage and planning.

  October 20, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12221   open full text
• Local Externalities and Firm Internationalisation.
  Chiara Burlina.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. September 26, 2016
  The aim of the work is to understand how the role of local externalities (agglomeration economies and related variety), as well as firm heterogeneity, have influenced the internationalisation strategies chosen by Italian manufacturing firms from 1998 to 2006. Based on the 10th survey of the corporate bank Unicredit‐Capitalia, I construct an unbalanced panel data of 19,635 firms. As in Cainelli, Ganau and Iacobucci, I compute related variety as a measure of the input‐output relationships between firms of different sectors: this procedure allows taking into account the vertical related variety as a proxy for diversification. The results of the econometric analysis, conducted with multinomial logistic regressions, show that vertically related variety and productivity positively influence both export and FDI strategies. The extant literature on firm heterogeneity has been confirmed, while important findings on local externalities enrich the already existing theories.

  September 26, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12224   open full text
• Transformation of China's ‘World Factory’: Production Relocation and Export Evolution of the Electronics Firms.
  Chun Yang, Canfei He.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. September 26, 2016
  Since 2000, particularly in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis, China's ‘world factory’ has undergone dramatic transformation in response to the changing business environment at global, national, local and firm levels. A rich body of literature has examined the spatial transformation of manufacturing firms from coastal to inland China, while little attention has been paid to the market shift engaged by export‐oriented firms, particularly from exports towards China's domestic market. Taking electronics industry as a case, this study examines the process and trajectories of production relocation and market rebalancing of electronics firms during the period of 1998 and 2009. Drawing upon the global production networks (GPNs) framework, particularly the evolutionary strategic coupling, decoupling and recoupling dynamics, the study argues that China's ‘world factory’ has been restructured through divergent decoupling of electronics production and exports from coastal regions, for example, the Pearl River Delta (PRD) on the one hand, and selective recoupling with a small number of cities in inland regions and Yangtze River Delta. The spatial expansion of electronics exports and changing ratio of exports to sales outputs among various provinces elucidates the emerging attempts at developing domestic market‐oriented production networks, yet with limited penetration to the domestic market. Through transition from structural coupling to selective recoupling, electronics firms like Foxconn, a Taiwan‐based contract manufacturer for global lead firms, for example, Apple, have strategically leveraged among diverse regional production networks in China. The findings of the study could enrich the developing literature of GPNs, particularly the dynamic strategic coupling, decoupling and recoupling in the evolution of regional production networks in the changing global economy.

  September 26, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12222   open full text
• Regional Innovation Systems or Innovative Regions? Evidence from Italy.
  Valentina De Marchi, Roberto Grandinetti.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. September 21, 2016
  The literature on regional innovation systems (RIS) has focused so far just on a few exemplary cases of regions where innovation resulted from systemic interactions between firms and institutions. This paper aims at evaluating quantitatively which regions can be considered RIS using Community Innovation Survey data on Italy. The analysis reveals a new geography of innovation in the country as compared to results emerging from studies on the 1990s, suggesting a high dynamism in innovation capabilities of Italian regions. Four clusters of regions are identified, but none of them can be described as a true RIS: the most innovative ones lack ‘systemicness’ and those that come closest to the RIS model have not the best innovative performance.

  September 21, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12217   open full text
• European Civic Neighbourhood: Towards a Bottom‐Up Agenda Across Borders.
  Jussi Laine.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. September 21, 2016
  The EU's borderland between Finland and Russia provides a fascinating setting to study how different understandings of state and civil society meet, overlap, and fuse. Focusing on this border region, this study pits the conventional bilateral framework against the more recent EU one in depicting a cross‐border space for civic activity. It offers a critical perspective on the official European Neighbourhood and illustrates a complementary vision of a non‐territorial civic neighbourhood seeking to capture the networked and fluid topologies of contemporary cross‐border processes. The paper underlines the role of civil society in bridging the gaps created by borders, and suggests that they provide a powerful driver for maintaining neighbourly relations in a tense climate. To better understand the transnational network‐space they fashion, we must abandon the geographical idea of territorial exceptionality and be receptive to alternative interpretations not tied to a particular policy framework and the restrictions defined by it.

  September 21, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12211   open full text
• Whose Reality Counts? Critical Junctures in Livelihood Trajectories Under Deforestation.
  Robin Biddulph, Pelle Amberntsson.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. September 21, 2016
  Livelihoods approaches focus on the poor and their knowledge and agency, but risk underplaying broader contextual forces which constrain and shape that agency. Livelihood trajectories approaches attend more fully to these structural, contextual dynamics. A three‐year study using quantitative and qualitative methods investigated livelihood trajectories over two decades in a village affected by deforestation in Northeast Cambodia, and sought to identify critical junctures structuring those trajectories. A timber rush, a land rush, a turn to agriculture and ongoing competition to shape post‐forest reterritorialisation were identified as the critical junctures. These transformed the physical environment, and initiated waves of migration which in turn transformed the social and economic structure and everyday life of the village. This valuably disrupts narrative simplifications associated with community forestry. The junctures furthermore suggest an analytical framework for understanding deforestation‐livelihoods dynamics in other contexts, thus demonstrating how livelihood trajectories research might contribute to middle‐level theory building.

  September 21, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12214   open full text
• Advanced Logistics in Italy: A City Network Analysis.
  Sébastien Antoine, Cécile Sillig, Hilda Ghiara.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. September 21, 2016
  Logistics services providers present similarities with main advanced producer services as, besides their operational functions, they manage highly elaborated informational flows in order to run supply chains. Thanks to detailed information on employees provided by the social network LinkedIn, this paper proposes a World City Network analysis applied to main logistics providers operating in Italy, that focus only on knowledge and management activities. LinkedIn also allows decomposing firms’ value chains and permits to develop interlocking networks dedicated to firms divisions. Italian advanced logistics appears to be primarily attracted by knowledge rich environments, rather than infrastructural nodes. The Italian network is centralised in Milan. Though, rather than an exclusive command centre, Milan acts as a hub, where part of the information and power are distributed in certain secondary cities, depending on their sectorial and geographical specificities.

  September 21, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12215   open full text
• Does Agglomeration Affect Exports? Evidence from Italian Local Labour Markets.
  Giulio Cainelli, Eleonora Di Maria, Roberto Ganau.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. September 21, 2016
  This paper analyses whether and how agglomeration economies – related variety, specialisation and urbanisation – affect the export performance of Italian local labour markets (LLM). Adopting spatial econometric techniques, and controlling for potential non‐linear effects, we find that related variety has a negligible effect on LLMs’ export intensity, while the effect of specialisation economies is negative. On the contrary, urbanisation economies positively affect export intensity. The robustness of these results is tested and confirmed using an alternative (institutional‐based) spatial weights matrix.

  September 21, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12216   open full text
• Cross‐Border Regional Innovation System Integration: An Analytical Framework.
  Teemu Makkonen, Adi Weidenfeld, Allan M. Williams.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. September 15, 2016
  The importance of inter‐regional co‐operation and innovation are widely accepted in the development rhetoric of the European Union. The highlighted importance of both themes in the context of borderlands has recently led to the coining of a new concept, cross‐border regional innovation system. However, little attention has been given to the empirical analysis of the concept. This paper suggests a framework for empirically validating the concept by examining the levels of integration between cross‐border regions. The outcome is a proposed framework that can be operationalised by measurable indicators of cross‐border co‐operation in a regional innovation system setting. The framework was further tested with illustrative empirical cases that demonstrate its feasibility.

  September 15, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12223   open full text
• Absorptive Capacity as a Mediator: Innovation of Handicraft Exporters in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.
  Jan Fransen, A.H.J. (Bert) Helmsing.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. September 15, 2016
  Innovation processes in emerging economies tend to differ from those in developed countries in that a larger share of firms absorb existing knowledge. The paper assesses how firms’ absorptive capacity mediates the impact of global value chains on the innovation of handicraft exports in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. The study draws three conclusions. First, the incremental innovation of craft exporters demands specific but rather mundane absorptive capacities of firms, such as language abilities and capable departments. Second, and contrary to what might be expected, the study finds that the governance modes of global value chains do not significantly affect the level of innovation. Third, a group of traders have the highest level of innovation, the highest level of absorptive capacity, and they positively affect the innovation of suppliers. Overall, the findings show that knowledge diffusion is furthered within an emerging local innovation system.

  September 15, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12212   open full text
• The Dark Side of the Crisis: Disparities in per Capita income (2000–12) and the Urban‐Rural Gradient in Greece.
  Luca Salvati.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. August 18, 2016
  The present study investigates changes (2000–12) in the spatial distribution of per capita income in Greece assessing how economic expansion and recession shape regional disparities in a traditionally‐divided country. Descriptive statistics, multivariate techniques and spatial analysis have been carried out to identify clusters of Greek regions with an homogeneous development path. Results outline how the gap between wealthy and disadvantaged regions consolidated with economic expansion (2000–07) strengthening the centrality of medium‐size urban areas, industrial and tourism‐specialised districts. Recession (2008–12) has widened the gap between Athens and the rest of Greece, while mitigating the disparities in per capita income between rich and poor regions. This evidence seem to contrast with literature indicating how dynamic regions came to be less exposed to recession than economically‐disadvantaged regions. The 2008–09 crisis stimulates a rethinking of the geography of socio‐economic disparities in highly‐divided countries, pointing out how expansion and recession differently impact the spatial distribution of wealth.

  August 18, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12203   open full text
• Satisfaction with the Political Domain of Local Government in a Contemporary British City.
  David C. Broadstock, Alan Collins.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. August 18, 2016
  This paper explores satisfaction with the political domain of local government performance, using survey data from a contemporary British city as the empirical context. It employs a factor‐augmented ordered logit analysis of data emerging from a representative city‐wide series of over 1,000 household interviews. Affective reactions to local economic performance and policy effectiveness are constructed in the spirit of the approach used in earlier work by social scientists. The key significant influences that raise or depress satisfaction at this geographical level are presented. Affective reactions to past policy and the economy are both shown to be statistically significant, but with reactions to the economy being negative while those for other policy reactions seemingly positive.

  August 18, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12192   open full text
• European Knowledge Neighbourhood: Knowledge Production in EU Neighbouring Countries and Intensity of the Relationship with EU Countries.
  Corinne Autant‐Bernard, Sylvie Chalaye, Elisa Gagliardini, Stefano Usai.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. July 29, 2016
  This study aims to analyse the creation of knowledge in the European neighbourhood and the diffusion of knowledge among EU countries and European neighbouring countries (ENCs). We first collate different indicators of knowledge production and diffusion in order to characterise the main feature of ENCs. In this respect, we contribute not only with an overview of potential knowledge interactions between EU and ENCs, but also suggest original ways to account for the different facets of knowledge diffusion. We use these indicators to assess the efficiency of ENC and EU in their use of knowledge resources, relying on data envelopment analysis (DEA). Contrary to the rare DEA studies in the field, inputs are both internal and external. The results show that, despite their weakness, ENCs may benefit from their orientation towards the EU for access to external knowledge, with some of them successfully turning their rare knowledge resources into knowledge creation and innovation.

  July 29, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12199   open full text
• Making News: Newspapers and the Institutionalisation of New Regions.
  Bouke Van Gorp, Kees Terlouw.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. July 29, 2016
  Regions have gained importance over the last decades. Old regions have picked up momentum while novel forms of municipal co‐operation and multi‐level governance have generated new regions. This paper examines the extent to which some new regions in the Netherlands have become familiar to the population, based on evidence from an analysis of newspaper articles. The study focused on the reports about several old and new regions within the borders of the traditional region of Noord‐Brabant, a Dutch province with a well‐established identity. In the dynamic constellation of Noord‐Brabant, news reports hinted at the institutionalisation of some of the new regions that have become meaningful places outside the administrative context in which they were originally created. The institutionalisation of some new regions did not result in a de‐institutionalisation of older regions in the same area but in a more complex layering of the identities of these regions with respect to each other.

  July 29, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12209   open full text
• European Neighbourhood Policy: History, Structure, and Implemented Policy Measures.
  Edzard Wesselink, Ron Boschma.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. July 15, 2016
  The objective is to provide an overview of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). Focus will be on the history of the ENP and its goals, the institutional structure of the ENP, and the policy measures that have been carried out through the ENP. The evolution of the ENP is traced from its origins in a 2003 European Commission communication to the broad and multifaceted policy that it is nowadays. Then the institutional dimension of the ENP, with both its thematic and spatial elements on a sub‐national, national, regional and interregional level will be explored. Finally, we present the specific policy measures that have been implemented on an interregional, regional, and national level.

  July 15, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12207   open full text
• Encountering Difference in the Workplace: Superficial Contact, Underlying Tensions and Group Rights.
  Catherine Harris, Gill Valentine.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. July 15, 2016
  Employment, demographic, cultural, and legal changes in Europe over the past 40 years have brought unprecedented numbers of minority groups into organisations at all levels, and research suggests that most workplaces are likely to become even more diverse in the future. While much attention has been paid to negative experiences of minorities in the workplace, it also has the potential to be an important site of prejudice reduction. In response, drawing on original quantitative and qualitative data, this article explores the encounters of socially different groups in the workplace. It demonstrates that workplaces can promote meaningful encounters. However, cases of positive encounter with difference were often discussed at the level of the individual, with reference to specific people and friendships, rather than towards the minority group to which the individual belonged. As such, these positive encounters were often superficial with underlying tensions still existing between different groups in the workplace.

  July 15, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12197   open full text
• The Neo‐Westphalian Public Sphere of Luxembourg: The Rebordering of a Mediated State Democracy in a Cross‐Border Context.
  Christian Lamour.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. July 15, 2016
  The mediatised public sphere in Europe seems to be put at risk by the growing importance attached to commercial values in the Media. At the same time, the Westphalian framework of political publicity is said to be diminishing in scale due to globalisation. However, both affirmations are not necessarily true in cross‐border metropolitan regions. As suggested in this paper, based on a quantitative and a qualitative analysis of a free daily publication located in the cross‐border urban region of Luxembourg, commercial media can help to reconfigure a neo‐Westphalian and territorial public sphere made of linear and network‐like borders. It is not so much the source of income of the media and the functional dynamics of international urban areas which determine the future of the mediatised public sphere and its territorial background in borderlands Europe but the values of plural reporters in a changing economic and cultural context.

  July 15, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12202   open full text
• Embedding Remittances: A Methodological Note on Financial Diaries in Nicaragua.
  Nanneke Winters.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. July 13, 2016
  In response to the methodological challenge of embedding remittances to counter dominant development discourses, this paper aims to contribute to remittances research by discussing financial diaries in Muy Muy, Nicaragua. Based on longitudinal and integrated quantitative and qualitative tracking of migrant household practices, financial diaries facilitate explorations of the social and contextual dimensions of remittances that may help account for their heterogeneous character. In particular, the paper highlights the partiality of diaries as well as the translocal interdependency and irregularity of household practices, providing clues for integrating remittances instead of isolating them as neutral instrumental transfers. It uses the example of household debt to further anchor remittances locally, illustrating how financial diaries can expose the changes and considerations that are part of household practices, including remittances. The paper concludes by suggesting that financial diaries need a decisively qualitative framework and may be particularly useful in contexts characterised by multiple migrations.

  July 13, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12204   open full text
• Size of Town, Level of Education and Life Satisfaction in Western Europe.
  Matteo Migheli.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. July 13, 2016
  I analyse the effect of living in settlements of different sizes on individual life satisfaction. The literature usually finds a negative correlation between life satisfaction and size of town. Here I cluster the population by level of education; the results show that people get dissatisfaction from living in large centres and that both education and income attenuate this effect. In particular, high education renders the cities and their features more enjoyable.

  July 13, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12205   open full text
• Transborder Co‐Operation and Competition Among Firms in the Polish‐German Borderland.
  Sylwia Dołzbłasz, Andrzej Raczyk.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. July 13, 2016
  The objective of the study was to analyse the transborder relationships of co‐operation and competition among economic entities operating in the Polish‐German borderland. The analysis concentrated primarily on the internationalisation of economic activity, the perceived strength of co‐operation, the actual competitive pressure, and the identification of the dominant character of transborder relationships. The analysis was conducted in the Polish‐German borderland in 2011. The study was based on a questionnaire survey (600 firms: 300 on the Polish side and 300 on the German side of the border). The research revealed that the predominant type of relationship among companies was that of co‐operation. However, the perceived importance of transborder relationships was generally low. Moreover, it can be stated that the vast majority of the businesses were operating without considering the context of the border.

  July 13, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12191   open full text
• Uneven Regional Development Under Balanced Development Strategies: Space‐Time Paths of Regional Development in Guangdong, China.
  Jie Gu, Suhong Zhou, Xinyue Ye.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. July 11, 2016
  Many questions regarding local economic phenomena involve issues of spatial and temporal dependence and heterogeneity. One of the main ideas of the socialist market economic system which was set up in 1978 in China is ‘those becoming rich earlier bring along other people, all achieving the common richer eventually’. However, after several decades, having performed a series of balanced development strategies and policies, is this purpose true or not? How about the outcome of regional level of planning strategies under the socialist‐market system? This paper focus on the intra provincial development, and uses per capita GDP of Guangdong, one of the most developed provinces in China to analyse the economic development of prefecture‐level cities from 1978 to 2013 with a new exploratory space‐time method. Three conclusions can be drawn as follows: first, the degree of regional economic development is gradually deepening along with rapid economic development in Guangdong province and the per capita GDP difference is gradually widening between the Pearl River Delta region and the non‐Pearl River Delta region. The core‐periphery relation is clear within the provincial level's development. Second, the trend and position of space‐time paths are different across regions. Third, the space‐time paths have not intersected across poor and rich regions during the last 33 years. Widening uneven development is concealed by the ‘fast growth’ economic phenomenon. The macro‐economic environment has had some effects on different regions, with the effect on fast growing areas, such as the core region of the Pearl River Delta the most obvious. There is a lag effect on other undeveloped areas. At the same time, under the socialist market economic system, the market is the main motivation behind regional discrepancies, and some policies and strategies aimed at narrowing the gap have had limited success.

  July 11, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12200   open full text
• Trade Activity Between the EU and Its Neighbouring Countries: Trends and Potential.
  Dimitris Kallioras, Anna Maria Pinna.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. July 11, 2016
  The objective of the paper is to examine whether trade activity intensifies over time as the outcome of signed bilateral trade agreements. Focusing on (the trade component of) the European Neighbourhood Policy, the paper conducts a study of trade activity between the EU and its neighbouring countries, attempting to offer a detailed analysis in terms of trade patterns and to investigate whether proximity is combined with higher trade flows, within the framework of a free trade agreement. The analysis utilises data derived from BACI database and covers the period from 1995 to 2011. The findings of the paper indicate that there is a lot of potential for the expansion of trade activity between the EU and its neighbouring countries.

  July 11, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12193   open full text
• Measuring EU Urban‐Rural Continuum Through Fuzzy Logic.
  Francesco Pagliacci.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. July 11, 2016
  This paper aims to provide a multidimensional and continuous indicator of rurality by means of fuzzy logic. A nuanced urban‐rural continuum actually occurs in an enlarged Europe. Thus, the introduction of a fuzzy rurality indicator (FRI) can improve conventional urban‐rural classifications. FRI takes into account about 1,300 NUTS 3 regions throughout the EU 27. Being a continuous indicator, it highlights those nuances, in a multidimensional perspective: it covers complementary drivers, such as role of agriculture, population density and land use characteristics. The paper also stresses geographical differences among EU Countries and groups of them. In this respect, replacing Eurostat urban‐rural typologies, FRI improves both accuracy of further socio‐economic analyses and policy evaluations.

  July 11, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12201   open full text
• A Gravity Model of Migration Between the ENC and the EU.
  Raul Ramos, Jordi Suriñach.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. July 11, 2016
  Due to its ageing population and low birth rates, the European Union (EU) will need to import foreign labour in the next decades. In this context, the EU neighbouring countries (ENC) are the main countries of origin and transit of legal and irregular migration towards Europe. Their economic, cultural, and historical links also make them an important potential source of labour. The objective of this paper is to analyse past and future trends in ENC‐EU bilateral migration relationships. With this aim, we specify and estimate a gravity model for nearly 200 countries between 1960 and 2010. Next, we use the model to obtain medium‐run migration forecasts. Our results show a clear increase in migratory pressures from ENC to the EU in the near future, but probably lower than initially expected.

  July 11, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12195   open full text
• Culture and Innovation: Evidence from the European Union and Neighbouring Countries.
  Anneli Kaasa.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. July 06, 2016
  This exploratory study investigates the effect of different cultural dimensions on different innovation indicators covering as many EU countries and neighbouring countries as possible. The measures of cultural dimensions were composed on the basis of the EVS/WVS data with the help of confirmatory factor analysis. Correlation, regression, graphical and cluster analyses were used. It was confirmed that innovation processes are strongly reliant on culture: power distance, uncertainty avoidance and masculinity turned out to be negatively and individualism positively related to innovation performance. The final innovation performance may develop on the basis of the combined effect of the four cultural dimensions that may or may not balance each other in a particular country. Hence, the Culture Index was calculated on the basis of the four cultural dimensions and it appeared to explain the differences in innovation performance between different countries quite well.

  July 06, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12194   open full text
• The Geography of Foreign Investments in the EU Neighbourhood.
  Andrea Ascani, Riccardo Crescenzi, Simona Iammarino.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. July 02, 2016
  This paper aims at investigating the drivers of Multinational Enterprise (MNE) investment in countries linked to the ‘core’ of the European Union (EU 15) by different degrees of functional, economic and political integration: the EU ‘new’ Member States, accession and candidate countries, European Neighbourhood Policy countries, as well as Russia. Understanding the drivers of foreign direct investment (FDI) in these countries is highly relevant in consideration of their increasing integration into the global market and the strong influence exerted by the EU on this process. By employing data on individual greenfield investment projects for the period 2003 to 2008, this paper aims to disentangle the drivers of FDI in these countries for different industrial sectors, business functions and investment origins. The empirical results suggest that FDI in the area tends to follow market‐seeking and efficiency‐oriented strategies, and show path‐dependency and concentration patterns that may reinforce core‐periphery development trajectories in the EU neighbourhood.

  July 02, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12198   open full text
• Determinants of Networking Practices in the Chinese Transition Context: Empirical Insights from the Pearl River Delta.
  Wenying Fu, Javier Revilla Diez, Daniel Schiller.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. June 23, 2016
  The underlying spatial forces of firm networking practices are understudied in the literature of economic geography. This paper aims to reveal patterns and mechanisms of networking practices and relates them to China's transitional context based on empirical data from a firm survey in the Pearl River Delta. It addresses the localisation effect as the primary factor in explaining the selection of networking partners. The results of this paper suggest a strong tendency towards networking with local government agencies vis‐à‐vis weak linkages with business partners. Furthermore, it reveals that the intent of bonding with local authorities through interpersonal relationships increases with the localisation of customers. Meanwhile, firms are more likely to pursue learning‐oriented networks with competitors as the number of suppliers in the same city increases. The findings add to the understanding of network relations in China, in particular to the rationales behind relations to local government officials.

  June 23, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12206   open full text
• A Comparative Perspective on Institutional Quality in Countries at Different Stages of European Integration.
  Will Bartlett, Nevenka Čučković, Krešimir Jurlin.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. June 22, 2016
  The paper investigates changes in institutional quality in countries at different stages of European integration over the seven‐year period from 2004‐11. It analyses two countries of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) region, two from the Western Balkans and two EU Member States from South East Europe. The analysis reveals differences between the country groups in the extent of institutional convergence, in perceptions of corruption and in the pace of democratic consolidation. Analysis of changes in a newly constructed index of institutional quality in the public sector reveals a further falling behind the EU in some key dimensions. We conclude that the EU did not play an important role as a ‘transformative power’ in the two ENP countries over the period up to 2012, and that the process of institutional reform was incomplete due to an absence of a clear European perspective.

  June 22, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12196   open full text
• Transport Supply and Demand Changes in Relation to Unemployment: Empirical Evidence from the Czech Republic in a Time of Crisis.
  Miroslav Marada, Viktor Květoň.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. May 11, 2016
  The continuing European recession underlines the urgency of the unemployment and labour force mobility issue. Therefore, the objective of this study is to scrutinise the relationship between changes in unemployment rate and transport indicators in the intercensal period 2001–2011. Both primary and secondary data are used in the analysis. Rate of car ownership and commuting data were taken from national censuses in 2001 and 2011 which surrounded the 2008 crisis. Primary data came from 1,023 interviews. The relationships among indicators are identified with the help of several statistical techniques whose results are analysed. Further, analyses have confirmed the dominant importance of passenger car ownership and car use in relation to decreased unemployment. It is particularly important in economically weaker areas with a poor access, that are endangered by social exclusions. Furthermore, it is necessary to emphasise the importance of public transport as a means of preventing social exclusion.

  May 11, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12186   open full text
• Economic Geography of the Australian Mining Industry.
  Celal Bayari.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. April 29, 2016
  This paper is a discussion of the economic geography of Australia. It provides a history of foreign investment in mining, and discusses several resources booms that shaped the landscape of the continent and the role of governments (state, federal and territory governments) in this process. The paper presents a chronological account of the development of the Australian mining industry, the primary activities of which are the extraction, and export of unprocessed coal, iron, minerals and increasingly natural gas. The paper analyses the industry's interaction with foreign investment and government assistance (that is, government spending in relation to the industry such as subsidies, loans and infrastructure construction, etc.). Australia's trade and foreign investment environment have long been deregulated. The Australian mining industry has benefited from this deregulation. But its most spectacular period has been the ‘commodities super‐cycle’ of the 2000s–2010s. Overall, its contribution to exports has long typified the mining industry. The discussion herein draws attention to the applicability of the ‘eclectic theory’ in reference to foreign investment in mining. That is, investing mining MNEs (multinational enterprises) have three main types of ‘locational advantages’ in Australia: (i) volume of the availability of resources; (ii) foreign investment regulatory environment; and (iii) government assistance that benefits the mining industry's expansion.

  April 29, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12185   open full text
• Defiant Neoliberalism and the Danger of Detroit.
  Jason Hackworth.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. April 29, 2016
  Critical geographical studies of neoliberalism have emphasised how local spatialities complicate the implementation and theorisation of top‐down, idealised versions of the ideology. The central assumption is that local circumstances autonomously contradict or disrupt such deployments of neoliberalism. This paper explores the deployment of ‘defiant neoliberalism’, and the use of Detroit as a vehicle to promote and ‘prove’ its veracity. Some geographers have suggested that such defiant ideologies are unworthy of serious critique because they are so self‐evidently contradicted by local circumstances. The case calls into question the assumption that local circumstance naturally challenges ideological framings such as neoliberalism. Many local details contradict the veracity of idealised neoliberalism, yet its promoters are able to actively morph them (or elide them) into a narrative that supports the wider ideology.

  April 29, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12184   open full text
• The Russian Cyber‐Bride as Geopolitical Fantasy.
  Ian Klinke.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. March 18, 2016
  This article unpacks the fantasy of the Russian online bride and its striking contamination with geopolitical language. Drawing on critical geopolitics and psychoanalysis, it explores the economy of desire and anxiety that accompanies British men's quest for sexually available ‘traditional’ housewives that are still untouched by ‘modern’ feminism. The paper argues that these men desire the slippery substance of Easternness – an ideal object of desire which is too elusive to be conquered or held. The paper thereby inverts existing accounts of the sexualised nature of the geopolitical gaze to expose the traces of geopolitics in sexual fantasies themselves. In doing so, it formulates the basis for a triadic understanding of otherness.

  March 18, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12175   open full text
• Europe's ‘Others’ in the Polar Mediterranean.
  Philip E. Steinberg.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. March 18, 2016
  A large body of literature problematises the role of the Mediterranean, as both civilisational hearth and liminal frontier, in both ancient and modern Europe. However, much less attention has been directed to the inland sea at Europe's northern edge: the Arctic. Increasingly, as the Arctic becomes attractive to non‐Arctic European capitals as a potential site of investment and (in)security, European states, and perhaps the EU as a whole, are seeking to construct the Arctic, like the Mediterranean, as a space that is both marginal and central to the continent's future. This paper seeks to investigate the extent to which the Arctic is, to paraphrase Viljhalmur Stefansson, Europe's ‘Polar Mediterranean’ and what this means for Europe as it constructs institutions and identities that, as in the Mediterranean, use the concept of the inland sea to both incorporate and differentiate its internal and external ‘others.’

  March 18, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12176   open full text
• Revisiting Al‐Idrissi: The Eu and the (Euro)Mediterranean Archipelago Frontier.
  Xavier Ferrer‐Gallardo, Olivier Thomas Kramsch.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. March 18, 2016
  This contribution has three overarching objectives. First, it seeks to describe the logics of fracture and cohesion governing current geopolitical dynamics in the Mediterranean. Second, in the face of these contradictory tendencies, it proposes the notion of archipelago‐frontier as a concept for deepening our understanding of an ever more dispersed and ubiquitous geography defining the Southern border of the EU. In this light we draw on the contemporary resonances of the destabilising cartographic imagination of Al‐Idrissi (1100‐1165). And we argue that, read today, it helps us rethink the current symbolic, terminological (and hence geopolitical) abduction of the Mediterranean by the European Union, which the very term ‘Euromediterranean’ encapsulates. Finally, the paper underlines the necessity of forging new vistas on the Mediterranean engendering perspectives that are more dialogical, plurivocal and sensitive to permanent transformation, as evoked by a long‐term spatial as well as political horizon of struggle.

  March 18, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12177   open full text
• Contemporary Geopolitical Positionings of Iceland Towards ‘Europe’ and the Nordic States.
  Alun Jones, Julian Clark.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. March 18, 2016
  In the context of the spatialities of Europeanisation, we demonstrate the manoeuvrability of states through the selection and deployment of geopolitical positioning strategies. Specifically, we highlight how geographic quantities (territory, location, resources, natural conditions) are bundled together to substantiate a mutable national interest as well as underpin the advocacy by states of particular geopolitical positionings. We argue that the diplomatic use of geographic quantities in state‐led efforts to structure and shape international interactions has demonstrable geopolitical consequences. Using the case study of Iceland, one of the first casualties of the international financial crisis, we examine this state's geopolitical repositioning towards ‘EUrope’ through use of geographical uniqueness and concomitant reaffirmation of Nordic closeness. We expose the diplomatic challenges to the use of geographical categories such as uniqueness in geopolitical (re)positioning towards the emerging ‘EUropean’ order.

  March 18, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12178   open full text
• Imagining ‘Europe’: Constituting Turkey's Identity on the Path to Eu Membership.
  Zeynep Arkan.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. March 18, 2016
  In the aftermath of the Cold War, Turkey, once the ‘southern bastion of NATO’, had to redefine its identity and geopolitical location in relation to not only the West and Europe, but also its neighbours to the East. In this period, the country's aspiration to join the European Union and its position vis‐à‐vis Europe proved to be determining factors in its identity transformation process, taking into consideration its traditional Western orientation. By specifically focusing on the last decade, this study analyses how Turkey's decision‐makers constituted the identity of the state in relation to a specific conception of Europe. It argues that these decision‐makers, through references to the distinctive history and geography of Turkey, reconceptualised the identity of the state in order to transform Turkey into an effective actor in the world and, in doing so, challenged the dominant inclusive, multi‐cultural and normative characterisations of the European Union's identity.

  March 18, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12180   open full text
• Introduction to the Special Issue: Europe and its Others.
  Virginie Mamadouh, Luiza Bialasiewicz.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. March 18, 2016
  There is no abstract available for this paper.

  March 18, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12188   open full text
• The Formation and Sustainability of same Product Retail Store Clusters in A Modern Mega City.
  Rujirutana Mandhachitara, Randall Shannon.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. March 16, 2016
  Compared with manufacturing locational analysis, relatively few scholarly researchers have demonstrated serious interest in examining the forces responsible for same store retail clustering in large cities. The centrifugal and centripetal forces influencing retail locations were once the subject of serious intellectual debate. Same product retail store (SPRS) clusters, which were once common in the retail landscape of Manhattan and other Western primary cities, are now in severe decline. However, there remain modern megacities where similar retail store cluster phenomenon is resurgent. This paper attempts to examine the formation and sustainability of the SPRS clustering phenomenon illustrated by Bangkok, Thailand. The authors find 14,468 SPRS permanent retail outlets located in 299 clusters. The data were mapped and then classified according to the North American Industrial Classification System. Locational Gini coefficients were computed to permit an analysis of the city's retail clustering within and between its fifty administrative districts.

  March 16, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12187   open full text
• Stress in Suburbia: Counting the Costs of Ireland's Property Crash and Mortgage Arrears Crisis.
  Richard Waldron, Declan Redmond.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. December 01, 2015
  Following the 2008 financial crisis, an extensive geographic literature has examined mortgage market financialisation and its socio‐spatial impacts, particularly patterns of mortgage defaults and foreclosures in US cities. However, the local geographic impacts remain under‐examined in European contexts, including Ireland, limiting the ability to accurately identify the casualties of the crisis and understand the manner in which they are affected. This paper draws on quantitative survey data to examine the Irish mortgage arrears crisis in a suburban spatial context. The socio‐economic and mortgage characteristics of households struggling with arrears are examined, while participants’ open‐ended responses elaborate upon the drivers of arrears and impacts upon households’ quality of life. The results demonstrate the extreme distress faced by suburban mortgagors and the role of the banks’ underwriting practices in driving arrears difficulties. The research questions Ireland's model of homeownership provision, particularly as home repossessions are expected to increase through 2015 and onwards.

  December 01, 2015   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12170   open full text
• High‐Speed Rail and Rural Livelihood: The Wuhan‐Guangzhou Line and Qiya Village.
  Shujing Liu, Christian Kesteloot.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. November 27, 2015
  China has started to develop the world's largest high‐speed rail network in the twenty‐first century with the general aims of developing the economy and increasing environmental sustainability. Meanwhile economic reforms have created massive movements of rural workers towards urban labour markets. The co‐existence of these movements with a HSR network raises the question about the impacts of the HSR on rural migrants and the livelihoods in their villages. This paper seeks to analyse these impacts from a livelihood perspective. Two main roles of transport are analysed: transport as delivering access to new economic opportunities and transport as an industry providing employment. Statistical data and fieldwork evidence in Qiya, a small village in Hunan province, show that the opening of the Wuhan‐Guangzhou HSR line decreased their access to places of employment both in terms of cost and time, but the HSR construction created employment opportunities for the villagers.

  November 27, 2015   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12169   open full text
• Determinants of Intra‐Distribution Dynamics in European Regions: An Empirical Assessment of the Role of Structural Intervention.
  Enrico Fabrizi, Gianni Guastella, Stefano Marta, Francesco Timpano.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. November 27, 2015
  This paper examines the dynamic of income distribution in European regions and attempts to relate movements within this distribution to regional structural characteristics and to the impact of cohesion policy (CP). There is evidence that CP supports advanced economic development in lagging and peripheral regions, hence contributing to the ‘convergence objective’. The effectiveness of CP, however, depends on the manner in which funds are managed by single regions: the likelihood of progressing in the income distribution is associated, in fact, to the balance between investments in infrastructure and the productive environment, favouring the former. Evidence presented in this paper also relates regional economic performance to the educational level and innovation in regions, providing useful insights for the current debate about reshaping EU cohesion policy toward a more place‐based approach.

  November 27, 2015   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12171   open full text
• Intra‐Metropolitan Agglomeration of Formal and Informal Manufacturing Activity: Evidence from Cali, Colombia.
  Ana Isabel Moreno‐Monroy, Gustavo Adolfo García Cruz.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. November 19, 2015
  This paper compares the agglomeration patterns of formal versus informal manufacturing activity within a metropolitan area of an emergent economy. We use census manufacturing enterprise‐level data for the metropolitan area of Cali for 2005 to calculate the degree of spatial agglomeration and co‐agglomeration by means of M‐functions. We also conduct spatial analysis on the distribution of formal and informal enterprises by means of kernel density mapping of selected industries. We find that although for the industrial sector as a whole informal enterprises display higher agglomeration intensity than formal enterprises of similar size, this is not the case for each individual industry. We also find that significant agglomeration of both formal and informal enterprises of similar size in the same industry does not necessarily imply that they agglomerate in the same areas of the city.

  November 19, 2015   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12163   open full text
• Gendered Space‐Time Constraints, Activity Participation and Household Structure: A Case Study Using A GPS‐Based Activity Survey in Suburban Beijing, China.
  Na Ta, Mei‐Po Kwan, Yanwei Chai, Zhilin Liu.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. November 19, 2015
  Space‐time constraints imposed by employment and household responsibilities may lead to greater gender differences in individuals’ participation in daily activities. However, few studies have directly examined the impact of household structure on the gender differences in space‐time constraints associated with various daily activities due to the lack of accurate space‐time data. Using a 7‐day GPS‐based activity‐travel diary dataset collected in Beijing, this paper investigates how household structure influences men's and women's space‐time constraints and reduces the related gender differences in daily activity participation. The results suggest that gender and household structure matters. Getting help from retired parents reduces the level of fixity household heads perceive and decreases gender differences in space‐time constraints. However, the degree of the impact differs among activities and retired parents’ age, and fixity level depends on the individual and household background of the person initiating the activity.

  November 19, 2015   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12167   open full text
• Production Network Knowledge as A Foundation for Resistance ‐ Workers Influence on A Chinese Acquisition in Germany.
  Kai Bollhorn, Martin Franz.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. November 13, 2015
  This paper analyses how workers in Germany's automotive industry developed power in the process of a transnational carve out – namely the carve‐out of the rubber and plastics department of the German automotive supplier ZF Friedrichshafen AG to the Chinese based Zhuzhou Times New Material Technology Co., Ltd. in 2013. The worker's actions were successful because they used their production network knowledge and decided against a strategy of pure co‐operative co‐determination but implemented a strategy of resistance. They concentrated their resistance on the weak points within the value creation processes of the automotive production network. On the basis of this, the authors argue that production network knowledge can be used to develop collective power within organisations. The study is based on qualitative interviews with ZF observing participation of workers events and a press analyses on the particular acquisition.

  November 13, 2015   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12164   open full text
• European Integration and Spatial Wage Structure in Poland.
  Andrzej Cieślik, Bartłomiej Rokicki.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. November 13, 2015
  In this paper we examine the relationship between average wages and market potential across Polish 16 NUTS 2 administrative units during the 1995–2009 period to study the effects of increased international market access using the new economic geography approach. In particular, we estimate the relationship between average regional wages and the market‐potential function derived from the modified Helpman‐Hanson theoretical model. We demonstrate that both before and after Poland's entry into the European Union the regional economic potential is positively related to the regional level of wages. The magnitude of the estimated parameters on the market potential after Poland's entry into the EU is lower compared to the estimates obtained for the period before the entry but the difference does not seem significant.

  November 13, 2015   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12166   open full text
• Labels of Interest Groups as Indicators of A Vernacular Region: A Case Study in Croatia.
  Branimir Vukosav, Borna Fuerst‐Bjeliš.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. November 05, 2015
  While not necessarily actual in the contemporary administrative divisions, vernacular regions are an integral part of regional identities. As such, they are a type of perceptual regions based solely on the inhabitants’ inner perception of a region. Vernacular regions are usually articulated through the occurrence of a region's name in various informal narratives such as labels of interest groups. The aim of the paper is to use the official online databases as a means to identify and extract interest groups such as businesses, companies and public associations with labels containing the name of Zagora region in southern Croatia. The extracted data is used to map the vernacular region and reach conclusions about the applicability of the method and the utilised data sources, as well as to find out how external perception influences regional affiliation in a traditional region without institutional frame.

  November 05, 2015   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12168   open full text
• Contested Lands? Dissonance and Common Ground in Stakeholder Views on Forest Values.
  Katarina Haugen.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. November 05, 2015
  Forest lands are used in increasingly plural ways and serve society with numerous benefits. This paper analyses the views of private forest owners and the general public in Sweden on the values of the forest. Two main dimensions were identified: ‘preservation and recreation’ values, reflecting ecological and social aspects; and ‘production’ values, reflecting economic aspects. While the general public emphasised the importance of forest uses which cater to ecological and social forest values more strongly compared to the forest owners, no significant difference was found concerning economic forest values. This suggests that while there is scope for contestation over forest land use, there is also some potential for common ground across stakeholder groups. These findings add to the body of knowledge of the views on the use of forest lands, and can inform forest related planning, management and policy development.

  November 05, 2015   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12165   open full text
• Development Differentials and Interaction Effects in the European Regions: A Study Based on the Regional Lisbon Index.
  Vicente Rios, Pedro Pascual Arzoz, BelÉn iraizoz Apezteguia.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. July 31, 2015
  This paper investigates regional development dynamics in a sample of 254 NUTS 2 European Union regions over the period 2000–2010. To that end, we propose a new version of the regional Lisbon index containing changes with respect the index developed by Dijkstra. The regional Lisbon index includes employment, education and R&D indicators. Targets for these indicators are related to an action and economic development plan for the EU regions and have been incorporated into European Regional Policy programming. The analysis of regional development is based on the estimation of the spatial Durbin model, containing endogenous and exogenous interaction effects. We compare the performance of different specifications of the spatial weights matrix describing the spatial arrangement of the sample regions finding evidence in favour of an exponential‐decay distance matrix. Using this matrix, we determine the extent to which a change in a covariate in a particular region affects development in other regions.

  July 31, 2015   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12154   open full text
• Co‐Location Synergies: Specialised Versus Diverse Logistics Concentration Areas.
  Frank van den Heuvel, Karel van Donselaar, Peter de Langen, Jan Fransoo.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. July 06, 2015
  Although anecdotal evidence suggests that co‐location can bring about several benefits for co‐located logistics companies, implying the need to incorporate such considerations in location decisions, these benefits have hardly been analysed empirically. This paper provides detailed insights for decision making by precisely analysing the synergies attained through the co‐location of logistics firms in specialised and diverse logistics concentration areas. The paper analyses whether co‐location in logistics concentration areas that specialise in fresh produce provides additional benefits over co‐location in diverse logistics concentration areas that do not specialise in any particular type of products. A survey of managers of 127 logistics firms located in logistics concentration areas tested for differences in synergies through co‐location in specialised versus diverse logistics concentration areas. Logistics firms co‐located in fresh produce logistics parks share knowledge, combine transport and storage capacities, and trade products more than logistics firms co‐located in diverse logistics concentration areas.

  July 06, 2015   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12152   open full text
• The Current Health of Metropolitan Labour Markets in the United States.
  Gordon F. Mulligan, Neil Reid, Michael S. Moore.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. July 01, 2015
  Much recent research on US labour markets has turned to tracing out the dramatic changes that accompanied and followed the events of the Great Recession (2007–2009). But to date this research has led to more temporal as opposed to spatial detail about those changes. This paper uses an online data set to assess the relative economic health (performance) of the US's more than 350 metropolitan labour markets during and after the Great Recession. These data address both the current level (e.g. unemployment rate) and the recent trend (e.g. 3‐year job growth) in the economic health of those labour markets. Multivariate analysis generates one sub‐index for level and a second sub‐index for trend and then an overall performance index is calculated. But, after recognising that heterogeneity in these labour markets exists according to their different sizes, this paper re‐examines those online data using four separate population size classes. New indices are then generated reflecting the relative sizes of the metropolitan labour markets and the new rankings that follow differ in important ways from the original rankings. The findings also indicate a disjuncture now exists between the economic health of Snowbelt versus Sunbelt cities. Coming immediately out of the Great Recession the average economic health of Northern cities is much better than that of Southern cities.

  July 01, 2015   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12147   open full text
• Spatial Differentiation in Industrial Dynamics. The Case of the Netherlands (1994–2005).
  Marco Capasso, Elena Cefis, Koen Frenken.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. July 01, 2015
  We compare the industrial dynamics in the core, semi‐periphery and periphery in the Netherlands in terms of firm entry‐exit, size, growth and location patterns. The contribution of our work is to provide the first comprehensive study on spatial differentiation in industrial dynamics for all firm sizes and all sectors, including services. We find that location patterns are largely consistent with the spatial product lifecycle model: traditional Fordist sectors are over‐represented in the periphery, while sectors associated with the ICT paradigm are over‐represented in the core, with the notable exception of science‐based manufacturing. Second, where the industrial dynamics in manufacturing sectors follow the predicted patterns, the industrial dynamics in service sectors largely contradict product lifecycle theory. We conclude that the spatial product lifecycle theory applies well to traditional manufacturing, while more specific theories are required to understand the location and industrial dynamics of science‐based industries and service industries.

  July 01, 2015   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12151   open full text
• Online Social Networks, Location, and the Dual Effect of Distance from the Centre.
  Balázs Lengyel, Ákos Jakobi.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. July 01, 2015
  Online social networks (OSN) are major platforms of ICT‐enabled communication, supporting place‐independent social life. However, recent findings suggest that the geographical location of users strongly affects network topology. Therefore, OSNs may be simultaneously related to locations and also unlocked from offline geographies. Our paper addresses this dual‐faced phenomenon, analysing the location‐specific effect on OSN diffusion and OSN usage. Findings on iWiW (International Who Is Who), the leading OSN in Hungary in the 2000s with more than 4 million users, suggest that the rate of users (proxy for OSN diffusion) is positively associated with the geographical proximity of Budapest, the foremost urban centre in the country. On the contrary, the average number of connections (proxy for OSN usage) is independent of the geographical proximity of the capital, and it is even higher in peripheral regions when controlling for other offline factors.

  July 01, 2015   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12150   open full text
• Intra‐Regional Differentiation of Population Development in Southern‐Limburg, the Netherlands.
  Josje J. Hoekveld, Marco Bontje.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. July 01, 2015
  Although we are steadily getting a better understanding of why regional population decline occurs, little is known about the causes of differentiated levels of decline between municipalities in the same region. In this paper we address the causes of intra‐regional differentiation in decline in the Dutch region Southern‐Limburg. The quantitative and qualitative analyses reveal that in the 1900‐1945 period, differentiation in population development was the result of economic boom and bust in the mining areas. After 1945 (except for 1985‐1989) however, the economic argument lost much of its relevance: intra‐regional differentiation has primarily been the result of intra‐regional and international migration and these flows are steered predominantly by life course motives, the uneven spatial distribution of housing opportunities and access to these opportunities within the region.

  July 01, 2015   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12149   open full text
• Exploring Cosmopolitanity and Connectivity in The Polycentric German Urban System.
  Anna Growe, Kati Volgmann.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. March 05, 2015
  This paper investigates the theoretical concept that a city is always influenced by the relations it has to its hinterland and to other cities. Taylor and colleagues point out that city‐city relations and city‐hinterland relations can be understood as two sides of a coin. Using this conception the polycentric structure and dynamics of the German urban system can be described through: (i) metropolitan functions representing city‐hinterland relations (cosmopolitanity) and (ii) a network of cities representing city‐city relations (connectivity). Measuring separately the degrees of cosmopolitanity and connectivity, we look at whether the German urban system after reunification has grown together, becoming one balanced urban system, and what role Berlin – as the new capital in the overall system – now has. The results of the two perspectives are compared and analysed.

  March 05, 2015   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12142   open full text
• The Internet and Desire to Move: The Role of Virtual Practices in the Inspiration Phase of Migration.
  Eva Thulin, Bertil Vilhelmson.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. March 05, 2015
  This paper contributes to the understanding of non‐local migration in the digital age by investigating emerging virtual practices in the migration process. We focus on the initial inspiration phase that theoretically defines the attainable reach of individuals considering moving. Using a case‐based approach, we distinguish how online information and social contact influence an individual's early considerations and desires to move elsewhere. We draw on indepth interviews with young adults in Sweden. Our findings characterise how Internet‐based information influences the spatial, social, and temporal horizons of inspiration with potential implications for subsequent plans. We find that virtual practices spatially expand these horizons and promote a shift towards insider information. Results further suggest that a flow of information and background knowledge regarding opportunities in other places drives the inspiration phase, extending its duration until it is more or less continuous. Reduced information friction increases the scope for impulsiveness to spark migration inspiration and intentions.

  March 05, 2015   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12144   open full text
• Tesco in Korea: Regulation and Retail Change.
  Woohyoung Kim, Alan George Hallsworth.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. March 05, 2015
  In South Korea, rising resistance has slowed the advance of global retailer Tesco to the advantage of traditional shopping locations. In 2013, Tesco claimed that retrospectively‐applied Korean Sunday trading regulations reduced its trading there by 8 per cent. We utilised secondary sources and also conducted an empirical survey of 1,092 consumers in 22 Korean cities to assess reactions to this regulatory change and found evidence of spatial switching back to traditional locations. Our Korean respondents supported the new Sunday trading restraint. Such an outcome would not be expected in those Western countries where further liberalisation is still promoted. Also, the poor trading figures announced by Tesco‐Homeplus in 2013 imply that Homeplus never fully adjusted to the Korean market. Issues of society and culture continue to challenge commercial innovations: with spatial implications.

  March 05, 2015   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12145   open full text
• Growing but not Developing: Long‐Term Effects of Clustering in the Peruvian Clothing Industry.
  Evert‐Jan Visser, José I. Távara, Fernando Villaran.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. April 21, 2014
  This paper analyses how a cluster of clothing firms in Peru fared over a 15 year period. The question is how and why this cluster has changed. We collected data for 1993 and 2007, comparing clustered and dispersed firms. The cluster grew significantly in terms of the number of firms and employment, due to the attraction of trade activities towards the cluster. The productivity of clustered producers fell somewhat, although they maintain an advantage over dispersed firms. This is due to static advantages falling into a producer's lap once located in the area and developing at the level of transacting inputs and output. Clustered producers do not use profits to upgrade businesses but rather invest in real estate. On the whole, they are struggling. Enhancing the quality of cluster governance is critical to prevent a further decline of the production part of the cluster.

  April 21, 2014   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12083   open full text
• Can Neg Explain the Spatial Distribution of Wages of Chile?
  Dusan Paredes.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. April 11, 2014
  The new economic geography (NEG) has been tested to explain the spatial concentration of wages in developed countries, but it has not been evaluated for developing countries where the excessive spatial concentration seems to be related with negative consequences on the economic development. This paper covers this gap in the literature estimating by first time a NEG model for a developing country such as Chile, pursuing two research question: (1) Can the NEG explain the spatial distribution of wages in a developing country as Chile?; and (2) How can the NEG be used to infer information about the future level of spatial concentration of wages in Chile? The results suggest that the case of Chile is poorly explained by the NEG and even higher level of spatial concentration should be expected in the future. These results indicate that the empirical application of NEG is not trivial for developing countries, and some considerations such as inclusion of the first nature or analysis at micro data level must be incorporated by future researches.

  April 11, 2014   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12088   open full text
• The (mis)fortunes of exceeding a small local air market: Comparing Amsterdam and Brussels.
  Guillaume Burghouwt, Frédéric Dobruszkes.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. April 01, 2014
  Comparing air service growth in Amsterdam and Brussels, this paper aims to understand how the strategies of airlines and public authorities allow certain medium‐sized cities to succeed in exceeding their local market by connecting passengers, while others do not. In contrast to Brussels, Amsterdam has become one of the most air serviced European cities, reaching a highly disproportionate level of service given both its size and its airport catchment area. Amsterdam has reached its rank thanks to a successful, global hub‐and‐spokes strategy led by KLM and its partners. Such a success story would have been impossible without support from the State pursuing the expansion of numerous, liberal bilateral air service agreements and a regional development strategy which facilitated the expansion of Amsterdam Schiphol airport in the 1990s. Finally, this paper shows how public and corporate governances might be able to convert themselves to the rules of the market economy.

  April 01, 2014   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12085   open full text
• Randomising Development: Geography, Economics and the Search for Scientific Rigour.
  Sophie Webber.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. April 01, 2014
  Development economics has become something of an innovator within the discipline of economics, due to its adoption of experimental and statistical analysis techniques. In this paper I give examples of this new trend in development economics: randomised‐control trials, natural experiments, specialist analytical techniques like pre‐analysis plans, and evidence‐driven policy evaluation. I explore this novel experimental development economics in conversation with current argumentation in economic/development geography about economics. I do this in order to ask whether this experimental trend responds to any of these geographical critiques. Although I find that this new development economics repeats many of the tendencies of economics that geographers find so specious, it does pose challenges to economic/development geography, which I explore.

  April 01, 2014   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12086   open full text
• An Exploration of Memory‐making in the Digital Era: Remembering the FEPOW Story Online.
  Hamzah Muzaini, Brenda S.A. Yeoh.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. April 01, 2014
  Symptomatic of the digital era, web‐memorials and web‐communities have become highly prevalent as a means of commemorating the past. Drawing on the analysis of fepow‐community.org.uk, an online network devoted to honouring the stories of Allied soldiers interned by the Japanese during the Second World War (also known as FEPOWs), and an online survey of its members, this paper examines the extent that such platforms facilitate more inclusionary allowances for doing so vis‐à‐vis physical sites of memory. Specifically, while web‐memorials do remedy some of the shortcomings linked to the latter, they too are plagued by criticisms limiting them as a more democratic way of remembering. It also highlights how physical sites of memory provide certain affective resonances virtual memorials do not. Consequently, both genres of memory are often capitalised upon complementarily (rather than in a mutually exclusive way) as each feeds into the other, both salient to memory work.

  April 01, 2014   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12087   open full text
• Spatial diversity in small‐scale fishing: A socio‐cultural interpretation of the Nile perch sector on Lake Victoria, Uganda.
  Joost Beuving.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. March 31, 2014
  This paper discusses spatial patterns in small‐scale fishing in Africa. It is located in Lake Victoria where since the 1990s a vibrant Nile perch fishing for overseas export developed. Focusing on a very small area in the Ugandan part of the lake, the paper uncovers a larger diversity in fishermen's responses to the dynamic environment of the Nile perch sector than a widely adopted generic model predicts. To understand this better, the paper looks at the social practices of Nile perch fishermen, uncovering the operation of different, spatially situated, fishing styles. These styles structure the social relations that the fishermen mobilise, the symbolic meanings they attach to their gear, and the values that inspire their decision‐making. By thus looking at socio‐cultural factors the paper hopes to contribute to an emerging spatial perspective on small‐scale fishing in Africa that begins with an interest in actual social practice.

  March 31, 2014   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12081   open full text
• A Simple Location Index Plus Some Maps and no Apologies: Back to Basics on the Development of Links Between Economic Integration and Spatial Concentration of Industries.
  Robert Schweizog, Alan Collins.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. March 31, 2014
  The analysis of the location patterns of economic activities in both Europe and the US has been addressed in an extensive literature dependent on increasingly more sophisticated techniques that arguably reframe debate away from the policy questions in focus and towards debate on the complex empirical techniques that seem to be in vogue at any given time. In part this has been a response to some clear shortcomings in the use of simple locational Gini coefficients. It is argued herein that simple index approaches can still retain value if augmented with intuitive reading of some relevant maps. An example of the utility of this approach is provided in relation to the location patterns of four exemplar manufacturing industries in the EU and USA.

  March 31, 2014   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12084   open full text
• Inserting Temporality into the Analysis of Displacement: Living Under the Threat of Displacement.
  Bahar Sakizlioğlu.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. March 17, 2014
  Even though there is a growing literature on the extent and impacts of state‐led gentrification and displacement, there is little attention to the process of change in restructuring neighbourhoods and how residents experience the threat of displacement. How is it to live in a house that is to be demolished? How does a neighbourhood change once it is targeted for gentrification? How do the residents experience the threat of displacement before actual displacement takes place? This paper addresses this gap and investigates the trajectory of neighborhood change in neighbourhoods targeted for gentrification. Based on an ethnographic study of the renewal process in Tarlabaşı /Istanbul, it discusses how residents live under the threat of displacement.

  March 17, 2014   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12051   open full text
• A Window on the (Changing) Neighbourhood: The Role of Pubs in the Contested Spaces of Gentrification.
  Olaf Ernst, Brian Doucet.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. March 17, 2014
  This paper examines the effects of gentrification through the lens of the interactions and perceptions which can be found in local, neighbourhood pubs. By interviewing predominantly Dutch, non‐gentrifying customers in the rapidly gentrifying Indische Buurt neighbourhood in Amsterdam, we uncovered discourses which are both welcoming to, and cautious of the process. Three themes were examined: changes in the neighbourhood, changes in the role of pubs in daily life and changes in the interactions within pubs. In many respects, the process of gentrification is welcomed because it represents something ‘Dutch’ coming into the neighbourhood after years of immigration. Divisions between gentrifiers and non‐gentrifiers are not experienced as starkly as is often portrayed in the literature; our respondents tended to be much more ambivalent than other non‐gentrifying groups portrayed in studies elsewhere. This may be due to the more managed‐nature of Dutch gentrification. However, there is a sense that one's pub is impervious to the changes in the rest of the neighbourhood, a discourse which must be taken into account when drawing any long‐term conclusions from this study.

  March 17, 2014   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12071   open full text
• From Yuppies to Yupps: Family Gentrifiers Consuming Spaces and Re‐inventing Cities.
  Lia Karsten.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. March 17, 2014
  This is a study of family consumption in an upgraded Amsterdam neighbourhood. It aims to unravel the relationship between the increase of middle‐class families and the establishing of new family‐related consumption spaces, both commercial and public. Based on observations and interviews in Amsterdam, we identify an increase in family and child directed consumption spaces. They reflect parental wishes to continue their former childless lifestyle, the need to combine work and care, and the wish to educate children in a wide range of skills. The more intensive consumption of parks and sidewalks reveals new practices of public parenting in urban contexts. It is argued that the transformation from childless yuppie to young urban professional parent (yupp) not only goes along with new consumption cultures but also with the production of a new city. This re‐invented city has potentials for age and gender equality, however unequal class relations appear to continue.

  March 17, 2014   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12055   open full text
• Displacement Through Participation.
  Carla Huisman.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. March 17, 2014
  Citizen participation is often regarded as a means to increase local democracy. Seldom is participation viewed as a means to legitimate disruptive practices of states. However, participation can become a tool for the effective implementation of policy rather than a means to enhance justice, if no power is transferred to citizens. Displacement in Amsterdam is a case in point. Here the local council together with housing corporations yearly forces over 2,000 households to leave their houses, a consequence of an ambitious policy of state‐led gentrification. Following Foucault, I explore the rationalities and techniques employed to ensure compliance. The promise of influence lures tenants into lengthy discussions with power holders. Investment choices are presented as objective facts and so provide a rationale for the disruptive interventions. Participation thus provides government a platform to impose its views in a context of severe power asymmetries, while alternatives are marginalised and dissent is disciplined.

  March 17, 2014   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12048   open full text
• Housing Liberalisation and Gentrification: The Social Effects of Tenure Conversions in Amsterdam.
  Willem R. Boterman, Wouter P.C. Gent.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. March 17, 2014
  Privatisation and liberalisation of the housing market are often used as governmental strategies for engineering the social composition of urban neighbourhoods. Drawing on longitudinal register data, this study reports findings from the highly‐regulated housing context of Amsterdam. Through regression modelling and GIS analyses, we demonstrate that tenure conversions from rent to owner‐occupancy are not just bringing about changes in social‐class composition, but also affect the ethnic and demographic compositions. Moreover, conversions from rent to ownership have highly spatially‐specific effects. Our evidence suggests that tenure conversions may contribute to gentrification in the inner‐city of Amsterdam, while conversions in post‐war neighbourhoods do not lead to a social upgrading and may even facilitate downgrading. Furthermore, trends in the converted section of the housing market are not just mirroring income developments but also seem to reflect trends in ethnic segregation and demographic trends such as a renewed interest among families to live in the inner‐city.

  March 17, 2014   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12050   open full text
• A Process of Change and a Changing Process: Introduction to the Special Issue on Contemporary Gentrification.
  Brian Doucet.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. March 17, 2014
  Gentrification is a process of social and spatial change, but it is also a changing process. This special issue aims to better understand new forms of gentrification, policies and experiences which have emerged since the year 2000. Specific emphasis has been given to the Netherlands, a country where the strong role of the state and more than two decades of pro‐gentrification policy have created a unique context where gentrification is pursued, implemented and experienced in different ways than in the Anglo‐Saxon world. Research into Dutch gentrification has led to new theoretical insights in the past and the papers in this special issue should present international readers with new and alternative perspectives towards contemporary gentrification, thereby contributing to a wider understanding of the ‘geography of gentrification’. This introduction will examine new spatial and social manifestations of gentrification over the past decade, examine what binds them together as part of the gentrification process, introduce Dutch gentrification and outline the papers featured in this special issue.

  March 17, 2014   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12075   open full text
• Construction of a Spatial Housing Price Index by Estimating an Almost Ideal Demand System.
  Víctor Iturra, Dusan Paredes.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. January 13, 2014
  The aim of this paper is to build, for the first time, a spatial housing price index for the Chilean communities. The first step is to recover hedonic prices of three housing attributes by estimating a mixed index model using a generalised method of moments (GMM) procedure. Second, a censored almost ideal demand system is estimated to build expenditures for every community and to compare them among different spatial units, while maintaining a constant utility level. Using micro data from the 2009 CASEN survey, we show that there are important differences in the expenditure of a consumer in Santiago to access the same level of welfare in another community in the country and there are important differences in housing prices among Chilean communities

  January 13, 2014   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12067   open full text
• Multiple Perspectives on Functional Coherence: Heterogeneity and Multiplexity in the Randstad.
  Martijn J. Burger, Evert J. Meijers, Frank G. Oort.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. December 26, 2013
  Measuring functional coherence in metropolitan regions, in particular polycentric ones, requires taking the issues of multiplexity and individual level heterogeneity more explicitly into account, as the spatial organisation of functional linkages is not necessarily identical. Based on the analysis of one type of functional linkage a region can appear to be integrated, but loosely connected based on another. We demonstrate the occurrence of multiplexity for the polycentric Dutch Randstad region, and focus particularly on the presence of individual level heterogeneity. Commuting patterns in the Randstad are strongly related to socio‐demographic variables and firm characteristics largely determine the scale of buyer‐supplier relationships. We present studies into functional coherence in the Randstad, and assess whether methods, including the interlocking network model, are sufficiently capable of accounting for multiplexity and individual level heterogeneity.

  December 26, 2013   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12061   open full text
• The Competitiveness of China's Leading Regions: Benchmarking Their Knowledge‐based Economies.
  Robert Huggins, Shougui Luo, Piers Thompson.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. December 25, 2013
  China's spectacular economic growth has been spatially uneven, with much development occurring in eastern coastal areas. In particular, three metropolitan ‘super‐regions’ have become China's most competitive knowledge‐based economies, consisting of the Pearl River Delta, the Yangtze River Delta, and the Bohai Gulf Region. This paper benchmarks the competitiveness of these regions, with a view to exploring which region is best positioned to become the most dominant knowledge‐based economy over time. Through the theoretical lens of dynamic comparative advantage, it is shown that each region has hugely increased its competitiveness through improvements in the capacity to absorb and diffuse knowledge. It is further shown that due to multi‐dimensional advantages the Yangtze River Delta, incorporating the Shanghai metropolis, is best positioned to become the dominant hub of China's future knowledge economy. It is concluded that China's leading regions will require further economic policy adjustments in order to secure their future competitiveness.

  December 25, 2013   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12065   open full text
• Binding Cross‐Border Regions: an Analysis of Cross‐Border Governance in Lille‐Kortrijk‐Tournai Eurometropolis.
  Frédéric Durand, Jen Nelles.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. December 17, 2013
  While the relatively free and frequent flow of traffic across international boundaries is an essential foundation of cross‐border regions, cross‐border public transit systems are the ultimate symbols of metropolitan integration. This paper investigates the governance of the cross‐border transit system in Eurometropolis of Lille‐Kortrijk‐Tournai between France and Belgium. It relies on a qualitative analysis of actors and institutions as well as social network analysis to more precisely fix the positions and roles of actors on either side of the border. The new cross‐border institution, the EGTC agency, is a central actor in public transit policy networks and its function is more complex than the institutional analysis implies. Evaluating these roles in evolving cross‐border public transit policy enables an assessment of the effectiveness of this new governance institution and the challenges faced by general‐purpose cross‐border governance structures in affecting policy areas in which political authority is fragmented.

  December 17, 2013   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12063   open full text
• Cognitive Distance and Obstacles to Subsidiary Business Success‐The Experience of Chinese Companies in Germany.
  Yuefang Si, Ingo Liefner.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. December 17, 2013
  The success of foreign direct investment (FDI) from developing countries to developed countries is critically dependent on managing the differences in the knowledge bodies of the regions and players involved. The theories that at least partly explain successful FDI of this kind use the terms cognitive distance and embeddedness. Most of the empirical research takes the perspective of regions and has addressed the problem of becoming embedded in the host regions. This paper takes the firm perspective and examines cognitive distance regarding not only the host region, but also the knowledge of the firms involved. It uses qualitative information from an extensive study of Chinese affiliates in Germany. In contrast to many other studies, this paper shows that a fast and successful process of becoming embedded in the host region can hamper the subsidiary's success, as it may cause conflict with the parent firm.

  December 17, 2013   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12064   open full text
• Understanding Mode Choice in the Chinese Context: The Case of Nanjing Metropolitan Area.
  Jianxi Feng, Martin Dijst, Bart Wissink, Jan Prillwitz.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. December 17, 2013
  In post‐reform China, rapid motorisation causes various problems like traffic congestion, diminishing road safety and air pollution. Adequate policies necessitate an understanding of the forces behind changing mode choices, but the rapidly developing literature is not complete yet. This paper aims to help fill that gap with an analysis of mode choice for commuting and shopping‐leisure trips in Nanjing. Using the Nanjing Residents Travel Survey, we find that models with the same independent variables explain mode choice in Nanjing better than in other cities in the world. Comparatively, members of ‘adult families’ use public transport and walking more often than the private car and bicycle. And inhabitants of danwei neighbourhoods walk more often than residents in commodity housing estates. These conclusions suggest that ongoing socio‐spatial transformations will push mode choice in China further towards private car use.

  December 17, 2013   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12068   open full text
• Perceiving the Ordinary: A Study of Everyday Landscapes in Belgium.
  Vincent Vanderheyden, Dan Van der Horst, Anton Van Rompaey, Serge Schmitz.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. December 17, 2013
  Landscape researchers have devoted relatively little attention to ordinary or everyday landscapes. This paper investigates differences in opinion about the attractiveness of these landscapes between groups of people according to their linguistic area and other socio‐demographic characteristics. A survey of 1,542 Dutch and French speakers in Belgium using photo‐questionnaires depicted the different types of Belgian rural landscape. Significant differences were observed regarding landscapes containing the same features, allowing to posit, to test, and to validate certain hypotheses. Dutch speakers found chessboard agrarian landscapes more attractive. Less educated participants felt more positive towards anthropogenic landscapes. Women were more attracted by farmed fields. Qualitative data added depth to the analysis, permitting to explore different ways in which people related to the landscape pictures. For a theoretical interpretation, we draw on Gibson's affordances theory and we revisit Larrère & Larrère's ways of looking at landscape theory.

  December 17, 2013   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12066   open full text
• Explaining Manufacturing and Non‐Manufacturing Inbound FDI Location in Five UK Regions.
  Grahame Fallon, Mark Cook.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. November 22, 2013
  This paper extends the analysis of foreign direct investment (FDI) location in the UK by exploring the determinants of manufacturing and non‐manufacturing inbound FDI location within and between the UK's core (the Southeast) and non‐core (West Midlands; Wales; Scotland and the Northwest) regions. Use is made of multiple regression techniques to analyse a set of official, longitudinal data gathered for the period from 1980 to 2005 as a means to this end. The findings offer new insights into the relative influence of regional, national and EU level factors and government policy over FDI location at the UK regional level, and into their variation between regions and sectors of industry. The resultant implications for government policies towards inbound FDI are also considered, including the desirability of allowing them to vary from region to region, if FDI inflows are to be maximised.

  November 22, 2013   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12070   open full text
• Towards a Polycentric Region? The Socio‐economic Trajectory of Rome, an ‘Eternally Mediterranean’ City.
  Luca Salvati.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. October 08, 2013
  The present study explores the long‐term changes (1971–2001) in the socio‐economic structure of a monocentric Mediterranean urban region (Rome's province, central Italy) undergoing moderately polycentric development. Descriptive and correlation statistics and a multiway factor analysis (MFA) have been used to analyse the spatio‐temporal evolution of 24 socio‐economic indicators made available at the urban district/municipal scale. The socio‐economic disparities observed along the urban‐rural gradient in 1971 decreased only moderately in 2001. The MFA clearly separates urban districts from suburban municipalities in both 1971 and 2001. Results indicate that exurban development has impacted only partly Rome's urban form which remained mainly compact and dense with persisting socio‐economic gaps between urban and suburban areas. The paper discusses the partial failure of Rome's master plan to promote a really polycentric development and a new, more sustainable, urban form.

  October 08, 2013   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12054   open full text
• Mono‐industrialism and the Struggle for Alternative Development: the Case of the Roşia Montană Gold‐mining Project.
  Lucian Vesalon, Remus Creţan.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. June 03, 2013
  This study proposes a critical discussion of a recent gold‐mining project at Roşia Montană, Romania and of the alternative development solutions for the area. The aim of the research is to examine the socio‐economic consequences of the mining project proposed by the multinational company Roşia Montană Gold Corporation and the struggle of the resistance movement to the mining project for an alternative development, in order to understand the complexity of development processes in rural communities in post‐communist Romania. In analysing the socio‐economic risks involved in conventional development, we focus especially on revealing the intrinsic limits of mono‐industrialism and on the issue of population displacement by development. In the second part of the paper we discuss the feasibility of alternative development solutions for the area. The paper relies on a theoretical framework that combines the critical literature on conventional development and the recent debates on grassroots development.

  June 03, 2013   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12035   open full text
• Seeking Opportunities: International Market Selection by European Engineering Consultancies.
  Kai Pflanz.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. June 03, 2013
  Over the last few decades professional service firms have increasingly expanded their activities beyond national borders and established international offices throughout the world. This paper describes and analyses spatial patterns of internationalisation within the engineering consulting sector. By mapping expansion biographies of European engineering consulting firms and conducting dynamic Cox regression models, external factors influencing international market selection are examined. It is shown that current spatial patterns are only partly shaped by the declining importance of cross‐national distance. Instead, market seeking motivations and the exploitation of time‐critical opportunities appear to be of more significance. Further, changing patterns of market selection are observed.

  June 03, 2013   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12036   open full text
• Regional Resilience and Spatial Cycles: Long‐Term Evolution of the Chinese Port System (221bc–2010ad).
  Chengjin Wang, César Ducruet.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. June 03, 2013
  Spatial models of port system evolution often depict linearly the emergence of hierarchy through successive concentration phases of originally scattered ports. The Chinese case provides a fertile ground for complementing existing works by a long‐term perspective, given the early importance of river ports and seaports and the development irregularities caused by periods of closure and openness over time and across such a large land mass. In both qualitative and quantitative ways, this paper describes and analyses the changing spatial pattern of China's port system since the first unified empire (221bc). Main results underline a certain stability of the port system with regard to the location of main sea‐river gateways, notwithstanding important regional shifts from one period to the other.

  June 03, 2013   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12033   open full text
• Spatial Organisation of Consumer Services in the Polycentric Urban Context: A Travel Behaviour Approach of Cinema‐Going in the City‐Region of Rotterdam.
  Arie Romein, Kees Maat.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. May 15, 2013
  So far, the growing body of research on polycentric urban structures has paid relatively little attention to spatial patterns of service consumption. There have been suggestions that the conventional central place model can no longer adequately describe and explain the patterns in contemporary polycentric urban areas and regions, and that it should be replaced by a new ‘network’ model. Though the network model is still in need of elaboration, several of its key notions are recognisable in this case study on cinema‐going in the city‐region of Rotterdam. However, this study also makes clear that the current ‘prototype’ of the network model needs to be enhanced by attention to the broad issue why people choose to visit certain service venues, including considerations regarding spatial factors but non‐spatial factors like qualities of service venues, before it can serve as a valid model for future study.

  May 15, 2013   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12031   open full text
• European World Cities and the Spatial Polarisation of Air Transport Liberalisation Benefits.
  David Ramos‐Pérez, José Luis Sánchez‐Hernández.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. May 15, 2013
  Research about the consequences of air transport liberalisation in the European Union is already substantial in amount and scope. Nevertheless, spatial implications of this liberalisation have not been fully addressed yet. By analysing information from the OAG database, this paper measures the geographic concentration of air routes and seating offers supplied under competition conditions among European airports. Our analysis demonstrates that competition is mainly restricted to European World Cities, the ones which concentrate high‐rank functions in the capitalist world‐economy.

  May 15, 2013   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12027   open full text
• Talent Acquisition in the IT Industry in Bangalore: A Multi‐Level Study.
  Micheline Riemsdijk.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. May 08, 2013
  Multinational corporations have established research and development centres in India to take advantage of low‐cost labour and sophisticated science and technology facilities. India is becoming a global competitor in innovation, and its knowledge‐intensive firms increasingly need skilled workers. This article investigates talent acquisition in the information technology (IT) industry in Bangalore, also known as India's Silicon Valley. In particular, the paper studies the local supply and demand of human capital, which is critical for innovation and competition in the global knowledge economy. The author argues for a multi‐level study to better understand labour needs in emerging economies. In conclusion, the article addresses local and national institutional obstacles to talent acquisition and discusses future labour challenges in India's IT industry.

  May 08, 2013   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12028   open full text
• Housing Projects for Low‐Income Groups and Modes of Economic Integration: A Comparative Study in Greater Cairo.
  Doaa Abouelmagd, Christian Kesteloot, Eric Corijn.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. May 08, 2013
  The housing of low‐income groups in Greater Cairo has always been difficult. However, the general shortage in housing supply is contrasting with the low occupancy rate of newly constructed public housing units. In contrast, despite their bad living conditions, informal settlements have a high occupancy rate. In order to analyse the reasons behind this contradiction, the paper compares four neighbourhoods ranging from formal and semi‐informal to informal housing production and including one rehabilitation project. The livelihood conditions in each settlement are unravelled with the concept of modes of economic integration from Polanyi. For this purpose, semi‐structured interviews were conducted and analysed with correspondence analysis. The findings indicate a preference among low‐income groups for informal settlements because of three reasons: the advantages of geographical location, the nature of social networks and the strength of private redistribution systems, thus enabling an easier access to means of existence. The results and recommendations are further discussed in the paper.

  May 08, 2013   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12026   open full text
• Origin Effects, Spatial Dynamics and Redistribution of FDI In Guangdong, China.
  Zhihua Xu, Anthony Yeh.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. May 08, 2013
  Based on panel regression analysis and interviews of 70 foreign‐invested enterprises (FIEs) in 2009, this paper compares the spatial dynamics and redistribution of foreign direct investment (FDI) from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan and the US in Guangdong province. We found that FDI in Guangdong tends to favour cities closer to Hong Kong, with lower wage rates, better market potential and more preferential policies, and to follow the agglomeration of FDI from the same origin. The diverse home‐based characteristics have resulted into the varied pathways of spatial redistribution of FDI. Hong Kong FIEs have been searching for lower‐cost regions given the rise of production cost and tightened environmental regulation. In contrast, the redistribution of FIEs from Japan and Taiwan are more sensitive to their home‐based business linkages, whereas Japanese and the US FIEs tend to value access to domestic market and to expand in large cities outside Guangdong.

  May 08, 2013   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12025   open full text
• How German Geopolitics Passed Through the Netherlands, 1920–1945: A Case Study in the Geography of one of Geography's ‘Projects’.
  Herman Wusten, Ben Pater.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. May 08, 2013
  German geopolitics emerged from the early 1920s. It was noticed in the Netherlands but not broadly embraced. In public discourse the term ‘geopolitics’ was hardly ever used between the First and Second World Wars but it became a bit more common with the looming threat of a second war and during the German occupation. Meanwhile Dutch geographers took note of the efforts of Haushofer and his circle. Around 1930, their initial reaction to this project took various forms – constructive criticism, co‐operation and indignant dismissal – but the attention waned over the decade. During the occupation Nazi‐friendly geographers discussed the launching of a new geopolitics. The generally shared Dutch preference for aloofness, neutrality and recourse to international law as the way to approach international relations precluded the formation of a large, responsive public for German geopolitics. The high status of German academia provided an initial audience of Dutch academic geographers.

  May 08, 2013   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12023   open full text
• Mobile policies and shifting contexts: city‐regional competitiveness strategies in Amsterdam and Dublin.
  Marco Bontje, Philip Lawton.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. May 08, 2013
  In the past decade international competitiveness has become the top priority of national, regional and urban governments in the advanced capitalist economy. Attracting and retaining creative and high‐educated talent as well as creative and knowledge‐intensive firms are considered essential ingredients of urban and city‐regional ‘recipes for success’. Amsterdam and Dublin have, at both city‐ and city‐regional level, been very active in preparing and implementing competitiveness strategies in which fostering and stimulating creativity, knowledge and innovation play a leading role. The crisis since 2008 has made a reconsideration of these strategies necessary. Is ‘creative knowledge’ still the preferred road ahead, and if it is, can existing competitiveness strategies be continued or should new strategies be developed?

  May 08, 2013   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12024   open full text
• The Impact of Urban Sprawl on Social Segregation in Beijing and a Limited Role for Spatial Planning.
  Pengjun Zhao.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. May 08, 2013
  Exploring the links between urban sprawl and social segregation is an important theme in urban research. Although many studies are available, conclusions are still mixed. This paper contributes to our existing understanding of the impact of sprawl on social segregation, looking at the case of Beijing. The results of the analysis show that sprawling development, characterised by scattered gated communities, low‐density luxury villas, informal development and uneven distributions of public services and transport infrastructures in the peri‐urban regions, have increased residential segregation between low‐income and high‐income residents and between local residents and migrants. Planning policies designed to control urban sprawl and encourage a compact city could have a positive role in reducing social segregation. However, the role of spatial planning is limited as there are still other institutional factors influencing social segregation in China's cities, two of the most relevant here being the remaining hukou system and dual land system.

  May 08, 2013   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12030   open full text
• Spatial Integration and Functional Balance in Polycentric Urban Systems: A Multi‐Scalar Approach.
  Antti Vasanen.
  Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. April 25, 2013
  Research on polycentricity has focused increasingly on the multi‐scalar functional organisation of polycentric urban systems. These studies have shown that the degree of functional polycentricity varies considerably across different spatial scales. Moreover, functional polycentricity is linked to two distinct concepts: spatial integration and the balanced distribution of flows. The aim of this paper is to clarify the relation between these two concepts and to highlight the implications of this conceptual distinction for empirical research across different scales. The paper examines the connectivity field method developed to measure spatial interaction in polycentric urban systems. Using detailed commuting data, the feasibility of the method in measuring both spatial integration and the balanced distribution of flows across different scales is tested in a case study from southern Finland.

  April 25, 2013   doi: 10.1111/tesg.12029   open full text