Factors Underlying the Formation of Industrial Clusters in Japan and Industrial Cluster Policy: A Quantitative Survey

The purpose of this report is to use information provided by a questionnaire survey to analyze the factors and processes underlying the formation of industrial clusters in Japan. The study, based on questionnaire surveys, forms part of an "Industrial Cluster Project". The Japanese government has implemented policies for industrial clusters so as to enable Japanese industries to maintain competitive power in global markets, and to aid the self-sufficient expansion of local industries. The government's project goes under the heading "Industry Agglomeration for the Recovery of Local Industries with respect to so-called "Industry Clusters." The authors aim to identify what expectations are held of government by the enterprises that make up industrial clusters. As part of our investigation, we used the results of a survey conducted by UNDP in 2004. Tsuji's study, published by the Osaka School of International Public Policy, surveyed 1198 small or medium sized manufacturing companies located in O ward, Tokyo and Higashi Osaka city, Osaka prefecture. The outcome of the present study, together with data from Tsuji's work on IT usage by SMEs in Japan, is meant to form the basis for policy design and implementation.Industrial Cluster Policy, Agglomeration, Innovation, IT, Industrial policy, Local industry, Japan

Public-Communication Spaces in School Buildings

Статья посвящена вопросам формирования внутренних и внешних общественно-коммуникационных пространств в гражданских зданиях, в частности, при разработке объемно-планировочных решений общеобразовательных учреждений. Рассматриваются возможности и условия формирования проектного потенциала с использованием инновационных инженерных технологий, которые, безусловно, определяют жизненный цикл здания и его дальнейшее типологическое развитие. Приведены основные факторы, определяющие актуальность проблемы общения и координации информационных и культурных связей, особенно, в учебных зданиях, позволяющие оценить необходимость ее исследования. Представление о школьном здании как о стандартной, в том числе в практике проектирования, организационной структуре с набором основных функциональных блоков, жестко связанных между собой может быть пересмотрено и существенно дополнено. В значительной степени это касается вопросов межличностных и общественных коммуникаций, что, несомненно, важно для всех потенциальных участников школьной системы, учебно-воспитательного процесса и для разработки образовательных программ. В статье представлены типологические аналоги из мировой проектной и архитектурно-строительной практики, а также результаты исследования и проектной апробации модели экопозитивного школьного здания по критериям устойчивого развития, в составе жилого района перспективного строительства поселке "Полеводство" в городе Екатеринбурге (Россия).The article is devoted to the issues of formation of internal and external public-communication spaces in civil buildings, in particular, during the development of spatial planning decisions of general education establishments. The possibilities and conditions for the formation of the project potential using innovative engineering technologies that undoubtedly determine the life cycle of the building and its further typological development are considered. The main factors that determine the relevance of the problem of communication and coordination of information and cultural relations, especially in educational buildings, are given. These factors allow to evaluate the need for investigation of stated problems. The idea of a school building as a standard organizational structure with a set of core functional blocks tightly interconnected can be reconsidered and substantially supplemented. To a large extent this concerns issues of personal and public communications, which are doubtless important for all potential participants of the educational process and for the development of educational programs. The article presents typological analogs from the world design, architectural and construction practice, as well as the results of the research and project approbation of the model of the ecopositive school building on the criteria of sustainable development, as part of the residential area of the perspective construction of the village "Polevodstvo" in the Ekaterinburg (Russia)

Conceptualizing a distributed, multi-scalar global public sphere through activist communication practices in the World Social Forum

This article contributes to debate about how to conceptualize the global public sphere. Drawing on media practice theory and ethnographic research on media activism in the World Social Forum, it shows how ‘global publics’ can be constituted through a diverse range of activist communication practices that complicate both conventional hierarchies of scale and contemporary theorizations of publics as personalized networks. It develops an understanding of the global public sphere as an emergent formation made up of multiple, interlinked publics at different scales and emphasizes the significance of collective communication spaces for actors at the margins of the global network society

How Cultural Rhetorics Can Change the Conversation: Towards New Communication Spaces to Address Human Trafficking

Rhetoric, as a discipline, can and should play a part in helping (re)formulate and (re)frame approaches to human trafficking because of the potential for such change to ripple through cultural discourse, leading to shifts across public understanding, law, and policy. Specifically, I argue that a Cultural Rhetorics approach is both necessary for and best suited to initiate the building of new communication spaces to address the issue of human trafficking. Indeed, the lens of Cultural Rhetorics reveals new priorities for scholarly intervention. This work must be rooted in and driven by attentiveness to and careful handling of stories. Such an alternate approach might more closely consider and account for the stories that individuals tell about themselves, the stories that survivors tell about their lived experiences, and the stories that institutions put forward about human trafficking. In so doing, we might then be better able to evaluate how these stories interconnect and constellate not just with each other, but also with a range of cultural influences

Relational Communication Spaces: Infrastructures and Discursive Practices

Digital communication technologies, social web platforms, and mobile communication have fundamentally altered the way we communicate publicly. They have also changed our perception of space, thus making a re-calibration of a spatial perspective on public communication necessary. We argue that such a new perspective must consider the relational logic of public communication, which stands in stark contrast to the plain territorial notion of space common in communication research. Conceptualising the spatiality of public communication, we draw on Low's (2016) sociology of space. Her relational concept of space encourages us to pay more attention to (a) the infrastructural basis of communication, (b) the operations of synthesising the relational communication space through discursive practices, and (c) power relations that determine the accessibility of public communication. Thus, focusing on infrastructures and discursive practices means highlighting crucial socio-material preconditions of public communication and considering the effects of the power relations which are inherent in their spatialisation upon the inclusivity of public communication. This new approach serves a dual purpose: Firstly, it works as an analytical perspective to systematically account for the spatiality of public communication. Secondly, the differentiation between infrastructural spaces and spaces of discursive practices adds explanatory value to the perspective of relational communication spaces.DFG, 290045248, SFB 1265: Re-Figuration von Räume

Ocupar las plazas con tuits. Una propuesta para el análisis de la gobernanza de los espacios comunicativos

The demonstration in 2012 in front of the Chamber of Deputies in Madrid serves to introduce a model for analysing communication spaces. During the demonstration, an online map of the centre of Madrid was used to collect the geolocated tweets of protestors under the hashtag #voces25s. A colour code represented the location of the citizens as well as the police charges. In that demonstration, and many that have followed since, a communication space was created across the virtual and the physical realms. In order to understand the socio-political conditions of this space for public discussion, four modes of analysis are introduced: representations, textures, structures and connections