Region, Regionalization and Local Development

This contribution aims to stimulate a critical reflection about local development, with particular attention to the role of regionalization practices in the construction of territorial identity processes. It is believed that the identification of specific areas is essential in public policies that aim to promote local specificities, especially in reference to strong areas of excellent territorial capital, not properly valued. This is the case of the Upper Aniene Valley, the study area of my PhD research project, for which there is no shared regionalization, neither from the scientific world, no from the political - administrative one, and in which the construction of a shared territorial identity is hindered by the absence of training and information models that allow the people to know the territory where they live or work. In this contribution, after highlighting (in the introduction) the importance of regionalization processes in the social and political construction of space, the case study will be presented, underlining the difficulties encountered in the research and the methodology that is intended apply in the regionalization of the Aniene Valley. It is believed, in fact, that this operation is preliminary to any attempt to intervene in the territory

The geography of British exports: country-level versus firm-level evidence

This study investigates the degree of regionalization of UK exporters. The firm-level findings, based on an original set of primary data of 356 UK exporters, are contrasted with the UK national trade flows as well as with the geographic spread of the UK, European and the world's largest MNEs. The analysis produced consistent findings of regionalization regardless of the classification thresholds or sales matrices employed. The findings also imply that country-level data supports the firm-level findings of regionalization. White the analysis presents relatively strong corroborating evidence of regionalization of UK exports, it also indicates that UK exporters might be more multi-regional and global oriented than previously thought. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. ALL rights reserved

Secure and Prepared Newsletter, February 11, 2010, Vol. 6, no. 4, revision 1

A bi-weekly newsletter for those involved in the fields of homeland security and/or emergency management. NOTE: The revise addition information about Five-Year Regionalization Review on the front page

Regionalization of landscape pattern indices using multivariate cluster analysis

This project was funded by the Government of Canada through the Mountain Pine Beetle Program, a six-year, $40 million program administered by Natural Resources Canada, Canadian Forest Service. Additional information on the Mountain Pine Beetle Program may be found at: http://mpb.cfs.nrcan.gc.ca.Regionalization, or the grouping of objects in space, is a useful tool for organizing, visualizing, and synthesizing the information contained in multivariate spatial data. Landscape pattern indices can be used to quantify the spatial pattern (composition and configuration) of land cover features. Observable patterns can be linked to underlying processes affecting the generation of landscape patterns (e.g., forest harvesting). The objective of this research is to develop an approach for investigating the spatial distribution of forest pattern across a study area where forest harvesting, other anthropogenic activities, and topography, are all influencing forest pattern. We generate spatial pattern regions (SPR) that describe forest pattern with a regionalization approach. Analysis is performed using a 2006 land cover dataset covering the Prince George and Quesnel Forest Districts, 5.5 million ha of primarily forested land base situated within the interior plateau of British Columbia, Canada. Multivariate cluster analysis (with the CLARA algorithm) is used to group landscape objects containing forest pattern information into SPR. Of the six generated SPR, the second cluster (SPR2) is the most prevalent covering 22% of the study area. On average, landscapes in SPR2 are comprised of 55.5% forest cover, and contain the highest number of patches, and forest/non-forest joins, indicating highly fragmented landscapes. Regionalization of landscape pattern metrics provides a useful approach for examining the spatial distribution of forest pattern. Where forest patterns are associated with positive or negative environmental conditions, SPR can be used to identify similar regions for conservation or management activities.PostprintPeer reviewe

A min-cut approach to functional regionalization, with a case study of the Italian local labour market areas

In several economical, statistical and geographical applications, a territory must be subdivided into functional regions. Such regions are not fixed and politically delimited, but should be identified by analyzing the interactions among all its constituent localities. This is a very delicate and important task, that often turns out to be computationally difficult. In this work we propose an innovative approach to this problem based on the solution of minimum cut problems over an undirected graph called here transitions graph. The proposed procedure guarantees that the obtained regions satisfy all the statistical conditions required when considering this type of problems. Results on real-world instances show the effectiveness of the proposed approach

An Empirical Note on Regionalization and Globalization

Purpose – Is it regionalization or globalization that more accurately depicts the state of the global economy? Exports and foreign direct investments (FDI) data are analyzed with the aim of answering the question and determining how intra- and inter-regional integration has changed over time. Design/methodology/approach – To address the research questions, this paper covers the following. First, it takes a longitudinal perspective in examining the changes taking place in exports and FDI at the regional level. Second, it draws strategic business and marketing implications of this development. Findings – The results show a trend toward regionalization in the Quad (North America, Western Europe, Asia, and Latin America), especially with respect to exports data. Originality/value – Findings, strategic implications, and directions for future research are presented

Forming Process, Pattern and The Need for Intergovernmental Management in Indonesia

Cooperation among neighbouring region is commonly termed regional cooperation. Inter-region cooperation in the study of public administration is categorized as public management especially intergovernmental management. Inter-region cooperation in Indonesia has been for a long time trying to find its form. However, in the middle of its process, the implementer is trapped in doubt. The paper aims to trace the institutional form and its problem in the neighbouring region cooperation. The research is done through literature study, observation on inter-region cooperation especially in the central Java and some facilitation done by the writer in the several regions in Indonesia. There are two forms of referred institution which is developed on the basis of this networking pattern; they are intergovernmental relation (IGR) and intergovernmental management (IGM). In the mean time, the governmental support on inter-region cooperation which is supposed to form collaboration is hampered by the inconsistency of regulation which is issued by several parties (ministries) in the central governmen

Supervised regionalization methods, a survey.

This paper reviews almost four decades of contributions on the subject of supervised regionalization methods. These methods aggregate a set of areas into a predefined number of spatially contiguous regions while optimizing certain aggregation criteria. The authors present a taxonomic scheme that classifies a wide range of regionalization methods into eight groups, based on the strategy applied for satisfying the spatial contiguity constraint. The paper concludes by providing a qualitative comparison of these groups in terms of a set of certain characteristics, and by suggesting future lines of research for extending and improving these methods.regionalization, constrained clustering, analytical regions.