Managing Austerity: Insights into Spatial Governance from an English City

Open access article. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the URI link.The research discussed below is part of an eight case international study looking at how austerity is governed and resisted, conducted in Athens, Baltimore, Barcelona, Dublin, Leicester, Melbourne (Dandenong), Montreal and Nantes. A report summarising each of the case studies is available in English, French, Greek and Spanish and can be downloaded at http:// cura.our.dmu.ac.uk/category/austerity- governance/ (Davies, 2017). The city of Leicester is the subject of this brief comment

Governing in and Against Austerity: International Lessons from Eight Cities

This report, mainly for non-academic users, summarises the interim conclusions from our ESRC study of austerity governance in eight cities. It also provides an overview of the eight case study cities: Athens, Baltimore, Barcelona, Dublin, Leicester, Melbourne, Montreal and Nantes. We welcome comments and discussion on the CURA website at http://cura.our.dmu.ac.uk/2017/08/16/dissemination-report-governing-in-and-against-austerity

A Case of Political Philanthropy: The Rowntree Family and the Campaign for Democratic Reform

This article examines the attitude of the Rowntree family - and in particular its three prominent members, Joseph, Arnold and Seebohm Rowntree - to campaigns for democratic and constitutional reform in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It explores their views on women\u27s suffrage, reform of the House of Lords and proportional representation, and their practical involvement in the promotion or otherwise of democracy in their dealings with the press, their model community at New Earswick and in the adult education institutions with which they were associated. The article argues that, in common with many other Quakers, the Rowntrees\u27 commitment to practical philanthropy outweighed their interest in political reform, and that their commitment to the latter was, in practice, equivocal

Interrogating Urban Crisis: Cities in the Governance and Contestation of Austerity

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.The meaning of ‘urban crisis’, and its applications in concrete struggles to govern and contest austerity urbanism, remains under-specified analytically and poorly understood empirically. This paper addresses the lacuna by opening up the concept of urban crisis to critical scrutiny. It begins by exploring how urban ‘crisistalk’ tends to over-extend the concept in ways that can render it shallow or meaningless. The paper looks secondly at different applications of the terminology of ‘crisis’, disclosing key framings and problematics. In the spirit of critical urban studies, it focuses, thirdly, on practices of crisis-resistance and crisis-making. The paper concludes by summarizing the six urban crisis framings linked to six urban problematics, in order to inform future studies of austerity urbanism and assist in developing more reflexive approaches to the concept

Urban governance in the age of austerity: Crises of neoliberal hegemony in comparative perspective

open access articleDrawing from neo-Gramscian theory, the paper explores how urban austerity governance mediates crises of neoliberal hegemony. Focusing on the decade after the Global Economic Crisis of 2008–2009, it compares four European cities disclosing five intersecting characteristics of urban political economy that contributed to sustaining and disrupting austere neoliberalism. Austere neoliberalism was sustained through three characteristics: economic rationalism, state revanchism and weak counter-hegemony, but undermined by both weakening hegemony and the combustibility and generativity of urban struggles. Hence, although state revanchism is a prominent feature of urban politics, and novel counter-hegemonic forms are elusive, struggles for equality and solidarity remain contagious, tenacious and vibrant. Urban governance is a crucial arena for studying the interregnum, signposting multiple ways in which neoliberalism survives, mutates and dies

Partnerships versus Regimes: Why Regime Theory Cannot Explain Urban Coalitions in the UK

Download via http://ssrn.com/author=1643345The file attached to this record is the authors final peer reviewed version. The final publisher version can be found by following the doi link.This study compares and contrasts urban regeneration partnerships in the UK with urban regimes in the USA. It is argued that regime theory, as developed by Elkin and Stone, neither describes nor explains the contrasting forms of collaboration in the UK. The development of urban regeneration partnerships has been driven by a combination of two main factors: the development of an ideological perception within local government elites that urban regeneration depends on market led growth, and a series of central government regeneration initiatives. These initiatives, designed to encourage and where necessary coerce local authorities into partnership working have resulted in highly bureaucratised, but symbolic, partnerships with local business elites. Business activity in these partnerships thus far has been marginal. It is unlikely to be fruitful, therefore, for scholars to seek ‘Stonean’ regimes in the UK. On the other hand, to describe such partnerships as ‘regimes’ is misleading and results in a lack of conceptual clarity. Despite the fashion for copying urban policy from the USA, the institutions of urban politics in the UK are likely to remain resolutely different

Why is Austerity Governable? A Gramscian Urban Regime Analysis of Leicester, UK

open access articleAusterity has been delivered in the UK, without durably effective resistance. Read through a dialogue between Urban Regime Theory and Gramsci’s theory of the integral state, the paper considers how austerity was normalised and made governable in the city of Leicester. It shows how Leicester navigated waves of crisis, restructuring and austerity, positioning itself as a multicultural city of entrepreneurs. The paper explores historical influences on the development of the local state, inscribed in the politics of austerity governance today. From a regime-theoretical standpoint, it shows how the local state accrued the governing resources to deliver austerity, while disorganising and containing resistance. Imbued with legacies of past-struggles, this process of organised-disorganisation produced a functional hegemony articulated in the multiple subjectivities of “austerian realism”. The paper elaborates six dimensions of Gramscian regime analysis to inform further research

Influence of Muscle-Tendon Wrapping on Calculations of Joint Reaction Forces in the Equine Distal Forelimb

The equine distal forelimb is a common location of injuries related to mechanical overload. In this study, a two-dimensional model of the musculoskeletal system of the region was developed and applied to kinematic and kinetic data from walking and trotting horses. The forces in major tendons and joint reaction forces were calculated. The components of the joint reaction forces caused by wrapping of tendons around sesamoid bones were found to be of similar magnitude to the reaction forces between the long bones at each joint. This finding highlighted the importance of taking into account muscle-tendon wrapping when evaluating joint loading in the equine distal forelimb

Austerity Urbanism: Patterns of Neo-liberalisation and Resistance in Six Cities of Spain and the UK

The paper draws on research from two funded projects on austerity governance. It draws mainly from the Spanish TRANSGOB project (The role of Participatory Urban Governance in times of Crisis and Austerity) and also research from our ESRC study of comparative governance under austerity: an eight-case comparative study. Open Access articleThis paper explores neoliberalisation and its counter-currents through a six-case study of austerity urbanism in Spain and the UK. Applying Urban Regime Theory it highlights the role of urban politics in driving, variegating and containing neoliberalism since the 2008 crash. Variegated austerity regimes contribute to strengthening neoliberalism, but with limits. Welfarism survives austerity in felicitous circumstances. And, where contentious politics thrive, as in Spain, it holds out the potential for a broader challenge to neoliberalism. In contrast, austerity regimes in the UK cities are strongly embedded. The legacies of past struggles, and differing local and regional traditions form an important part of the explanation for patterns of neoliberalisation, hybridization and contestation

The surface brightness and distance of Dwingeloo 1

The Tully-Fisher distance to the galaxy Dwingeloo 1, recently discovered very close to the Galactic Plane, is highly uncertain because of the range of possible foreground extinction values which have been suggested. We show that very high values of AB ($\sim 10$ magnitudes) or low values ($\sim 4$ magnitudes) are unreasonable since the intrinsic surface brightness implied for Dwingeloo 1 would be unrealistically high or low for a mid type disc galaxy. Obtaining 'normal' surface brightness values requires AB close to 6 magnitudes. We therefore concur with distance estimates which suggest values $\sim 3$ Mpc