Assessment of Institutional Thickness in the Turkish Context

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RAZUMIJEVANJE DINAMIKE LOKALNOG I REGIONALNOG RAZVOJA

Planning and developing relevant policies for regions, localities and places have been one of the fundamental issues for politicians, policy makers, academics, researchers and practitioners in the field of local and regional economic development. This task is getting increasingly problematic in the face of rapid global economic change that has now been complicated by the impact of recession and volatility in fuel, energy and mineral costs. In this process, some countries that have been considered less developed are growing very fast in a way that has never been anticipated before. These counties show great potential to develop and there is a need to understand the regional dimension of growth more than ever. This paper explains the challenges that analysts and researchers experience when they want to translate the processes that shape regional economies into regional policies and programs both at the national and regional levels.Rad tvrdi da političari, kreatori politike, akademici, istraživači i praktičari u sferi lokalnog i regionalnog razvoja moraju preispitati dinamiku lokalnog i regionalnog razvoja. Ekonomija se rapidno mijenja, zemlje koje su smatrane manje razvijenima imaju ubrzani rast na način koji nitko nije mogao predvidjeti. Te zemlje pokazuju ogroman potencijal za razvoj te više nego ikad postoji potreba za razumijevanjem regionalne dimenzije rasta. Ipak, globalizacija i brze promjene događaja u svjetskim razmjerima postavljaju niz izazova pred političare, kreatore politike, akademike, istraživače i praktičare u sferi lokalnog i regionalnog razvoja. U radu se raspravlja o tim izazovima i tvrdi se da bi se trebali sagledati interaktivno a ne pojedinačno. Ra stimulira debatu koja je potrebna kako bi lokalni i regionalni razvoj ostali relevantni

Smart cities as a mechanism towards a broader understanding of infrastructure interdependencies

No abstrac

Unlocking values through infrastructure interdependencies

Urban infrastructure is a complex interdependent system of system. It provides a framework that connect and integrate social, cultural, financial, natural, technological and human values. This paper contributes to the development of new approaches towards urban infrastructure governance, identified as one of the key issues in the field of sustainable urban infrastructure. To do that, we explore cross-sectoral urban infrastructure projects, in which infrastructures supplying different urban functions are connected. This focus on a local level of cross-domain connection allows us to understand the challenges of such connections on a project-level, giving us practical insights into management and governance challenges. We analyse four local projects of cross-sector connections of infrastructures, aiming to understand the collaborative dynamics of governing such projects towards successful outcomes, in terms of overcoming the barriers towards such projects while creating value. Given the high expectations of increased value of integrated urban infrastructures compared to traditional, siloed infrastructure development and management, the insights from local, project-level experiences, in addition to holistic perspectives, can be informative for investment strategy development by private and public stakeholders

Modelling Local and Regional Economic Development in Turkey: A “Curate's Egg”

International audienc

Pluralizing the urban waste economy: insights from community-based enterprises in Ahmedabad (India) and Kampala (Uganda)

The delivery of urban basic infrastructure services is often guided by the modern infrastructure ideal, which aims for technical innovation, economic efficiency and uniformity through long-term, centralized management approaches. In rapidly growing urban centres of the global South, however, heterogeneous infrastructure configurations have long involved multiple systems in varying degrees of coexistence. This paper explores how community-based enterprises – organizations that aim not to turn a profit but rather to generate human well-being – contribute to, complement or conflict with wider municipal solid waste management strategies. It does so through two case studies, focused on Luchacos, a local enterprise turning waste into briquettes in an informal settlement of Kampala, Uganda; and the Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), a cooperative of waste pickers in Ahmedabad, India. Drawing on empirical data and policy analysis, the research finds that, given the necessary state support, community-based enterprises can contribute to a range of sustainability and development objectives.Urban Development ManagementManagement in the Built Environmen

Addressing the climate challenge

In 2021, colleagues from across the University of Birmingham community were invited to write articles about topics relevant to the COP26 climate change summit. In this series of articles, experts from across many different disciplines provide new insight and evidence on how we might all understand and tackle climate change

Dynamics and drivers of Turkish regional development: a Curate’s Egg

Understanding of the economic processes shaping regional economies is in a constant state of change. These processes are important to understand for policy making as governments seek to improve the economic well-being of citizens. Existing empirical research in this field has focussed on regions in economically advanced and technologically innovative economies. As a consequence, the broader picture of the dynamics of regional development in less developed countries, particularly its social and political origins and the overall changes in regional inequality, have remained elusive and less clear. The purpose of this thesis has been to develop an understanding of the local and regional dynamics of economic development in the context of the transitioning and emerging economy of Turkey. The approach has been to unpack a series of local and regional development theories and, from the drivers identified, to develop an econometric model calibrated for the Turkish context using available and appropriate proxy measures. Document analysis supported by interviews with groups of policy makers has been intertwined with the results of the model. The results of the study explain that implications of the current local and regional economic development theories are a Curate’s Egg – good in parts – because these theories are only partially relevant in the Turkish context