Understanding the spatial organisation of economic activities in early 19th century Antwerp

This article uses space syntax analysis to explore the spatial organisation of economic activities in the city of Antwerp in the early 19th century. A cadastral map from 1835 and a commercial almanac for 1838 were used to map the occupations held by the inhabitants of some 10,667 plots. Economic activities were found to be relatively broadly distributed throughout the street system, as opposed to being clustered at particular points. However some trades and occupations were more likely to be found on a ‘foreground network’ of more accessible streets, and this was found to be statistically significant. Those occupations found in locations with high accessibility at all scales included retailers, wholesalers and artisans. While retailers would have prioritised access to passing trade, the latter two groups may have valued accessibility to the circulation of goods, products and knowledge as much as to the circulation of people

Global policy developments towards industrial policy and skills: skills for competitiveness and growth

There is a rising interest in both skills policy and industrial policy in OECD countries following the economic downturn. But how can skills policy best support industrial growth? In the UK, the coalition government is arguing for an industrial policy which is bottom-up, supporting networks of employers and helping to build productive local supply chains. There is simultaneous investment in a more ‘employer-led’ skills policy, in order to better tackle skills shortages and gaps. But is an employer-led skills policy the best way of boosting industrial growth in all UK regions? Are there potential market failures in employer-led policies of which the public sector should be aware? This article warns against taking an overly simplistic approach to skills development, arguing that while skills policies should be flexible to the needs of employers, there is still justification for investing in a broad educational curriculum at the local level. Further, policy-makers may need proactively to help employers to better use skills in some regions in order to boost productivity and growth

Can the organisation of commercial space in cities encourage creativity and 'self-generating' economic growth? A return to Jane Jacob's ideas

This paper explores the implications of Jane Jacob’s ideas about the ‘self-generating economic culture of cities’ (Soja, 2000) for the way in which urban commercial spaces are organised and managed. Jacobs saw economic development as an emergent process, based on economic branching, and the development of ‘new work on the basis of old’. Drawing on three case studies from London (on railway arches, the Winkley Road Estate and Gillett Square in Dalston) this paper explores the key spatial factors which Jacobs identified as supporting bottom-up economic growth, such as the intermingling of old and new buildings of different types, sizes and conditions; the mixing of commercial and residential uses; and high population density. In her later works, Jacobs shifted away from her neighbourhood focus to explore how city economies work more globally, highlighting the multiple opportunities for collaboration offered through diverse city supply chains. At this point she did less to imagine how the physical structure of cities might play an enabling or constraining role. The paper concludes by suggesting that Space Syntax might have something to contribute here, through underlining the importance of local-global spatial linkages in cities

Senescence in natural populations of animals:Widespread evidence and its implications for bio-gerontology

That senescence is rarely, if ever, observed in natural populations is an oft-quoted fallacy within bio-gerontology. We identify the roots of this fallacy in the otherwise seminal works of Medawar and Comfort, and explain that under antagonistic pleiotropy or disposable soma explanations for the evolution of senescence there is no reason why senescence cannot evolve to be manifest within the life expectancies of wild organisms. The recent emergence of long-term field studies presents irrefutable evidence that senescence is commonly detected in nature. We found such evidence in 175 different animal species from 340 separate studies. Although the bulk of this evidence comes from birds and mammals, we also found evidence for senescence in other vertebrates and insects. We describe how high-quality longitudinal field data allow us to test evolutionary explanations for differences in senescence between the sexes and among traits and individuals. Recent studies indicate that genes, prior environment and investment in growth and reproduction influence aging rates in the wild. We argue that – with the fallacy that wild animals do not senesce finally dead and buried – collaborations between bio-gerontologists and field biologists can begin to test the ecological generality of purportedly ‘public’ mechanisms regulating aging in laboratory models

Relative costs of offspring sex and offspring survival in a polygynous mammal.

Costs of reproduction are expected to be ubiquitous in wild animal populations and understanding the drivers of variation in these costs is an important aspect of life-history evolution theory. We use a 43 year dataset from a wild population of red deer to examine the relative importance of two factors that influence the costs of reproduction to mothers, and to test whether these costs vary with changing ecological conditions. Like previous studies, our analyses indicate fitness costs of lactation: mothers whose calves survived the summer subsequently showed lower survival and fecundity than those whose calves died soon after birth, accounting for 5% and 14% of the variation in mothers' survival and fecundity, respectively. The production of a male calf depressed maternal survival and fecundity more than production of a female, but accounted for less than 1% of the variation in either fitness component. There was no evidence for any change in the effect of calf survival or sex with increasing population density

‘A marvellous order’: how spatial and economic configurations interact to produce agglomeration economies in Greater Manchester

Despite widespread agreement that agglomeration externalities present a powerful economic force, understanding how they work in practice has constituted a “black box” problem. The word “agglomeration” is itself a crude term for describing the spatial characteristics of cities, which disguises the important role that the spatial configuration of street networks plays in structuring the operation of shared supply chains, labour pools, and knowledge-spillovers. At the same time, while most would agree on the importance of economic diversity to urban agglomeration, it is increasingly recognised that this diversity also has relational structure, with certain industry sectors being more likely to interrelate with each other, and share skills, knowledge, and products. This thesis will unpack the role of these spatial and economic configurations in the functioning of Greater Manchester as an “engine of creativity” in the broadest sense. To do so it draws on two main types of network analysis – space syntax analysis (developed by architects) and industry relatedness analysis (developed by economic geographers). This network analysis is contextualised in qualitative and historical research to produce a “thick description” of the city's evolving economy, with an in-depth focus on the clothing, textile, and waterproofing industries. The configurational characteristics of Greater Manchester's street network have brought diverse economic capabilities within reach of each other, while also connecting them into national and international economic flows. A degree of mess and redundancy in the system has been important to spurring unlikely collaborations and new innovations. However, there has been an overall decline in the capacity of the city street network to support agglomeration externalities in recent years, due to a loss of configurational structure and network density that is partly associated with planning changes from the 1950s onwards. The thesis concludes by considering what this means for contemporary policy

Sex-related variation in the vulnerability of wandering albatrosses to pelagic longline fleets

The population of wandering albatrosses Diomedea exulans at South Georgia is decreasing because of bycatch in longline fisheries. Until at least the early 1990s, the survival rate of females was lower than males, consistent with the adult female-biased bycatch reported for fisheries operating around the Brazil-Falklands Confluence (BFC). Here we use extensive tracking data (1990–2012) from breeding birds at South Georgia to investigate overlap with longline fishing effort reported to the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT). Using data from multiple years, we conclude that breeding females are at higher risk than males from all the main pelagic longline fleets in the south-west Atlantic. Our overlap index (based on fishing effort and bird distributions) correlated positively with numbers of ringed birds reported dead on longliners, indicating that the metric was a good proxy of bycatch risk. The consistent sex bias in overlap across years, and the likely resulting sex-biased mortality, could account for lower adult female survival rate at the colony. The risk from fisheries changed seasonally; both sexes overlapped with pelagic longline effort during incubation (January–March), and particularly during post-brood chick-rearing (May–December), whereas overlap was negligible during brooding (April). The highest percentage of overlap was with the Taiwanese fleet, then vessels flagged to Brazil, Uruguay, Spain, Japan and Portugal. Females were consistently at greatest risk in the BFC region, whereas males showed lower and more variable levels of overlap with fisheries from 35 to 45°S. Our results have important implications for management of ICCAT longline fisheries and conservation of this highly threatened albatross population

What drives the creation of green jobs, products and technologies in cities and regions? Insights from recent research on green industrial transitions

Given the global imperative to meet ‘net zero’, and growing interest in the potential for green jobs growth, there is an urgent need to better understand the drivers and processes underlying green structural economic transitions. How should we in fact define ‘green’ products, jobs and technologies? How do local economies transition into greener jobs – is this generally an incremental process or does it require more radical innovation? Building on nascent green definitions, recent work emerging from the literature in Evolutionary Economic Geography suggests that there is a degree of path dependency to green transitions, with regions benefiting from existing capabilities which are somehow related to newer green tasks and technologies. On the other hand, having diverse, frequently unrelated, skills and competencies also helps local economies to make the recombinations necessary for the emergence of new green activities. These drivers are moderated by factors such as the local institutional environment, IT skills and the degree of maturity of the local industrial base. This article summarises the recent literature in order to provide an overview of emerging findings of relevance to local policy delivery, while also highlighting future research directions