Analysing the Changing Landscape of European Financial Centres: The Role of Financial Products and the Case of Amsterdam.

The turn of the twenty-first century saw the re-emergence of debates about the reconfiguration of European financial geographies and the role of stock exchange mergers in this process. There has been, however, no systematic attempt to date to analyse such changes. This paper proposes a specific conceptual framework to explore these issues. It uses a product-based analysis to examine, in the context of recent stock exchange mergers, the factors affecting the competitiveness of a financial centre. It argues that it is important to understand three intertwined influences � product complementarities, the nature of local epistemic communities, and regulation � and their contingent effects on change. This is exemplified by a tentative application of the framework to the case of Amsterdam in order to better understand its recent decline in competitiveness as a European financial centre

Fragile environment in need of resilient carers? a case of regional natural resources management in Perth, Western Australia

The Perth region is one of the 56 designated Natural Resources Management (NRM) regions in Australia. A community-led body – Perth Region NRM (PRNRM) – is in charge of overseeing NRM initiatives in the region. PRNRM heavily relies on Environmental Care Organisations (ECOs) that are involved in a wide variety of activities ranging from managing nature reserves to restoring ecosystems on a voluntary basis. While ECOs have become an integral component of PRNRM, they are often vulnerable because of the uncertain availability of financial and human resources. The way these organisations can overcome resource scarcities and become resilient is therefore significant for the effective delivery of regional NRM arrangements. However, what makes some ECOs in the Perth region more resilient than others is not well understood. This paper responds to this gap and explores the state of ECOs in the Perth region. The paper begins by reviewing the notion of resilience using a social capital lens. Drawing on a survey of ECOs and interviews, the method used for data collection and data analysis is presented next. Finally, the paper makes a case for fostering social capital as a way of enhancing the resilience of ECOs in the Perth region and beyond

Technology and institutions: A critical appraisal of GIS in the planning domain

GIS (Geographic Information Systems) has captured planning practice to an unprecedented degree, and this article on how it reconfigures and is configured by institutional context. The author inquires into GIS as a technology for incorporating knowledge into institutional use and includes five propositions: (1) GIS's efficiencies in data processing allows it unprecedented facility and scope of analysis, (2) its use increases alienation, (3) its mimetic language furthers its role in planning, (4) its logic appears rational-purposive, but it conceals an underlying normative logic, and (5) its most profound effect is on the mapper, and the alienating and normative character of GIS necessitate new modes of "social ground-truthing." The author studies the southeast Los Angeles (SELA) initiatives to demonstrate these propositions. This article compares two studies: one GIS-based, and the other based on participatory action research and discusses how GIS might be recontextualized into a technology for liberating democratizing processes. © 2008 Sage Publications.link_to_subscribed_fulltex