Central Micro-Peripheries: Temporary Uses of Central Residual Spaces as Urban Development Catalysts (?)

New “urban wastelands” are continually developing in European cities as side effects of economic, technological and political changes. These abandoned industrial zones or former traffic nodes (railways, harbours) have typically been built in the late 19th or in the early 20th century to the fringe of the old city centres. The combination of low estate values with high potential land rents have turned these areas to important scenes of urban transformation since 1980’s. Especially locations close to waterfront have attracted investments and resulted rapid changes and new housing and commercial exploitations. There are though exceptions: some areas remain residual or vacant for years. These areas turn to potential places for temporary “lower secondary uses” since no “primary higher uses” are attracted of them. The contextual factors creating “gaps” for temporary uses are weak demand in the local estate market, delays in the political decision making and planning processes, unclear ownership or exceptionally high construction costs caused by soil contamination and massive old infrastructures. This paper examines the nature of temporary uses and users in the central micro-peripheries, the role of temporary uses in the urban development processes as well as their impact on urban cultures and urban economies in five European metropolitan areas. The research has been done as part of the research project “Urban Catalysts. Strategies for Temporary Uses – Potential for Development of Urban Residual Areas in European Metropolises” (duration 2001-2003), funded by the Fifth R&D Framework Programme of European Community and its key action programme "City of Tomorrow and Cultural Heritage". In this project local case studies have taken place in Amsterdam, Berlin, Helsinki, Naples and Vienna. The research methods have included interviews with local key actors (temporary users, estate owners, planners and other authorities, politicians) and examination of planning and other development documents as well as site documentation with spatial analyses of the patterns of temporary usage of urban space. The research results show that the areas containing temporary uses have succeeded to foster extremely dynamic and mixed uses (art, culture, education, leisure, sports, residences, production, commerce) and to attract heterogeneous user groups (established and start up companies, migrants, system refugees, drop-outs, part time activists, associations). Many of the sites have also attracted user groups working in the same branch, sharing a common production network or co-operating in flexible ways. The spatial analysis proved temporary uses to mean adaptive reuse of urban spaces, being in most cases part of industrial heritage. The residual spaces seemed also to offer a possibility also for weak social groups to take risks and do various experiments with relatively modest economic investments. They created synergy and arenas for collective learning. The results include further strategies, instruments and methods that have been used in some cities to integrate temporary uses into city management and urban design. The most successful best practice examples show that the temporary uses have had clear catalytic effects on local urban culture and economies. It could be stated that temporary uses are an underused resource in activating residual areas and in improving both social stabilization and competition capacity of urban regions.

Strategy implementation : an assessment of empirical research and suggestions for future research

This Master’s thesis got its inspiration from a few articles from the early 2000s, which questioned senior executives’ understanding of the elements of a strategy statement, which should crystalize the ends, domain and means guiding the business forward. If this was found questionable two decades ago, could the same be valid still? Are businesses lacking in clarity in their strategies, which in turn impedes their implementation? Without a clear goal set by the strategy, how could business make sure, and follow up on, its successful implementation? Through a systematic literature review, this study sheds light on what the level of empirical research done on strategy implementation is. Through an as objective as feasible material selection process, 59 scientific journal articles are identified for final selection review, which then resulted in a total of 38 articles which fit all of the set criteria. The selected articles are classified, and their key findings then summarized. Overall evaluation and results are then compounded from key findings from the reviewed articles, revealing some of the factors identified to be fundamental for successful strategy implementation. The depth and breadth of the reviewed articles was found narrow and varying and the same also applied for the chronological split of the publications, with majority (92%) of the articles having been published in the 21st century. Findings of the empirical studies covered by the articles were drawn from very varying samples, focusing on a dedicated industry, or dedicated cultural or hierarchical domain, etc. Connecting points or reoccurring aspects were also identified. Similar characteristics of the reported aspects were grouped as follows: support and engagement of the upper management; management competencies; knowledge and competencies of the personnel; organization of strategy work; and participation and compensation of the personnel. However, the applicability of the components of a successful strategy implementation would benefit from further empirical validation. The underlying presumption that many companies, whether public or private, may not understand the reasons on failing or lacking strategy implementation was not properly found valid nor invalid, but it rather remains open and allows room for further research. Thus, the study concludes with suggestions for future research.Tämä pro gradu -tutkielma sai kimmokkeensa muutamasta 2000-luvun alussa julkaistusta artikkelista, jotka kyseenalaistivat ylemmän johdon ymmärrystä koskien yrityksen strategiasta annettavan lausunnon merkitystä. Strategiasta annettavan lausunnon tulisi ohjata yrityksen toimintaa kiteyttämällä strategian tavoite, toimialue sekä tapa, jolla tavoitteeseen päästään. Jos johdon ymmärrystä kyseenalaistettiin pari vuosikymmentä sitten, voiko olla, että tämä olettamus pitää edelleen paikkansa? Puuttuuko yrityksiltä strategista selkeyttä, mikä osaltaan haastaa tai jopa estää strategian toimeenpanoa ja toteutusta? Miten yritys varmistaa ja seuraa, että strategian toimeenpano onnistuu linjassa suunnitelmien kanssa, mikäli sen toteutus toimii ilman selkeitä strategian asettamia tavoitteita? Pro gradu -tutkielmaani varten tekemäni systemaattisen tutkimuskatsauksen kautta saamme käsityksen strategian toimeenpanon ja toteuttamisen saralla tehdyn tieteellisen tutkimuksen määrästä, laajuudesta ja syvyydestä. Tutkimusmateriaalin valinta noudattaa mahdollisimman objektiivista valintaprosessia, jonka kautta valintaprosessin viimeiseen karsintavaiheeseen valikoitui yhteensä 59 tieteellistä ja akateemista julkaisua. Näistä tarkempaan tutkimukseen valikoitui yhteensä 38 artikkelia, jotka täyttivät kaikki asetetut hakuvaatimukset. Systemaattisen kirjallisuuskatsauksen kautta valikoidut julkaisut ryhmiteltiin ja tärkeimmät löydökset referoitiin osaksi tutkielmaa. Julkaisuissa raportoiduista ja näistä referoiduista löydöksistä luotiin arvio sekä kirjattiin ylös yhteneviä tekijöitä, joiden tavalla tai toisella nähdään tieteellisissä tutkimuksissa vaikuttavan strategian toimeenpanon ja toteutuksen onnistumiseen tai epäonnistumiseen. Läpikäytyjen julkaisujen laajuus ja syvyys todettiin sekä kapea-alaiseksi että vaihtelevaksi. Lisäksi julkaisujen kronologinen jakauma painottui vahvasti (92 %) julkaisuajankohdan mukaan 2000-luvulle. Julkaisujen kuvaamien empiiristen tutkimusten havainnot tehtiin hyvin vaihtelevista tutkimusotoksista. Otokset keskittyivät vaihtelevasti eri toimialoihin, tiettyyn kulttuurilliseen kontekstiin tai organisatoriseen hierarkiatasoon, jne. Yhteneviä sekä toistuvasti raportoituja tekijöitä oli kuitenkin tunnistettavissa empiiristen tutkimusten tuloksista joko strategian toimeenpanon ja toteutuksen edesauttajina tai heikentäjinä. Löydöksistä tunnistettuja yhteneviä tekijöitä ryhmiteltiin löydösten yhteenvedossa seuraavan mukaan: ylimmän johdon tuki ja sitoutuminen; johdon kompetenssit; henkilöstön tiedot, taidot ja pätevyys; strategiatyön organisointi; sekä henkilöstön osallistuttaminen strategiatyöhön ja heidän palkitsemisensa. Näitä tunnistettuja tekijöitä olisi kuitenkin eduksi validoida kattavammin empiiristen tutkimusten kautta. Taustalla oleva hypoteesia siitä, että monet julkiset tai yksityiset yritykset eivät ehkä ymmärrä syitä strategian toimeenpanon epäonnistumiseen tai puutteelliseen toteutukseen, ei todettu asianmukaisesti päteväksi eikä pätemättömäksi. Hypoteesin oikeellisuus jää täten avoimeksi ja antaa tilaa tulevaisuudessa tehtävälle lisätutkimukselle. Pro gradu -tutkielmani edistää näin ollen akateemista keskustelua nostamalla esiin ehdotuksia lisätutkimuksen tarpeesta sekä näkökulmia tutkimukseen kaivattavista parannuksista

Reinforcement Learning: Low Discrepancy Action Selection for Continuous States and Actions

In reinforcement learning the process of selecting an action during the exploration or exploitation stage is difficult to optimize. The purpose of this thesis is to create an action selection process for an agent by employing a low discrepancy action selection (LDAS) method. This should allow the agent to quickly determine the utility of its actions by prioritizing actions that are dissimilar to ones that it has already picked. In this way the learning process should be faster for the agent and result in more optimal policies

On the Distribution and Products of Totatives

This thesis concerns itself with relative primality of integers. It uses the concept of totatives, that is, integers relatively prime to a fixed number n, to investigate the distribution and products of those integers. The thesis presents two sufficient conditions for uniform distribution of totatives, a composite analogy of Wilson's theorem, and some results on partial products, including sufficient conditions for congruence of partial products in composite moduli and the Gauss and Jacobi coefficient theorems for prime moduli

Literature review of research on personal selling : A content analysis of scientific articles in 1997-2006

Siirretty Doriast

Relating statistics to dynamics in axisymmetric homogeneous turbulence

The structure and the dynamics of homogeneous turbulence are modified by the presence of body forces such that the Coriolis or the buoyancy forces, which may render a wide range of turbulence scales anisotropic. The corresponding statistical characterization of such effects is done in physical space using structure functions, as well as in spectral space with spectra of two-point correlations, providing two complementary viewpoints. In this framework, second-order and third-order structure functions are put in parallel with spectra of two-point second- and third-order velocity correlation functions, using passage relations. Such relations apply in the isotropic case, or for isotropically averaged statistics, which, however, do not reflect the actual more complex structure of anisotropic turbulence submitted to rotation or stratification. This complexity is demonstrated in this paper by orientation-dependent energy and energy transfer spectra produced in both cases by means of a two-point statistical model for axisymmetric turbulence. We show that, to date, the anisotropic formalism used in the spectral transfer statistics is especially well-suited to analyze the refined dynamics of anisotropic homogeneous turbulence, and that it can help in the analysis of isotropically computed third-order structure function statistics often used to characterize anisotropic contexts.Comment: Physica

An Analysis of Tennessee Agri-Tourism Visitors’ Preferences and Expenditures

Agri-tourism is a relatively new concept in the United States and Tennessee, but it is gaining popularity with agri-business owners as a source of additional income. Because agri-tourism is new, much is left to be understood about what motivates visitors to agri-tourism attractions. This thesis analyzes the results of a visitor survey of 6 agritourism attractions in Tennessee, with a focus on understanding the factors that are motivating people to visit agri-tourism attractions. It was found that the reasons for visitors to attend agri-tourism attractions encompass a complex web of both economic and social motives. Visitors who attend agri-tourism attractions also have an economic effect directly and indirectly on the Tennessee economy

On the third order structure function for rotating 3D homogeneous turbulent flow

A form for the two-point third order structure function has been calculated for three dimensional homogeneous incompressible slowly rotating turbulent fluid. It has been argued that it may possibly hint at the initiation of the phenomenon of two-dimensionalisation of the 3D incompressible turbulence owing to rotation.Comment: This revised version corrects some serious flaws in the discussions after the equation (2) and the equation (13) of the earlier version. Some typos are also correcte