Controlling the Urban Fabric: The Complex Game of Distance and Proximity in European Upper‐Middle‐Class Residential Strategies

This article presents an open discussion of the processes of urban secession and gentrification in contemporary European cities, arguing that intergroup social dynamics in urban spaces are generally more complex than either extreme mutual avoidance or the colonization of neighbourhoods by the wealthiest groups. We analyse the residential strategies of urban upper‐middle class managers in various European metropolitan areas through in‐depth semi‐structured interviews to argue that these groups develop complex strategies of proximity and distance in relation to other social groups. The development of these ‘partial exit’ strategies takes place through specific combinations of practices that allow groups to select the dimensions they are willing to share with other social groups, and those in which they prefer a more segregated social environment for themselves and their families. The responses of our interviewees were consistently more nuanced and complex than suggested by a simplistic theory about their drive to withdraw from society, forcing us to develop more sophisticated conceptual frameworks to account for the growing prevalence of multi‐layered identities and spheres of reference and solidarity, specific combinations of elective segregation and local involvement, and more active patterns of mobility combined with local embeddedness.     

Ecological Gentrification in Response to Apocalyptic Narratives of Climate Change: The Production of an Immuno-political Fantasy

Anxieties over the potential impacts of climate change, often framed in apocalyptic language, are having a profound, but little studied effect on the contemporary Western urbanscape. This article examines the ways in which current theorizations of ‘ecological gentrification’ express only half the process, describing how green space is used for social control, but not how ecology is used as a justification regime for such projects. As urbanites seek out housing and living practices that have a lower environmental impact, urban planners have responded by providing large-scale regeneration of the urbanscape. With the demand for this housing increasing, questions of inequality, displacement and dispossession arise. I ask whether apocalyptic anxiety is being enrolled in the justification regimes of these projects to make them hard to resist at the planning and implementation stages. The article shows that, in capitalizing on collective anxiety surrounding an apocalyptic future, these projects depoliticize subjects by using the empty signifier, ‘Sustainability’, leading them into an immuno-political relationship to the urbanscape. This leaves subjects feeling protected from both responsibility for, and the impacts of, climate change. Ultimately, this has the consequence of gentrification coupled with potentially worsening consumptive practices, rebound effects and the depoliticization of the environmentally conscious urbanite.     

电力监控技术在矿井供电的应用探讨

电力监控系统技术是一个致力于解决煤矿井下供电难题而开发的新技术。本文结合煤矿供电特点及存在问题,对电力监控系统在煤矿供电中的应用进行了探讨。     

Executive pay and performance: the moderating effect of CEO power and governance structure

This paper examines the crucial question of whether chief executive officer (CEO) power and corporate governance (CG) structure can moderate the pay-for-performance sensitivity (PPS) using a large up-to-date South African data-set. Our findings are threefold. First, when direct links between executive pay and performance are examined, we find a positive, but relatively small PPS. Second, our results show that in a context of concentrated ownership and weak board structures; the second-tier agency conflict (director monitoring power and opportunism) is stronger than the first-tier agency problem (CEO power and self-interest). Third, additional analysis suggests that CEO power and CG structure have a moderating effect on the PPS. Specifically, we find that the PPS is higher in firms with more reputable, founding and shareholding CEOs, higher ownership by directors and institutions, and independent nomination and remuneration committees, but lower in firms with larger boards, more powerful and long-tenured CEOs. Overall, our evidence sheds new important theoretical and empirical insights on explaining the PPS with specific focus on the predictions of the optimal contracting and managerial power hypotheses. The findings are generally robust across a raft of econometric models that control for different types of endogeneities, pay, and performance proxies.     

治理环境、控制权与现金流权分离及现金持有量——我国民营上市公司的实证研究

利用我国民营上市公司披露的2003年-2006年的终极控股股东数据和樊纲、王小鲁(2007年)编制的中国各地区市场化进程数据及其子数据构建各地区公司治理环境指数,检验治理环境、控制权与现金流权分离及现金持有量的关系.研究发现,治理环境与现金持有量正相关;终极股东控制权与现金流权偏离度与现金持有量显著负相关,治理环境的改善有助于减轻这种负向影响.     

Spatial Imaginaries of the Dutch–German–Belgian Borderlands: A Multidimensional Analysis of Cross‐Border Regional Governance

Parallel to the proliferation of cross‐border regional cooperation initiatives in the European Union, increasing scholarly attention has been given to conceptualizing cross‐border governance in recent decades. In line with the recognition that cross‐border regions have not undermined the significance of nation‐state spaces but have added to their complexity, conceptual frameworks of analysis have become more and more refined. However, studies still tend to be framed in one spatial grammar, that of territory, scale or network, and fail to consider the ways in which these different dimensions become interlocked. The aim of this article is to address this lack by developing a multidimensional perspective, in order to finally circumvent state‐centric thinking on cross‐border regions and to offer a more nuanced account of whether and how new imaginaries of spatial governance institutionalize. These arguments are demonstrated by means of a case study of cross‐border regional governance in the Dutch–German–Belgian borderlands.     

从空间扩展到网络治理:城市分散化趋势探析

以城市空间分散作为研究基点,对城市经济和行政活动进行分析,论证了当前城市成长中的分散化趋势,为当前我国城市发展及管理研究提供了有益借鉴.     

Territorial Stigmatization and Territorial Destigmatization: A Cultural Sociology of Symbolic Strategy in the Gentrification of Parkdale (Toronto)

Territorial stigmatization is one of the most powerful concepts for understanding how social, spatial and symbolic processes are intertwined in producing contemporary urban inequality. Through a detailed case study of Parkdale, a Toronto neighbourhood that has been profoundly shaped by its long association with poverty, single room occupancy housing and psychiatric survivors, this article works at the points of intersection between the rapidly expanding literature on territorial stigmatization and wider social scientific interest in gentrification‐led displacement. Drawing on archival research, participant observation and interviews with residents, it demonstrates how territorial stigmatization, and a new allied concept, territorial destigmatization, operate in Parkdale. Territorial stigmatization and destigmatization work across three dimensions: legal, material and discursive. Using conceptual tools from cultural sociology to foreground symbolic elements of these three dimensions, two strategies of territorial destigmatization are delineated: one that operates in concert with gentrification‐led displacement, and the other that works to symbolically reinscribe stigmatized persons and housing forms. To complement and sharpen territorial stigmatization research, recent findings from studies of stigma are integrated to show how psychiatric survivors and housing advocates in Parkdale use territorial destigmatization to offset gentrification‐led displacement.     

The ‘Graying’ of ‘Green’ Zones: Spatial Governance and Irregular Settlement in Xochimilco,Mexico City

This article details the evolving social and spatial dynamics of a planning approach that is now being used to regulate irregular or informal settlements in the conservation zone of Xochimilco in the Federal District of Mexico City. As part of the elaboration of ‘normative’ planning policies and practices, this approach counts, maps and then classifies irregular settlements into different categories with distinct land‐use regularization possibilities. These spatial calculations establish a continuum of ‘gray’ spaces, placing many settlements in a kind of planning limbo on so‐called ‘green’ conservation land. The research suggests that these spatial calculations are now an important part of enacting land‐use planning and presenting a useful ‘technical’ veneer through which the state negotiates competing claims to space. Based on a case study of an irregular settlement, the article examines how the state is implicated in the production and regulation of irregularity as part of a larger strategy of spatial governance. The research explores how planning ‘knowledges’ and ‘techniques’ help to create fragmented but ‘governable’ spaces that force communities to compete for land‐use regularization. The analysis raises questions about the conception of informality as something that, among other things, simply takes place outside of the formal planning system.     

How to Green the red Dragon: A Start‐ups' Little Helper for Sustainable Development in China

This article qualitatively identifies and explains the barriers that foreign cleantech start‐ups can encounter when attempting to enter the Chinese market, as well as the possible strategies that can help overcome these barriers. We base our analysis on interviews with Chinese and foreign entrepreneurs and facilitators. To structure the analysis of such barriers, we use the components of the entrepreneurial ecosystem. We then explain the barriers using institutional theory. We demonstrate that they are caused either by the regulations in China or by the difference between Chinese and Western logics. We further recommend that cleantech entrepreneurs come prepared to China, remain flexible, associate themselves with reputable partners and take advice from those familiar with business in China. Cultural–cognitive barriers might be overcome by integrating the communities of foreign and Chinese start‐ups. Regulative barriers can be removed by the Chinese Government, but this conflicts with the logic of state control. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Assessing policy interventions to stimulate the transition of electric vehicle technology in the European Union

The European Union (EU) is taking steps to gradually reduce its reliance on fossil fuels, as well as to decarbonize the entire energy and automotive systems, with the goal of reaching carbon neutrality by 2050. As such, road transportation plays a fundamental role in this process. Internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles are to be slowly decommissioned as other powertrain systems arise for multiple reasons, from greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to urban air quality. To change both the technological and consumer landscapes, governments must act through policymaking intervention. Electric vehicles (EVs) provide a significant opportunity to address this issue, and as such, the current work aims at assessing national-level policy intervention within the EU regarding the EV transition. This study employs the ELECTRE (ELimination Et Choix Traduisant la REalité - ELimination and Choice Expressing the REality) TRI-nC method to classify 27 EU Member States (MSs) regarding their governance in terms of EV technology promotion. Overall, financial incentives still have a big effect on EV deployment, since those countries with greater concern on this topic were generally better classified than the rest. Finally, charging infrastructures also play a critical role, either making or breaking the deployment of EVs, leading to the worst classification of MSs with very few charging points per 100 thousand urban inhabitants.     

投资者保护视角下的帕累托最优 --对我国公司治理的新诠释

把福利经济学的帕累托最优原理直接运用于公司治理的研究中,在分析了我国公司治理的现状及其制度背景后,结论是:考虑到我国“效率优先,兼顾公平”的宏观经济发展模式和当前国有企业改革的现状和问题,我国企业的公司治理应当围绕投资者利益保护这一核心目标构建其他利益相关者的帕累托最优状态。     

Watching Sausage Being Made: Lessons learned from the co-production of governance in a behavioural health system

Abstract

We draw out lessons from a multi-level governance system implemented to create more consumer oversight and involvement in the governance of behavioural health services. Through two rounds of interviews, we identified key areas of design that were difficult to implement, resulting in the system continuing to operate as a top-down environment rather than a flatter arrangement. Although new governance structures can be implemented, the underlying culture of government has to shift to allow real buy-in. Until this happens, multi-level governance systems will remain single-layered and command and control systems. The patina of change will cause frustration and animosity among participants.     

解决我国股票期权激励障碍的对策研究

文章分析了我国实施经营者股票期权制度在思想意识、法律法规、市场及公司治理结构等方面的障碍,并提出了解决这些障碍的对策。     

基础设施投资的空间溢出效应分析——以沪昆线沿线城市为例

以沪昆铁路沿线区域及城市经济发展为分析对象,实证分析了我国基础设施投资的空间溢出效应。认为沪昆线的基础设施投资既产生了提高沿线区域及城市的运输能力、扩大沿线贸易量、调整沿线产业结构、促进沿线经济增长的空间正溢出效应,也产生了加剧沿线地区及城市要素的非均衡流动、非均衡经济增长的空间负溢出效应。     

Decision-Making Patterns in Multilevel Governance: The contribution of informal and procedural interactions to significant multilevel decisions

To come to decisions in a multilevel setting, informal as well as procedural interactions are of importance. In this paper, we explored in a case study the decision-making patterns between informal interactions and procedural interactions, and the significance of the decisions resulting from different patterns.

We discovered five patterns of multilevel decision-making: top-down processes, bottom-up processes, collaborative decision-making, synchronization by procedures, and synchronization by interactions. We conclude that these patterns do have different results. Top-down and bottom-up processes often result in mutually extinguishing decisions, whereas the other patterns can result into decisions that matter, depending on the relationships between levels.     

Trapped in the hierarchy: the craft of Dutch city managers

The position of top public managers implies management in three directions: up (political office holders), down (creating organizational capacity), and out (boundary spanning). We know however, little about what these managers do. I present a close-up analysis of city managers using diary analysis, shadowing, and interviews with stakeholders. The analysis interprets their craft as managing up, down, and out. It finds that despite the contemporary emphasis on collaborative public management, the prevalence of boundary spanning activities in top managers’ activity patterns is easily overestimated. Working in the governmental hierarchy consumes most of the managers’ attention.     

治理基础审计:公司治理图景下的新审计模式

现代审计必须对公司治理问题给予足够的审计关注。本文通过分析现代审计与公司治理之问的关系,提出在公司治理图景中可能构建成一种新的审计模式——治理基础审计。