Governing ‘Sustainable Urban Development’ Through Self‐Build Groups and Co‐Housing: The Cases of Hamburg and Gothenburg

This article critically examines the governing of ‘sustainable urban development’ through self‐build cohousing groups in Gothenburg and Hamburg. The two case cities have been selected because both are currently involved in major urban restructuring, and have launched programmes to support self‐build groups and cohousing as part of their emphasis on promoting urban sustainable development through this process. Departing from a theoretical discussion on advanced liberal urban governance, focusing in particular on the contemporary discourse on sustainable urban development, we examine the interaction between political institutions, civil society and private actors in the construction of cohousing as a perceived novel and alternative form of housing that may contribute to fulfilling certain sustainability goals. Questions centre on the socio‐political contextualization of cohousing; concepts of sustainability; strategies of, and relations between, different actors in promoting cohousing; gentrification and segregation; and inclusion and exclusion. In conclusion we argue that, while self‐build groups can provide pockets of cohousing as an alternative to dominant forms of housing, the economic and political logics of advanced liberal urban development make even such a modest target difficult, particularly when it comes to making such housing affordable.     

LRN 2016 SPECIAL – high capacity vehicles and modal shift from rail to road: combining macro and micro analyses

ABSTRACT

This paper addresses a road transport policy of allowing high capacity vehicles (HCVs) on the roads. The purpose is to examine the effect reduced road transport costs from HCVs can have on a modal shift. Two studies of HCV implementation in Sweden were combined. A micro-based case study modelled the distribution network of a major retailer in scenarios based on actual cost and flow data. A macro analysis was conducted of the cross-elasticity between rail and road combined with detailed price changes for lorries considering the product characteristics in different industries. The results show the long-term effects of HCVs on the modal shift for heavier, and heavier and longer vehicles. The combined approach triangulates the results and highlights the effects of logistics decision-making, transport network characteristics, and time. It emphasises linkages between modal shift and road transport efficiency, price reductions, geographical characteristics, product types, train organisation, and the capacity of HCVs.     

Standards as Barriers Versus Standards as Catalysts: Assessing the Impact of HACCP Implementation on U.S. Seafood Imports

The United States mandated a Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points (HACCP) food safety standard for seafood in 1997. Panel model results for 1990 to 2004 suggest that HACCP introduction had a negative and significant impact on overall imports from the top thirty-three suppliers. While the effect for developed countries was positive, the negative effect for developing countries supports the view of "standards as barriers" versus "standards as catalysts." A different perspective emerges from individual country-level analysis. Regardless of development status, leading seafood exporters generally experienced a positive HACCP effect, while most other smaller trading partners faced a negative effect.     

Extensions and intensions of management control—The inclusion of health

Interest in management control of intangibles has grown remarkably during the last decades and now includes managing employee health. Research in this field is so far in the early stages: few empirical studies have been undertaken and fewer studies take into consideration the implications of such systems. In this paper we wish to contribute to the field with a qualitative study of instances of management control of health in ten Swedish organizations.Many good intentions lie behind the idea of making health and ill-health a subject for management control and the expected results are very positive—lower sick-leave rates, reduction of costs and human suffering. Such intentions stand for an intension, i.e. the ideas, properties or state of affairs that are connoted by a word or symbol, in this case what can be connoted by the concept of management control of health, its conceptual position. An intension, however, is not given insofar as a word or concept may be associated to more than one. Thus we set out to interpret management control of health in terms of two conceptual positions, modernism and postmodernism, in order to bring forth two very different intensions of management control of health: one where the practice is seen as an investment with a purpose to visualize ill-health and increase efficiency by putting in place measures to increase employee health; the other where the practice is seen as a means to make the individual accountable in order to be able to intensify control and colonize leisure.     

Technological Diffusion and Growth among Nations: the Two Stages of Catching Up

The international diffusion of technology is fundamental to an understanding of the nature of technical progress and why growth differs among advanced industrialised countries. In the present technological gap model, innovation is supposed to take place in the leading country. In countries following behind, knowledge growth depends on the spill-over of technology from the leading country. The diffusion mechanism is first studied in a growth accounting framework. In a second step, a complete growth model is constructed in which there are two stages of catching up (falling behind). One involves closing (widening) the technological gap, the other one involves convergence (divergence) in the capital-labour ratio.     

Technology management view of conversion from defence to civil production: experiences from southern california

This paper examines from a technology management perspective the prospects for conversion within the US military industrial complex from defence to civil production. After the introduction, the second section establishes a theoretical framework for the analysis, and the concept of conversion is critically examined. This section concludes, among other things, that firms can be perceived as a function of their core skills and their strategic alliances. In the next section, US defence production is discussed from a technology management perspective. Then there is an examination of three firms strategies to develop a competitive advantage in civil commercial markets: edploitation of the defence technological base; organizational and institutional changes; initiatives to affect the socio-economic framework. The success criteria for coping with reduced defence spending are established at frim, individual, local and national levels, and the firms performance with respect to these success criteria are evaluated. A major conclusion is that elements of industrial restructuring constitute an essential—although not sufficient—part of a successful transition to an economy less devoted to defence.     

Productivity Measurement in Manufacturing and the Expenditure Approach

This paper studies conversion factors based on the expenditure approach and evaluates the appropriateness for international comparisons of output levels in manufacturing. We apply a consistency check based on the insight that relative productivity levels should be invariant to the choice of base year. Consequently, convergence parameters and dispersion of productivity across countries should also be unaffected by this choice. The results are disappointing: relative measures of productivity depend heavily of the choice of base year and change systematically as the base years roll forward. The conclusion is insensitive to the applied method for developing conversion factors. The implication is that we cannot measure relative productivity levels in manufacturing across countries using the expenditure approach.     

Quality Labelling for Re-used ICT Equipment to Support Consumer Choice in the Circular Economy

Journal of Consumer Policy - The ever-increasing consumption of natural resources required for the production of consumer electronics, and the growing amount of electronic waste, underline the...     

AIRLINE TICKET TAXES: INNOVATION OR IDIOCY?

The French President Jacques Chirac has proposed an airline ticket tax to finance international efforts to reduce poverty. This article describes how the proposal came about and examines the benefits and drawbacks of this method of helping the poor. It is concluded that the tax is more of a stunt to ensure Mr Chirac's place in the history books than a genuinely innovative method of financing the elimination of poverty.