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Inter-municipal cooperation mechanisms have been promoted as flexible tools, reflecting the transition from government to governance in a new network economy and eliminating the need to engage in redrawing clear-cut boundaries in the context of soft spaces with fuzzy boundaries. An evaluation of inter-municipal cooperation in the development of industrial parks and tax revenue redistribution in Israel, from the first 1992 initiative to imposed redistribution in 2014/15, reveals how an initiative 'from below' has been adopted and encouraged 'from above', finally used by the central state as a tool of control, to serve its own objectives. It highlights the inherent temptation for top-down imposition, embedded in bottom-up cooperation mechanisms, calling for light-touch regulatory legislation and opting for gently imposed solutions where needed.

Inter-municipal cooperation mechanisms have been promoted as flexible tools, reflecting the transition from government to governance in a new network economy and eliminating the need to engage in redrawing clear-cut boundaries in the context of soft spaces with fuzzy boundaries. An evaluation of inter-municipal cooperation in the development of industrial parks and tax revenue redistribution in Israel, from the first 1992 initiative to imposed redistribution in 2014/15, reveals how an initiative 'from below' has been adopted and encouraged 'from above', finally used by the central state as a tool of control, to serve its own objectives. It highlights the inherent temptation for top- down imposition, embedded in bottom-up cooperation mechanisms, calling for light-touch regulatory legislation and opting for gently imposed solutions where needed.

In this paper, I qualitatively examine the rise and possible fall of statutory district plans as a major tool of regional planning in Israel. Rigid statutory regional plans are a top-down means, and the Israeli case demonstrates that their days are not necessarily over in an era of 'soft spaces' and complex governance networks. The swing of the pendulum in attitudes toward these plans is not associated with centralization–decentralization trends. Rather, it reflects power relations between two centralized coalitions of stakeholders. The one led by elected politicians favors proactive-developmental goals, aiming at state-led open-ended or non-statutory planning. The other coalition, led by central state bureaucrats, favors strict regulation. NGOs, assumed to form the core of soft horizontal governance networks, paradoxically support top-down 'hard' modes of regional planning, in the name of environmental sustainability that is not necessarily best served by bottom-up soft approaches.

Results of the comparative study presented in this paper suggests that local government organization influences land-use planning, and local development strategies and disparities. Local government reforms can, therefore, serve to modify spatial patterns of development and disparities. Based on a review of studies made in the developed and the developing world, the author provides a comparative perspective on these influences. Five major dimensions of local government organization—territorial, functional, political autonomy, fiscal, and electoral—are used to define four extreme models of local government. The American self-government model leads to substantial inequalities and to considerable sprawl. The Western welfare-state model alleviates these problems somewhat, but at a cost to central government. Its positive impact is also dependent on norms of administration at the central level, whereas reduced competition over economic development has its negative sides. Developing-world-type centralism has no real advantages in terms of development or disparities. The developing-world decentralized model can be regarded as a transitional phase towards either the self-government or the welfare-state models. Its implementation has been partial; hence its impact has, so far, been rather small.

Urban sprawl, fuelled by powerful market forces, is unlikely to be controlled by macro-scale regional plans or by comprehensive reforms of the local government map. This paper emphasises two mechanisms that determine the 'rules of the game' of local development and public regulation of urban sprawl: local government finance and the transfer of land from rural to urban local authorities. Sharing local taxes paid by new non-residential property is discussed, in the Israeli context, as a means to reduce overdevelopment of industrial areas in the metropolitan fringes as well as pressures on open space. Complementary regulative measures, where rural local government is separated from urban local government, are based on improved co-ordination between land-use planning and decisions on municipal boundary changes.

A case-study of six towns in Israel's southern coastal plain demonstrates how a shift from nationally directed industrial dispersal efforts to one in which there is a greater role for locally initiated development strategies leads to the restructuring of the urban system. Semi-peripheral regions attain a growing advantage over the remote periphery, though within the semi-periphery intra-regional competition has intensified. Whereas previously there was a degree of homogeneity in the inter-urban patterning of economic investment, the correct identification of advantages at the micro-level has gained importance in promoting local economic development. These advantages can be utilised by effective local leadership for developing 'niches of success' in the face of general economic stagnation. The local strategy achieving the clearest impact on long-term development paths has been to exploit advantages associated with proximity to a metropolis, particularly by intervening in the housing market and by promoting economic integration with the metropolis.

Entrepreneurial activity has served as a route of economic advancement and social mobility for many of the more successful immigrant groups in their new host countries. In addition to varying ethnic resources, the formation of small-businesses by new immigrants depends greatly on characteristics of the host country and the specific urban area. Moreover, interaction of location and ethnicity factors may influence entrepreneurial behavior of immigrant groups; i.e. the role of location may differ for each immigrant group. This role of location has been given only cursory treatment in most previous studies of immigrant entrepreneurs. This paper outlines the relation between theories of entrepreneurship among immigrant groups and studies on entrepreneurship in space. Then, it focuses on case studies of self-employment among recent immigrants in Israel, Canada end California, basing the analysis on national censuses of population from the early 1980s. Special attention has been put on the influence of location on the propensity of immigrants from various origins to engage in self-employment, and on the types of entrepreneurial activities performed by different immigrant groups. The influence of human capital attributes, ethnic networks and local opportunity structures on spatial variations in entrepreneurial behavior of immigrants is discussed. Immigrant entrepreneurship is assessed in the context of changing realities of the 1970s and 1980s. These years witnessed a certain revival in the role of small businesses in job creation in many Western countries. A new role has been assigned to local entrepreneurs in public economic development efforts, replacing post-war strategies, based on capital-intensive industrialization (Storey 1988). International migration flows have also reemerged as a political and economic phenomenon of major importance, due to the passage of liberal immigration legislature in countries of destination during the period of economic growth and prosperity in the 1960's, and due to pressures in the countries of origin, aggravated by the economic crises of the 1970's and 1980's. Thus, the phenomenon of entrepreneurship among immigrant groups has a growing sugnificance in assessing local econimic development processes and social change.