Suchergebnisse

Set in the context of a growing trend toward increased privatization, changes in information technology and telecommunications infrastructure pose both challenges and opportunities for economic development. These developments have led to an emergent telecommunications-oriented strategic approach to urban planning. It is increasingly common that these policies couple urban media strategies with urban-wide economic development strategies together into one 'high-tech' economic development package. Under the rubric of 'urban telecommunications-oriented planning' strategies, the problem with these policies is when they are often viewed as new technological 'quick fix' solutions to complex urban problems. This thesis examines the potential for 'high-tech' economic development strategies as a catalyst for redevelopment, and their implications for the role of local government and non-profit organizations. In what is an overall trend toward privatization or the outsourcing of traditional municipal services, it will (1) illustrate how industry and government have undergone an 'entrepreneurial shift,' and (2) identify how this trend, concomitant with changes in information technology and telecommunications infrastructure, poses both challenges and opportunities for economic development. Finally, it will (3) define what role local government must take as entrepreneurial planners.

We report the results of a qualitative longitudinal case study that lends credence not only to the need to reflect on competing values and outcomes of the politics and legitimation processes involved in practicing "food justice". The study highlights ideological pluralism, pragmatism and compromise inherent to the actually occurring experiences of actors involved in organisations ostensibly created to serve a food justice agenda. This has implications for the sort of academic filters prefigured into analytical frameworks for the study of transition processes. Such filters may pre-empt criteria against which practices are judged legitimate or indeed 'effective'. We draw on two distinct bodies of literature exhibiting useful complementarities and develop an argument around the idea of 'liminal transition spaces' where the institutional arrangements of an organisation may be deemed futile or unattainable, but their substitution remains uncertain. Firstly, 'institutional logics' and secondly, pragmatist sociology is used to advance the idea of institutional liminality, and to open a debate on the role and long-term sustainability of transition entrepreneurship among pluralist organisations.

This paper seeks to critically assess how 'radical' sustainability approaches that challenge 'mainstream' development trajectories – and politics – are crafted and contested within local government. We assess how sustainability transitions scholars have thus far accounted for dimensions of power and politics within socio-political innovations and explore the extent to which these account for how an 'independent' group in Frome (Somerset, UK), Independents for Frome (IfF), took control of the town council in 2011 and consolidated a non-party political approach within its administrative functions, referred to as its 'Flatpack Democracy' model. The findings reveal the extent of adversarialism within political systems, namely how the capture of local political institutions by 'protagonists' affects questions of legitimacy, accountability, or the validation of sustainability agendas through informal institutional capital, such as the role of personal ties and friendships. These debates remain under-theorised where they concern what we term 'liminal transition spaces' of transformative power at distinct moments, or instantiations, of transition. That is, there remains a much-needed theoretical debate around the fragile and imperfect processes of democratisation within the everyday politics of transition management.

Our current global food system – from food production to consumption, including manufacture, packaging, transport, retail and associated businesses – is responsible for extensive negative social and environmental impacts which threaten the long-term well-being of society. This has led to increasing calls from science–policy organizations for major reform and transformation of the global food system. However, our knowledge regarding food system transformations is fragmented and this is hindering the development of co-ordinated solutions. Here, we collate recent research across several academic disciplines and sectors in order to better understand the mechanisms that 'lock-in' food systems in unsustainable states.