Grand Projects Research Articles

Industrial Policies in France: The Old and the New

Industrial policy is mainly sector based in France, moulding industrial specialization and often promoting “grand projects.” It intended to make use of economies of scale, specifically in technologically sophisticated sectors and has been labelled as High Tech Colbertism. The European unification and the Single Market Programme has to some extent converted European industrial policy to the horizontal approach, banning sectoral activities, promoting framework policies, and a sound macro economic policy. The Lisbon strategy then designed a new agenda for growth which acknowledged a gap in competitiveness relative to the USA. In France new initiatives were launched in the past decade, which to some extent are echoing the French type of industrial policy. Regional cluster programs (“poles de competitivité”) were introduced, an industrial innovation agency and a national research agency were founded and the Oseo program promotes small and medium firms. The history, preconditions and chances of the new initiatives are analysed.

Jakarta: Environmental problems and sustainability

Jakarta is on the way to become a “world city”, but to classify in this regard, it needs to be more than the size of the metropolis but it should be enlightened management, the kind of services the city offers to ensure a balanced economic, social, political and environmental development; thus, criteria which would indicate its social, economic and environmental “sustainability” and quality of life. The recent years have shown Jakarta's current management to evolve as promoter of centennial projects like the modernization of the center, the establishment of an integrated public transport system, the redevelopment of the waterfront and a new harbor, the conservation of the Old City, and creation of a few gentrified public parks. While these grand projects are still in the making, many infrastructure and environmental problems still continue to prevail, and there is substantial concern about the pro-rich and anti-poor policies which are being pursued, while Jakarta pretends to make the quantum jump to a modern city.

The Interface of Globalization and Peripheral Land in the Cities of the South: Implications for Urban Governance and Local Economic Development

AbstractThis essay examines the impact of globalization on land peripheral to large cities of the south. It identifies such land as providing major arenas for contested claims between the requirements of international firms and those of local inhabitants and businesses, entailing both threats and opportunities in terms of local economic development. Much depends on the urban governance and institutional processes surrounding the use and allocation of land that are themselves directly influenced by the globalization process. In many cities national, state or provincial governments have set up special parastatal organizations with substantial funding and significant decision‐making powers over infrastructure development and land use to facilitate the rebirth of their cities as havens for international investment. In the process local municipalities and the local population are often excluded from the decision‐making process, while being left to cope with the aftermath and maintenance of the grand projects. The essay identifies weaknesses in elite governance models usually centred at the state or national levels, and asks if a better alternative may be a local government‐led ‘inclusive leadership’ model capable of clear leadership, greater coordination of different governance layers and inclusion of local actors.RésuméCet essai étudie l’impact de la mondialisation sur les terrains situés à la périphérie des grandes villes du Sud. Il identifie ces terrains comme des scènes majeures de contradiction entre les besoins des multinationales et les revendications des entreprises et habitants locaux, ce qui créent à la fois menaces et opportunités en termes d’expansion économique locale. Le résultat dépend largement des processus institutionnels et de gouvernance urbaine qui entourent l’utilisation et l’affectation des terrains, processus eux‐mêmes directement influencés par la mondialisation. Dans de nombreuses villes, les organes de gouvernement nationaux, étatiques ou provinciaux ont créé des entités para‐étatiques spécialisées, dotées de fonds et de pouvoirs décisionnels considérables en matière d’aménagement des infrastructures et d’occupation des sols, afin de réinstaurer leur ville en terre d’accueil de l’investissement international. Or, les municipalités et populations locales sont souvent exclues du processus de décision alors qu’on les laisse assumer les conséquences et la maintenance des grands projets. L’article repère les faiblesses des modèles de gouvernance par les élites, généralement centrés aux niveaux de l’Etat ou de la nation, et se demande si un modèle de ‘leadership inclusif’ sous la houlette du gouvernement ne serait pas une meilleure alternative, permettant un leadership clair, une meilleure coordination des différentes strates de gouvernance et l’intégration des acteurs locaux.

Merkel's EU Policy: "Kohl's Mädchen" or Interest-driven Politics?

This article tries to assess the likely trajectory of Angela Merkel's policies toward the EU in contrast to her predecessor's. With Germany taking the European Council Presidency in the first half of 2007, Merkel will have had a year to put her stamp on the Presidency. By contrast, Gerhard Schröder, who took office in October 1998 had only two months before the German Council Presidency of 1999 began. I argue that Schröder's years will be remembered at the EU for a new emphasis on Germany's interests, and the decline of Germany's interest in and willingness to fund "European Grand Projects." Schröder had no great ambitions to follow Helmut Kohl's footsteps in being "reflexively European." Merkel, by contrast, shows signs early in her tenure to follow more closely her mentor's approach to the EU. I examine Germany's EU budget policies, as well as statements and policies toward the Stability and Growth Pact as the main support for the claim Merkel is different in policy not simply rhetoric.

The Contributions of Nineteenth-Century Christian Missionaries to Chinese Library Reform

This article examines the crucial but hitherto largely neglected contributions made by Western missionaries to Chinese academic librarianship in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It begins by analyzing how early missionaries unintentionally laid the groundwork for library reform while pursuing their two grand projects aimed at promoting Western culture. Next, the article demonstrates how the eminent missionary William A. P. Martin's efforts led to the establishment of China's first prototype of the modern library and how he subsequently participated in the building of China's first modern academic library. This in-depth case study of Martin's efforts aptly underscores the crucial roles played by Western missionaries in Chinese modern library reform in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Seek the Good Life, Not Money: The Aristotelian Approach to Business Ethics

Nothing is more common in moral debates than to invoke the names of great thinkers from the past. Business ethics is no exception, with scholars in that field constantly referring to moral theories like utilitarianism and deontology, raising the ghosts of John Stuart Mill and Immanuel Kant. Yet insofar as business ethicists have tended to simply mine abstract formulas from the past, they have missed out on the potential intellectual gains in scrupulously exploring the philosophic tradition. This paper seeks to rectify this shortcoming by advocating a close reading of the so-called great books, beginning the process by focusing on Aristotle, the founder of virtue theory. Contrary to the leading advocate of the Aristotelian position in business ethics, Robert C. Solomon, we do not find Aristotle implying a theory of the virtues based on the embeddedness of individuals within particular communities. Instead, The Nichomachean Ethics and The Politics points to Aristotle's emphasis on tying business morality to a universal conception of the good life. This conception defines personal happiness to chiefly consist in practicing the virtues, with a good deal of this involving the control of desire, and with the pursuit of wealth relegated to a secondary role. More specifically, the model Aristotelian businessperson takes well-calculated risks, though more to express their superiority over fear than to make money. Such an individual limits their consumption and savings opportunities through the practice of self-control and generosity, at the same time reserving most of their energies to a few grand projects. While respecting voluntary agreements, the Aristotelian businessperson rewards individuals more on their moral and intellectual qualities than their productivity. When doing business abroad, he or she does not seek to impose a single norm, but pragmatically adjusts their behavior and expectations in line with local conditions. According to Aristotle, virtue reaches its height with the exercise of the intellectual virtues of prudence and wisdom - the first manifest in the leadership of organizations, and the second in the philosophic search for truth. From an Aristotelian point of view, therefore, the greatest ethical imperative for business is to give individuals opportunities to thoughtfully participate in the management of company affairs and to contemplate the ultimate meaning of things.

Government Policy, the Local State, and Gentrification: The Case of Prenzlauer Berg (Berlin), Germany

ABSTRACT:Since reunification, Berlin planners have sought to find a niche for a post-industrial New Berlin integrated into Europe. While great scholarly attention has focused on the grand projects that have dominated the reconstruction of the city’s government and downtown commercial districts, only lesser attention has been paid to the city’s housing and social policies. This article seeks to identify the extent to which Berlin planners have permitted unabated market-led redevelopment to proceed and to what extent local policy has sought more balanced redevelopment and the “European city” ideal. The article looks at gentrifying Prenzlauer Berg, in eastern Berlin, to assess the extent to which public policy measures can be expected to constrain and temper, and not just promote, gentrification. The role played by community development organizations in mediating development is observed. The impact of the city’s fiscal crisis and slack housing market are also noted.

Persisting vision: plans for a modern Arab capital, Amman, 1955–2002

This article examines the character and role of the main urban design and architectural proposals included in the various plans and masterplans made for the city of Amman, Jordan, in the period 1955–2002, gauges the degree and extent of their implementation and discusses the general factors influencing their implementation. It documents the time lag between the initial date of the proposal and the date of its final implementation which varies from a minimum of 10 years to a maximum of 47 years, thus often far exceeding the time horizon of the plan. Nevertheless, the survey has shown that the majority of these proposals have indeed been implemented, notwithstanding their slightly modified form or location, and that a good number of the spectacularly grand projects had been implemented (or are currently underway) since the 1990s, which coincides with formation of a new administrative and planning entity known as the Municipality of Greater Amman. This process of delayed but, eventually, rather assured implementation is here termed, ‘persistence of vision’.

Trauma and Testimony

This article examines questions of trauma and testimony from the perspective of political community. It argues that terms such as riots, pogroms, and genocide reflect the points at which the body of language becomes one with the body of the world. Hence the performative force of these terms comes from their capacity to relocate narratives of violence and to anchor them to juridical-political discourses. The article asks for double vision in which life and its forms are subjects of the political but then are remade at the level of the personal. Critiquing grand projects for building identity and/or self, the article asks for mindfulness towards experience and forms of making the experience of violence knowable when saying gives way to showing.

National Interests, State Power, and EU Enlargement

The EU enlargement process and its consequences are decisively influenced by material national interests and state power. Current EU leaders promote accession primarily because they believe it to be in their longterm economic and geopolitical interest, and applicant states embark on the laborious accession process because EU membership brings tremendous economic and geopolitical benefits, particularly as compared exclusion as others move forward. As in previous rounds of EU enlargement, patterns of asymmetrical interdependence dictate that the applicants compromise more on the margin—thereby contributing to a subjective sense of loss among those countries (the applicants) that benefit most. Domestic distributional conflict is exacerbated everywhere, but the losses are in most cases limited, inevitable and, in the longer term, even beneficial. Once in, we should expect applicant states, like their predecessors, to deploy their voting and veto power in an effort to transfer resources to themselves. While overrepresentation of smaller states gives the applicants an impressive number of votes, the lack of new “grand projects” essential to existing members, the diversity of the new members, and above all, the increasingly flexible decision-making structure of the EU, will make it difficult for the new members to prevail.

Sen on Redfield

Reviewed by: Space in the Tropics: From Convicts to Rockets in French Guiana Satadru Sen Peter Redfield, Space in the Tropics: From Convicts to Rockets in French Guiana (University of California Press, 2000) In this volume, Peter Redfield examines the relationship between geography, migrants and the imagination in colonial Guiana and European discourse. He asserts that the space center (from which the French Ariane rockets are launched) took shape within a political, economic and discursive landscape inherited from the now-defunct penal colony. Both “grand projects” redefined European perceptions of human limits, relocated bodies in space, and involved the restructuring of nature. Both established hierarchies of race and power. Nevertheless, Redfield points out, there are significant differences between the two uses and representations of tropical space. The penal colony was a closed world which ultimately represented the failure of Europeans to work effectively (i.e., as Europeans) in an alien geography. The space center, on the other hand, is open to those who possess certain ‘universal’ skills, and reflects a successful transformation of nature to suit the racialized European body. The major objective of Redfield’s analysis is to show how the European vision of Guiana underwent a series of incomplete transitions: from an initial optimism, to images of failure, death, and tropical horror, to a new triumphalism and images of a tropical paradise. His study of the space center describes the physical and biological taming of the tropical geography, and the arrival there of a cosmopolitan pool of European scientists, whose mobility is intimately related to a satellite’s-eye view of the ground, in which distances and boundaries are collapsed. He describes, also, the tensions that result from this space-age vision, which tends to convert tropical geography into a permanently endangered zone for metropolitan Europeans to own and protect, and which then denies the legitimacy of relatively earth-bound (“native”) perspectives on local development. The strengths of the study lie in an exceptional analysis of contemporary Guiana. Redfield convincingly demonstrates how the language of colonialism — especially the European assumption of “the destiny of mankind” — is applied to space exploration, and used to justify the extension of metropolitan space programs into tropical geographies. Even as overt colonialism winds down and one set of frontiers closes, others are opened, reopened, and reinvented. We are shown how the transformation of local space through colonial modernization, at the end of the twentieth century, can leave the native as the outsider, and the migrant expert as the insider: one wallowing in heat, torpor, and “authentic” poverty, the other inhabiting an air-conditioned world of privilege and purpose. The major weakness of the study has to do with the penal colony, in which the convicts all but disappear. (The exception is Dreyfus, whose stay on Devil’s Island is discussed at length.) “Listening” to non-literate prisoners is a notoriously difficult enterprise, but scholars like Anand Yang and Clare Anderson, who have worked on British penal colonies in the Indian Ocean, have managed nonetheless to extricate convicts from the colonial records. Redfield does not appear to have tried. This is connected to an apparent reluctance to acknowledge the relevance of non-European perspectives. Redfield tells us that there were substantial numbers of convicts in Guiana from other French colonies, but we are told nothing about how these prisoners may have envisioned the land of their exile. They are reduced, effectively, to the status of colored extras in Hollywood exotica: milling about in the background, but faceless and inarticulate. There are other regrettable lapses. Redfield must know that defining the cultural/racial Self through technology is not peculiarly European, and that colonized elites in “the tropics” have consistently linked technological expertise — including visions of space exploration — to their validity as nations and civilizations. He tells us nothing about medicine in the penal colony, which is surely relevant to a study of the relationship between bodies and geography. There is, moreover, a persistent confusion regarding the meaning of modernity. The culture of mobile, transnational scientists who flit in and out, shaping Guiana’s image as space without a place, is more post-modern than modern. Also, the intriguing distinction that Redfield makes between the purposeful...

Tocqueville and the Challenge of American Philosophy

Less attention, I suppose, is paid to philosophy in the United States than in any other country of the civilized world.1Thus Alexis de Tocqueville begins his paradoxical chapter on philosophy in America. It is paradoxical because, should its premise hold, the chapter would have to break off right there then. But of course goes on. So we might say that Tocqueville understands there is no easy way out of philosophy, that indifference to philosophy too is a philosophical stance. The challenge for Tocqueville will be to describe how philosophy looks like when has no method, no grand projects to tackle, no attention to consume. A century a half after the writing of Democracy in America we have learned to give this new strange way of doing the philosopher's work a name, i.e., analytic pragmatism. It is analytic because, unlike synthetic European metaphysics, is not interested in finding the overall theoretical picture of all things; is pragmatic because its concern is making use of empirical situations on hand, rather than ultimate teleology. However, America is a troublesome case. For all its pragmatic vigor, Tocqueville finds that the American way of thinking nonetheless makes profligate use of metaphysical generalizations. It philosophizes while claiming has no use for philosophy. To Tocqueville, this does not mean that America is philosophically confused or immature. On the contrary, his book helps us find a keystone where the conflict of American pragmatism Continental metaphysics is shown to be a relatively false problem. And his suggestion is that each philosophical tradition in some sense addresses its claims to the other in order to hold a claim at all. But first things first: Tocqueville's basic problem with America rests with the country's beginning comes up in his opening sentence: America, Tocqueville writes, is something without parallel elsewhere in the world(Dem. 454). It presents the world with a spectacle for which past history had not prepared it (Dem. 30). The first challenge in understanding America is to come to terms with its novelty, with the fact that the world has never yet seen the like of it. In America history happened without precedent. The question here is, not so much about what we are going to do with this freak occurrence, but about what we are going to do with history. For, if anything can happen, if the unprecedented the unforeseeable can occur, then historical wisdom is in no position to explain to us why we live the way we do. America throws sociological history into doubt: exposes the fact that not everything is rooted in the past, or that consequences have lately acquired a queer way of springing out of nowhere. Some, like Tocqueville, will be likely to feel that America awakens us to the happenstance of our times, call modernity, a breakaway era from parent ages tradition: Where are we then? Tocqueville asks in his introduction, and have men always dwelt in a world in which nothing is connected? (Dem., 17). The realization that unconnected or unaccountable events can happen means that history tells a story which cannot explain. In the wake of America, we must see that we sometimes make things we did not anticipate or mean to do: we have become unpredictable and, to this extent, strange to ourselves.2 To explain this strangeness, this mystery of our times, Tocqueville turns to the national origin puts forward two entities: the on the one hand (what today we would call society); on the other hand, or how we organize this society (that is, culture). The critical question for Tocqueville is: which one comes first creates the other-society or culture? The way we live, or how we say we live? Given the interwoven pattern of action thought in human affairs, his answer necessarily comes up inconclusive: `The social state is commonly the result of . . . laws; but once has come into being, may be considered as the prime cause of most of the laws (Dem. …

The Virtues of a Passionate Life: Erotic Love and “the Will to Power”

I would like to defend a conception of life that many of us in philosophy practice but few of us preach, and with it a set of virtues that have often been ignored in ethics. In short, I would like to defend what philosopher Sam Keen, among many others, has called the passionate life. It is neither exotic nor unfamiliar. It is a life defined by emotions, by impassioned engagement and belief, by one or more quests, grand projects, embracing affections. It is also sometimes characterized (for example, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in Faust, by Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche) in terms of frenzy, vaulting ambition, essentially insatiable goals, impossible affections. I want to contrast this conception of life with ordinary morality and “being a good person,” although for obvious reasons I do not want to say that one must give up the latter in pursuing the former. This is a mistake that Nietzsche often suggests with his “immor-alist” posturing and warrior metaphors, but I am convinced—on a solid textual basis—that he intended no such result. Nor do I want to dogmatically assert any superiority of a passionate, engaged life over a life that is more calm and routine (“bourgeois” in the standard cant of Bohemian rebellion). On the other hand, I do want to raise the question whether mere proper living, obedience to the law, utilitarian “rational choice” calculations, respect for others' rights and for contracts, and a bit of self-righteousness is all there is to a good life, even if one “fills in” the nonmoral spaces with permissible pleasures and accomplishments. Even a greatly enriched version of Kant, in other words, such as that recently defended by Barbara Herman, unfairly denigrates a kind of life that many of us deem desirable.

Manifesto for a digital bauhaus1

In the history of modern society several grand projects have been launched in an attempt to unite the two sides of the Enlightenment project: the hard (technology and natural sciences) with the soft (values, democracy, art and ethics). One remarkable such project was the Bauhaus. It was a great modern success story, but also a failure. Today, in the digital age we can witness new more post‐modern attempts to meetings between ‘art’ and ‘technology’. This emerging ‘third culture’ of nerds and digerati is promising, but still most immature. With this background, the paper is formed as a general manifesto for a digital Bauhaus for the twenty‐first century, and at the same time an introduction to the attempts to implement this vision of creative and socially useful digital design at the School of Art and Communication at Malmo University in Sweden.

Francis Bouygues, entrepreneur (22 décembre 1922 - 24 juillet 1993)

Abstract The story of Francis Bouygues is that of an altogether meteoric rise in society. Over thirty years, his firm ascended to the rank of world leader in the field of construction and civil engineering. His initial successes in housing development and the building of low-rent housing estates enabled him, as from the late 1960s, to claim his place among the majors in the building industry. Completion of grand projects (the Paris Parc des Princes stadum, the Teheran stadium, Ryadh University), and the takeover of one of his main rivals, SCREG, have consolidated his position as world number one in the field. This success story is due equally to his insistence of the prime importance of commercial function ; to early adoption of American-style management practices ; and to an effective combination of technical innovation, diversification (T.F.I, television) and motivating of individuals. He has thus secured for his family, within the group's management.

Aesthetic control in Europe

In the Netherlands there has been increasing interest in architecture, design, and in the quality of the built environment in general in the last few years. Plans for such important buildings as the Opera House and Town Hall in Amsterdam or the new Town Hall in The Hague received extensive publicity and provoked much discussion. Many local authorities are busy drawing up and developing plans, through which, they hope, their city's identity can be profiled. Part of the reason for this increasing interest is the impending single European market. More and more Dutch towns (such as Amsterdam with the northern banks of the IJ, Arnhem with the banks of the Rhine, Eindhoven with the Hill area, Maastricht with the rearrangement of the Sphinx-Ceramique area, Nijmegen with the "Brabantse Poort", Rotterdam with the "Kop van Zuid") are developing grand projects, sometimes designed by internationally famous architects, which are supposed to increase the prestige and importance of the towns. It is easily forgotten, however, that controlling the architectural quality of the environment in which most of us live is just as important as the fact that prestige projects are being developed. In the Netherlands this control takes the form of aesthetic control (welstandszorg). Through aesthetic control, building regulations are enforced to regulate the external appearance of buildings and their relation to their environment. This means that every building to be constructed and all (major) alterations to existing buildings have to be assessed on the basis of their external design; that design has to be acceptable and also to fit in with the environment. In the Netherlands architects are confronted with this aesthetic control system when they apply for building permits. The debate about architectural and environmental quality is mainly a national issue. Hardly ever does it take on an international dimension. There is thus hardly any knowledge or experience of control systems for maintaining the quality of the built environment in other European countries. This was one reason we decided to study possible equivalents to the Dutch system of aesthetic control in other European countries. This will provide us with a better knowledge of the specific qualities of our own national system of aesthetic control and perhaps also provide

Alexander Hamilton: The Aristocrat as Visionary

Alexander Hamilton described, and attempted to be, an aristocratic yet visionary statesman. Hamilton's statesman would resist and rise above popular prejudices and passions; occupying a commanding eminence, he would plan grand projects for the nation's future. His architectonic vision detailed instruments for efficient action: the energetic executive and the administrative state. Having shaped these powerful tools, he turned them to economic use, fashioning a carefully integrated set of policies that fostered the rise of manufacturing in the United States. While the aristocratic statesman did not expect the public to understand his vision, he did expect it to respond to the prosperity and power that his efforts produced. As the nation rose to greatness, so, ultimately, would his fame.

Accelerators - Instruments and Symbols for Power

I examine the cult of accelerator physics, describe the laws which govern its development, compare and contrast it with other similar cults in the past, and search for its driving force. It is a story of sheer power. Not only of grand projects whose scale dwarfs everything we have imagined, whose funds deplete federal treasuries and whose real estate transcends national boundaries, but also of the very symbols of human power, directly connected to the destiny of our race.

Oman in the Twentieth Century: Political Foundations of an Emerging State

This reviewer has difficulty in remembering the last time that he was able to understand every word in a book by an American academic. This is not a complaint that can be made against Dr Peterson whose style is clear, straightforward and pleasant and entirely free from pseudo-scientific jargon and ponderous verbiage. Dr Peterson has decided against a chronological approach in favour of discussion of a series of topics, and despite some inevitable repetition, his method works very well. It is clear that he has not confined himself to libraries and record offices and such chapters as that on the Sultans and the ruling family show that he must have spent much of his time in the field. He knows the scene well and can give the details that make so much difference in such a work. We are told, for example, that one of the ruling family worked as a wireless operator while another was a school teacher and that Said bin Taymur manifested his displeasure with an incompetent governor, who happened to be his uncle, by cutting off the water supply to his house. He is very fair to this Sultan who does not emerge as the reactionary ogre of so much propagandist writing. Dr Peterson shows that the Sultan's first task was to extricate his country from crippling debts and so administer it free from British interference in every detail of government. From the budgets from 1921 onwards, which are given as an appendix, we can see how little money there was available for grand projects of development. Dr Peterson is very good, too, on the changes in the nature of tribal society that have taken place in this century. Seventy years ago there were Tamimas (paramount shaykhs) who could lead more warriors into the field than could most of the supposedly independent chiefs of the Trucial States. Even in the 1950s, the turbulent Sulayman bin Himyar could strut the international stage and negotiate with the King of Saudi Arabia. By 1970 such shaykhs were outdated as central government from Muscat spread throughout the Sultanate, and in a series of case-studies Dr Peterson shows how these events affected individual tribes. An amusing feature of modern life that he records is the use by an oil company of shaykhs as shop-stewards and the maintenance of a 'duty shaykh' who is responsible for handling disputes as they arise. There are useful appendices which give genealogies, lists of officials and a comprehensive bibliography. There is also a good index which is of particular importance in such a book where one constantly needs to refer to previous appearances of the various characters. Robin Bidwell