Temporary Feature Research Articles

SOLAR CITY 2000: VISIONS, TARGETS, TASKS

The built environment in the 21st century faces a massive and unprecedented crisis: the depletion of the very basis of urbanisation as we know it. The coming end of the fossil fuel era throws the meaning of architectural dogma in the 20th century into stark relief. The modem movements of Futurism, Constructivism, the Bauhaus, Postmodernism and Deconstructivism and their legacy are a highly significant but temporary historic feature - the product of the last Industrial Revolution, was sparked by an abundance of cheap energy. The mainstream discourse engendered in late 19th and 20th century architecture and town planning principles celebrated a wild illusion: the arrival of the New Age as an all-powerful myth that thrived by totally obfuscating the underlying issues of sustainability.All contemporary urban civilisation, mega-city formation and spatial globalisation are driven by a single-worldwide force-, cheap oil, coal and natural gas as development drivers. As these supplies dwindle and the spectre of catastrophic climate change triggered by greenhouse gas emissions rises, the call for fundamentally new conceptual frames and solutions will soon become all-consuming –and lend ultimate meaning to the currently rather vague concept of sustainability on the built environment.

The Many Faces of Competition

Despite a great deal of theoretical research on competition, there has been limited empirical work assessing the type of competitive interaction that actually exists in the marketplace. The empirical work that has been conducted has suggested that there is significant variation in the type of competitive interaction across categories and across marketing instruments. Consequently, the central objective of this paper is descriptive in nature—what does competition look like? Focusing on the competition that exists across strategic groups (Porter 1985), we categorize competitive interaction between private labels and national brands for each of 58 categories and four marketing instruments. Specifically, we look at five types of competitive interaction. Three, cooperative, non-cooperative, and independent (Nash) are symmetric in nature, while two, leader-follower (Stackelberg) and dominant/fringe-firm, are asymmetric. The empirical results suggest that general comments or assumptions about competitive interaction can produce very misleading conclusions. There is no consistent pattern of competition that exists between private labels and national brands across categories. Further, the pattern of interaction is quite complex, while there is likely to be a significant variation across instruments within a category. National brand leadership is the most common form of interaction for each marketing mix variable. However, it characterizes only 19 out of 58 categories for regular price, and 16, 19, and 15 out of 58 categories for temporary price reduction, feature and display, respectively. Further, the interaction is idiosyncratic to the category, depending heavily upon the demand and competitive characteristics of the category. Implications for both game theorists and for managers are explored.

Reduction and Instrumentalism in Genetics

In his important paper “1953 and All That: A Tale of Two Sciences” (1984), Philip Kitcher defends biological antireductionism, arguing that the division of biology into subfields such as classical and molecular genetics is “not simply … a temporary feature of our science stemming from our cognitive imperfections but [is] the reflection of levels of organization in nature” (p. 371). In a recent discussion of Kitcher's views, Alexander Rosenberg has argued, first, that Kitcher has shown that the reduction of classical to molecular genetics is impossible only because of our intellectual limitations and, second, that this kind of antireductionism supports an instrumentalist approach to biological theory. I argue that both of Rosenberg's claims should be rejected despite the fact that Kitcher misdiagnoses the central reason for the failure of reduction.

The Industrial Way of Life

AMONG refined and sensitive people the conviction is quite general that there is no such thing as American civilization. They do not deny that there is an American way of life. What everybody talks about must have some sort of existence, if only as a figment of the folk-imagination; and in this case the subject is only too real. Among Americans Topic Number One is making money. In the lambent phrase of a former president, business of America is business. This is not a recent development. In the opinion of those who have thought themselves best qualified to judge, America never has been civilized. But what could once be excused as a natural and, it could be hoped, temporary feature of a frontier existence is now, in the same view, a world calamity. Now that the civilization of the Old World has been swept by the holocaust of war, as we say, people everywhere look to America not only for material aid but even more for a renewal of spiritual strength. They look-but what do they see? The people, both here and elsewhere, who see in themselves the finest flower of Western civilization find our spiritual climate singularly sterile. Not only do we have no past; we seem to have no proper sense of the importance of the past. Ours is now the richest country in the world, and not merely by default. It is richer than any other country has ever been, and we have enjoyed comfortable circumstances for several generations. Nevertheless we have no historic homes. Even our greatest families still hop, skip, and jump from one dwelling to another, building great palaces only to abandon them a generation later. Americans are, it seems, a migratory race. We are a nation