Territorial Coordination Research Articles

Performing synthetic worlds: Situating the bioeconomy

This paper explores the role of intermediary organisations in the development of the 'bioeconomy'. Focusing on the strategies employed by UK funding agencies to coordinate research in the emerging field of synthetic biology, I explore the spatiality of contemporary science and research policy and the practices engaged by research support bodies. While forms of territorial coordination have constituted a crucial strategy in the promotion of biotechnological clusters, regions and cities, a range of 'geographical imaginations' have dominated political and policy discourse on the bioeconomy and institutional responses to the emergence of synthetic biology. Developing a notion of the reflexive creation of hybrid forums, drawn from Callon et al. (2002), in this paper I develop an alternative concept of the performative enactment of interactive spatialities. I argue that in coordinating research in synthetic biology intermediary institutions are engaged in the active composition and management of new networks of actors and institutions. Copyright The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com, Oxford University Press.

Reviewing the Auckland ‘super city’: towards an ongoing agenda for evaluating super city governance

Super city amalgamations are cast as a contemporary solution to the challenges of planning across borders. In 2010, Auckland was ‘super-sized’ into a unitary metropolitan authority to govern, plan, and manage the metropolitan city region. We argue that this super-sizing comprises a mode of ‘governance by re-bordering’, in which urban problems are framed and solved through techniques of territorial restructuring and strategic coordination. This article examines the re-bordering of local government municipalities into super cities and analyses the subsequent implications for planning, policy, and community drawing on the cases of Auckland, Brisbane/SEQ, and Vancouver. Due attention is given to the planning challenges arising from super amalgamations that rescale central-local government relationships; reassert local government roles in promoting efficient and coordinated spatial planning; and reform the collaborative urbanism in a regional mode of political action.

A assessoria externa nos territórios educativos

The universalization of the secondary education in Portugal is follow by a process of integration of the school into de community and reformulation territorial coordination of the educational activities. The politics of the universal school becomes more complex, taken inside the problem of economic, cultural and social inequality, and the evidence of the inadequacy of a equal, homogeneous and impersonal teaching. The territorial politics of teaching in Portugal includes de TEIP Program – territories educational of Priority Intervention, that aims prevent the dropout of school and ensure the equal success of the student, benefits of specific supports in the areas of education and human resources, promotes flexible mobility of the pedagogical organization and management of the curriculum, and stimulates the joint with families and with the local community. Our investigation is of qualitative nature, so privileges the investigation-action in the extent of advising 50 “priority” schools and aims problematize the action of the external consultant in the organization of the school, especially in the teaching field, that is the domain of the teachers and where is played the formal legitimacy of distinct leaders when we problematize the educational orientation, groups of students reorganization, the implementation of tutorials, the articulation of pedagogical work and the relation between community and families. The observation and participant observation and the several scripts produce by teachers and consultants allow to put in evidence a tension between, by one side, the strong influence of the centralization and the sequential teaching passivity, and by another side, the political impetus to the professional autonomy and the sequential teachers capacity, opening a opportunity for sustainable development and for professional teaching development.

The territorial coordination of the After Care and Rehabilitation facilities (ACR): What place for the Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PMR) in France?

The territorial coordination of the After Care and Rehabilitation facilities (ACR): What place for the Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PMR) in France?

Diffusione e dispersione produttiva in Veneto

The issue of urban sprawl is particularly evident in the Italian North-East and particularly in the Veneto. Within the general settlement sprawl, the spreading and fragmentation of the production system is the result of a distinctive mode of transformations induced by the economical processes. The production facilities sprawl is a process characterized by considerable temporal continuity that has maintained almost intact its antecedents and constituent functional processes with (seemingly simple), continuously adapt to the changing practices of the genius loci. The understanding of this phenomenon is a key element in planning policies. In fact, next to the well-known problems related to sprawl and common to most of the settlements, the case of diffusion of manufacturing activities has resulted settlement in severe conditions of unsustainability in relations to with specific issues such as the supply of raw materials, the accessibility in general, the provision of infrastructure services, the organization of production activities, the consumption of soil, etc.. The Veneto Region has tried to solve the problems arising from this situation through specific legislative instruments and directing regional planning towards these issues. Indeed, the production facilities sprawl has already been dealt with regional laws 80/1980 and 24/1985 that face the problem from the point of view of diffusion in historical town centers and agricultural areas, even before the approval of the Regional Planning Law (Regional law 61/1985). From a planning perspective, Veneto Region with the Law 11/1987 wrote off all the production facilities outside production settlements, however endorsing the diffusion and fragmentation of the production areas. The problem of non-proliferation of sprawl have therefore remained as a key issue in regional coordination plans. These paper wants to further illustrate the proposed methodological approach and the principal results of the working group of the Department of Architecture, Planning and Surveying - University of Padua, in the processing steps of the new Regional Territorial Coordination Plan of the Veneto Region. These reflections, which allowed us to evaluate intervention strategies focused on the recognition of the territory of settlement types specific to refer to.)

In Tandem for Cohesion? Synergies and Conflicts between Regional and Agricultural Policies of the European Union

The paper sets out to analyze the allocations of financial resources accruing to the European regions from the Regional, Rural Development and Agricultural policies of the European Union in order to assess their territorial coordination and synergies and their degree of compatibility with the general objective of territorial cohesion. Regression analysis is used to evaluate the relationship between allocated funds (dependent variable) and factors of territorial disadvantage (explanatory variables) covering the 20-year period 1994-2013 and approximately 90% of total Community expenditure. The analysis reveals that both coordination and compatibility with territorial cohesion of the various areas of Community policy have not always improved in response to major policy reforms. The territorial ‘vocation’ of overall Community spending is weakly linked to its distribution among different policies, but it crucially depends upon how each policy area defines appropriate allocation mechanisms and interventions, based upon the characteristics of each region and its ‘local’ needs.

Nuovi poteri, uso razionale delle risorse e dell'ambiente nella pianificazione dell'area metropolitana di Milano

As acknowledged by a recent Oecd report and by numerous studies on the competitive profiles of cities, one of the major weaknesses of Milan is its scarce ‘habitability’, due to the lack of governance on a regional scale. Following the enactment of Law No. 142/1990, which revived the subject of metropolitan areas in Italy, and at the time of the fi rst studies for the Provincial Territorial Co-ordination Plan, this essay proposes a model for the territorial organisation of the Milan metropolitan area able to combine economic development, protection of the environment and the reorganisation of infrastructures. A key point of the proposal is the reorganisation of the public and private mobility network in order to allow forms of ‘concentrated metropolitan decentralisation’ of services functions, in contrast with the uncontrolled spread of these in the province.

Territorial Coordination or Territorial Governance?

This paper argues that in order to achieve better coordination in dealing with spatial development across borders, the current focus on territorial governance and organizational structures in the Alpine-Adriatic area might not be the right answer to the present situation. Currently, the focus in the area is shifting to the formal aspects of cooperation but, the paper argues, territorial coordination should be pursued instead, focusing on functional aspects and informal processes of mutual learning and adaptations of goals between the actors involved. To support this position, the paper elaborates and emphasizes a distinction between territorial coordination and territorial governance, where coordination is seen as a product of decentralized control over resources, processes and activities, while governance refers to a deliberate transcending of governmental borders while retaining some degree of centralized control. The paper then reviews recent policy developments in relation to the coordination of spatial development in Europe and presents a historic overview of cooperation in the area, including recent developments that point to growing tensions between the regions each time the formal aspects of cooperation come to the foreground. The paper also suggests that appropriate tools for territorial coordination are needed, including working groups for tackling specific transnational and cross-border planning problems and area- wide platforms for exchanging information and knowledge, which would allow the continuity and transparency needed for the construction of collective knowledge in the area.

Genotypic heterogeneity and geographical diversity of collection strains of Francisella tularensis according to the data of VNTR analysis of their DNA

The distribution of variable tandem repeats in four loci (FtA, FtB, FtC, and FtD) in 352 strains of Francisella tularensis of different subspecies, isolated in various regions of the world during the period from 1941 to 2004, was studied. The variability of the VNTR loci was evaluated using the Ney diversity index (DI). An analysis of the identified genotypes of the strains made it possible to group them into 61 variants from A to I with frequencies of encounter from 0.002 to 0.142, while cluster analysis made it possible to distribute them among nine clusters with different numbers of components. The real existence of genotypic heterogeneity and geographical diversity among them, as well as the territorial coordination of definite types of strains, were demonstrated. In order to conduct a territorial and spatial analysis of the distribution of genotypes of the strains studied, we developed a geoinformational system (GIS), “Tularemia.” A characteristic feature of the GIS developed is a dynamic mode of operation, expressed in the possibility of constant addition of information not only by supplementation of already existing data but also by the creation of new layers. Any new input of information is dynamically incorporated into the GIS, which makes it possible to perform both retrospective and operative analysis. The “Tularemia” geoinformational system should find its place in the structure of the epidemiological method, the use of which will make it possible to bring the epidemiological surveillance of tularemia to a qualitatively higher level.

The Government Offices for the English Regions: towards regional governance?

The Government Offices for the English regions (GORs) were established in 1994 in response to mounting pressures for improved territorial coordination in the English regions. For the first time government departments with a regional presence were brought under the management control of a single senior civil servant, the Regional Director. The article explores the underlying pressures which led to their establishment, their role and functions within the regions and their relationship with Whitehall. Against the background of the government’s own stated objectives for the GORs and the expectations of others the article examines some of the problems which have emerged in the first two years of their operation. The article highlights the issue of the openness and accountability of the GORs to their regions. the extent of influence over government departments and agencies outside the immediate span of control of the GORs, and how far they have proved able to have an impact on policy making at the centre. It is concluded that from the perspective of a Conservative administration the GORs have proved successful in strengthening the presence of central government in the regions and should provide the administrative building blocks for a more devolved and democratically accountable regional tier of government in the event of a change in government.