Volume 30 (2011): Issue 4 (December 2011)

In response to the global financial crisis of 2007, a number of central banks used quantitative easing to address the collapse of confidence and credit. This involved increasing the liquidity of the financial system by creating new money. It is suggested that similar strategies of ‘printing money’ in the form of local currencies may be of value for local communities confronting the challenges of economic globalisation. This paper identifies the local impacts of economic globalisation, examines the underlying causes of the global financial crisis, explains the nature of money, and illustrates the goals and different forms of local money. Finally, the potential value of local currencies as a response to the globalisation of capital is assessed.

Escalating mega-city concentrations, perpetuated by investment distortions and rural-urban imbalances in densely populated and economically undeveloped countries, endorse migration, generate pluralities, and create potential conditions for conflict, evoking planners' concern. In a globalising world, national policies tend to comply with international agreements, which do not necessarily synchronise with commitment of welfare states to domestic issues arising from inequities. This is more apparent in economies disadvantaged by large population sizes, sprawling urban agglomerations, preponderance of slums, a large proportion of untrained and illiterate human resources, and differential taxation laws. This paper appraises selected Indian Ocean countries characterised by development imbalances, lop-sided and unmanageable urbanisation on account of limited availability and poor allocation of resources, shift of rural poverty to urban areas, consumption inequities, etc. Most governments have embraced largely aggressive approaches to address this problem, evicting the ‘destitute in-migrants’, or forcibly shifting them. These cannot have a positive and far-reaching impact, and hence incentive-based ‘inclusive’ and ‘participatory’ resettlement strategies are urged.

Globalisation primarily embraces cities, which turn into major nodes of the global economic network. It is here that huge transnational corporations locate their operations, an intensive exchange of information takes place, and the largest global flows are registered. In seeking to adjust their economic and spatial structure to the requirements of the competitive global economy, cities undertake large-scale infrastructural investments and develop new forms of organisation of their economic space, including scientific-technological parks, high-quality spaces offering services to producers and business people, and modern office districts where the headquarters of global corporations, international economic organisations and financial institutions are concentrated. The aim of the paper is to analyse the resources of modern economic space in Polish cities in the age of dynamic globalisation, in particular such elements of this space as high-quality office stock and technological parks.

The changes taking place in the public space of many cities of the world have been assessed as harmful. They are seen as resulting from modern processes shaping their spatial-functional structure. Among them are advancing privatisation, which leads to various forms of public space appropriation, and globalisation, which transforms the world from a world of cities and places into one of networks (especially the Internet and motorways). In Polish cities, however, the deterioration in the quality and accessibility of public spaces is due not only to the social awareness developing in the conditions of neoliberalism and a market economy, which puts private property above public to get over the experience of feasible socialism, but to some extent also to Polish legislation. The aim of this article is to present forms and ways of appropriation of public urban space in the conditions of privatisation and globalisation, as well as reasons why this development seems to intensify in the Polish conditions.

The subject of this paper is an analysis of marginal spatial development processes taking place in Bogotá, one of the largest cities in the Southern Hemisphere. Bogotá, the capital of Colombia, situated on a high plateau (Sabana de Bogotá) at over 2,500 metres above sea-level, has currently approximately 8 million inhabitants. In Bogotá, as in any major South American city, we find the characteristic, highly pronounced diversification of urban space in terms of quality, urban landscape features, and living conditions. Marginal areas in Bogotá, characterised by a low quality of urban space, can be divided into two types, their origin and attributes linked to the general social processes that have taken place here in the 20th century. They are distinguished as follows: (a) marginal districts on the outskirts of the city, resulting from a period of dynamic and unplanned urbanisation, from the 1970s until now; and (b) marginal districts in the centre of the city. This article aims to show the mechanisms that contribute to the formation of and changes in these two types of urban space.

Borders are fundamental structuring elements of space. This paper uses concepts derived from the study of political boundaries to make sense of urban structures and developments. It does this in the case of Guangzhou, a mega-city in Southern China, but the suggestion is that this approach is significant beyond the Chinese case. The author introduces five different ways to see borders (political, physical, socio-spatial, psychological and functional), and holds that border analysis should combine those five aspects. In the case of Guangzhou, spatially differentiated urban governance is seen as creating strong physical, social and other boundaries. This finding is illustrated by various pieces of evidence from the author's fieldwork, including survey data and qualitative interviews.

This paper deals with chosen aspects of revitalization within the downtown area of Polish medium-sized towns. The author underlines the necessity of introducing a mixed-use offer in the city centre. Not only commerce and services, but also cultural functions and values should be promoted in the contemporary city centre. Therefore the idea is presented of turning the downtown public space into a single, homogeneous and integrated spatial-functional system. The system is to introduce cultural functions on the basis of so-called cultural space, which is defined here as a specific kind of public space of historical or cultural value, or that has the potential to develop this kind of new functions.

The number of foreign tourists visiting Japan has steadily increased in the recent decades. The country has much variety between districts in spite of its small area, and there is a close relation between the variety of tourist resources and preferences of foreign visitors according to their nationalities. For example, prefectures located in the Hokuriku and Hida district, which do not have large cities, have shown a rapid increase in foreign visitors in the recent years and become one of the major international tourist areas in Japan. The district is mainly supported by visitors from Taiwan and Europe seeking tradition of Japan in smaller cities and the beauty of nature. It is true that 75% of foreign tourists visiting Japan come from Asia and many of them prefer shopping in large cities. But it is also important to enhance historic and cultural value of tourist resources to heighten the attraction of Japan: variety between districts.