Competitiveness and cohesion in Romania's regional development: a territorial approach

The assessment of the socio-economic disparities at the regional level is one of the priority development topics. In particular, in formerly socialistic-planned countries, the development driven by the transition period, the accession to the European Union and the economic crisis, the regional disparities are present. The main aim of the research has been to identify the most competitive and the most cohesive Development Regions in Romania by computing, mapping and analysing two secondary indices (Territorial Competitiveness and Territorial Cohesion). Overall, the investigation shows that economic performance is more consolidated in central and western regions based on their mature and innovative industries, better-developed services and urbanisation/suburbanisation processes, while the eastern and southern development regions, with predominantly rural traits, experienced a significant industrial decline and social deprivation. The most competitive Development Region is Bucharest-Ilfov, given the advantage conferred by Bucharest Capital City, the main economic and social polarising centre in Romania. For reducing regional disparities, the Cohesion Policy should allocate increased funds for countries with least developed regions. The study provides the result of quantitative and qualitative analysis on the regional-level territorial disparities in Romania that could easily be considered as guidelines in the decision-making process while trying to achieve the competitiveness and cohesion goals.

Economies and employment in growing and declining urban peripheries in South Africa

Urban peripheral growth takes diverse forms, including the development of new economic centralities, raising questions about access to employment for residents, especially in contexts where unemployment is high and economies are shifting towards more skilled and service-related employment. This article explores two case studies of residents’ experience of access to employment close to economic centralities on the urban edge in South Africa: the growing northern eThekwini area (Durban), which has developed major retail and office complexes since the 1990s and more recently a new airport and industrial spaces, and a declining industrial decentralisation point established in the 1980s on the eastern edge of the City of Tshwane (Pretoria). It shows the severe impact of industrial decline in the Tshwane case, but while unemployment is less in northern eThekwini, access to employment for low-income residents in these areas is still very limited and constrained. Experiences are however differentiated, suggesting a complexity of outcomes. The cases point to the vulnerability of these economic centralities to economic change and the limits of new developments on the urban periphery to addressing unemployment. These findings have implications for the current advocacy of ‘new cities’ in economic contexts such as South Africa.

Liberalism's Opiate Subjectivity: Dependency, Edinburgh and Enlightenment

This essay suggests that British liberalism itself has an addictive core. It describes opiates as a particular carrier of this addiction, and follows them from the Edinburgh-based opium trade of the early nineteenth century to their rebound in the Edinburgh of the 1980s. Opiates are such a telling carrier of British liberal authority because they take on a dual historiographical and physical role, affirming both the rise of individual ownership and the understanding of that individual through an addictive self-interest. An accompaniment to and analogue for British globalisation, opiates show how entrepreneurship and dependency have been bound together. This essay describes how a hardening of Scottish Enlightenment ideas in the early nineteenth-century expansion of opium was echoed in the late twentieth century, as liberalism reformed for the post-industrial economy and Edinburgh reabsorbed the combined 'dependency-entrepreneurship'. Both the 1830s opium that extended the reach of British liberal values and the 1980s heroin that accompanied post-industrial decline have their own heroic smuggling, virtuous entrepreneurialism, and 'property progressivism'. Both demand the reform of personal time in economic terms, first in a kind of Smithian productivity, second in a relentless search for opportunity against a background of mass unemployment. An opiate neoliberalism, moreover, becomes paradigmatic for the financialisation of personal relationships we experience in the twenty-first century, and the normalness of progressive pseudo-communities joined in individual self-interest. A number of dramas of the 1980s Edinburgh epidemic realise this, exposing the debilitation underside in virtuous progressive self-interest, and returning to the foundations of Scottish Enlightenment and British liberalism as a whole. Of these dramas, this essay returns to Shoot for the Sun (1986), Trainspotting (1993) and Looking After Jojo (1998), and asks what opiate entrepreneurialism says about our own ongoing 'historiographical addiction'.

Deindustrialization and deaths of despair: mapping the impact of industrial decline on ill health

A growing literature on deaths of despair has argued that workers’ declining life expectancy in deindustrialized rustbelt areas in the U.S. and the associated deepening of health inequalities signal the profound existential crisis of contemporary capitalism. Competing explanations downplay the negative consequences of “creative destruction” and focus instead on unhealthy lifestyles. This article contributes to this debate by presenting the first empirical analysis of the role of deindustrialization in the deaths of despair epidemic that hit Eastern Europe in the 1990s. Drawing on the thematic analysis of 82 semi-structured interviews in four deindustrialized towns in Hungary, the article constructs a general sociological framework for analyzing deaths of despair applicable to other rustbelt areas. Deindustrialization engenders individual and social processes that affect health by increasing stress and eroding coping resources. By conceptualizing deindustrialization as a fundamental cause of ill health, sociology has great potential to contribute to understanding the root causes of deaths of despair.

EUROPEAN FUNDS HELP ROMANIAN AGRICULTURE

The EU Structural Funds are managed by the European Commission and are intended to finance structural assistance measures at Community level, with the aim of promoting regions with developmental delays, reconverting areas affected by industrial decline, combating long-term unemployment, employing young people or promoting rural development. The European Union is first and foremost an economic union. The central goal is to improve economic performance, including poverty reduction. Cohesion policy is the basic policy of the Structural Funds and is a key element in achieving the central goal.

Building the Suburban Factory and Industrial Decline in Postwar Chicago

This chapter examines the built form of deindustrialization through an examination of the metropolitan geography of factory construction after 1945. It shows the little capital investment that flowed to Chicago, while the suburbs became the prime location for the construction of new industrial facilities. It also discusses how employment loss in the central city of Chicago was rooted in site selection decisions made by the managers of industrial and financial firms about more profitable locations for fixed-capital investment. The chapter focuses on factory construction that provides a different perspective on the impact that industrial change had on the built environment. It looks at studies of the relationship between local economic change, politics, and place dependency that have demonstrated the tenuous hold that places have on productive forces and the unequal relationship that exists between place and capital.

Introduction

This chapter examines Chicago's industrial decline and the response of the city's place-dependent bourgeoisie to its fading fortunes. It charts the history of industrial change between 1920 and 1975 and looks at the creation of industrial redevelopment programs in the city of Chicago in the postwar years as city leaders responded to these industrial changes. It also argues that the city of Chicago experienced industrial decline from the 1920s and city leaders implemented several industrial renewal initiatives in the postwar period in an attempt to reverse industrial decline. The chapter explains how the industrial renewal failed, emphasizing on the place-dependent coalitions of developers, financiers, politicians, small business owners, and industrial managers that worked to counter deindustrialization were fighting a losing battle. It mentions alliances that consisted of people from real estate, health, education, finance, and government that pushed a new vision for Chicago.