This PhD thesis in Spatial Planning argues for the importance of understanding the approaches to knowledge and rationalities embedded in spatially relevant decision-making. It emphasises the significance of seeing law as an empirical object of study for planning and environmental management. The Swedish development of wind power and 3G mobile infrastructures are used as cases to study these issues of principal interest. It is a compilation thesis consisting of a comprehensive introductory framework and five articles or chapters that have also been published elsewhere. The study is based on three main perspectives: Level of decision-making, legitimacy of different forms of knowledge involved in the process, and the sociolegal tension between formal law and its practical consequences. The thesis deals with problems stemming from the multi-level tensions in the planning and implementation that exist between the national, the regional and the local authorities. The legal context is analysed from the sociolegal perspective, in particular how the juridification of siting and permit conflicts determines what type of knowledge that can legitimately affect the decision-making and thereby set conditions for public participation. Finally, the thesis elaborates on the largely counterproductive results of the strong emphasis on “efficiency” in the revision of planning and permit processes for wind power and 3G-infrastructure, and what can be learnt from the experiences of the attempts at increasing efficiency. A combination of methods has been employed in the studies, and the data comes from a range of sources such as a large set of mast building permits, a sample of wind permit cases, as well as appealed permit cases. In addition, interviews have been conducted with judges from relevant courts, including regional handling officers who assess wind turbine applications. Legal documents such as preparatory work and licence conditions have also been analysed. The results show that there is a legal-rhetorical adaptation to the expert-based decision-making in court when permits are appealed. Further, the administrative levels interact poorly in the overall implementation. The national decisions, irrespective of the normative viewpoint of who should control the landscape planning, could be better informed of the preconditions at a local level that factually define the outcome of the implementation.

The year 2013 marked the 100th anniversary of the 1913 Land Act in South Africa which legalised the violent dispossession and alienation of the African majority from the land. It is common cause that the alienation of land for conservation purposes, introduced to Africa under colonial rule, has continued more or less uninterrupted until today. However, while nature conservation practices inevitably raise challenging questions relating to land and land use, there has thus far been little concentrated effort to bring together scholars working on the land question, particularly around issues of land tenure, with those whose work focuses on questions of nature construction and the social impacts of conservation in an African context. Compiled from research presented at a ground-breaking interdisciplinary conference held at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa, in 2012, the chapters in this book made their first appearance in a special issue of the Journal of Contemporary African Studies (JCAS) in July 2013. The book brings critical interdisciplinary analyses of the complex interrelations between contemporary (neoliberal) conservation practices in post-colonial Africa, into conversation with the well-trodden territory of land use and contested land issues on the continent. Anchored by an intellectual curiosity about the extent to which past practices continue into the present and with what consequences, the book provides fresh insights into the complex relationship between land and conservation in contemporary Africa.

In an era where new areas of life and new problems call for normative solutions while the plurality of values in society challenge the very basis for normative solutions, this book looks at a growing field of research on the relations between social and legal norms. New technologies and social media offer new ways to communicate about normative issues and the centrality of formal law and how normativity comes about is a question for debate. This book offers empirical and theoretical research in the field of social and legal norms and will inspire future debate and research in terms of internationalization and cross-national comparative studies. It presents a consistent picture of empirical research in different social and organizational areas and will deepen the theoretical understanding regarding the interplay between social and legal norms. Including chapters written from four different aspects of normativity, the contributors argue that normativity is a result of combinations between law in books, law in action, social norms and social practice. The book uses a variety of different international examples, ranging from Sweden, Uzbekistan, Colombia and Mexico. Primarily aimed at scholars in sociology of law, socio-legal studies, law and legal theory, the book will also interest those in sociology, political science and psychology.

This book explores and critiques the process of spatial regulation in post-war New York, focusing on the period after the fiscal crisis of the 1970s, examining the ideological underpinnings and practical applications of urban renewal, exclusionary zoning, anti-vagrancy laws, and order-maintenance policing. It argues that these practices were part of a class project that deflected attention from the underlying causes of poverty, eroded civil rights, and sought to enable real estate investment, high-end consumption, mainstream tourism, and corporate success.

Based on anthropological fieldwork in the 1990s, this book provides an ethnographic perspective in its examination of the politics and policies of cultural tourism as they were played out under the Indonesian New Order regime. The successful New Order tourism policy ensured that tourism development both contributed to, and benefited from, increasing economic prosperity and a long stretch of political stability. However, that success has come at a price; the policy to encourage mainly 'high-quality' tourism revolved around carefully constructed and controlled tourist experiences that have led to local inequalities. The failure of this policy is analysed in a detailed case study of the city of Yogyakarta.

We typically take public space for granted, as if it has continuously been there, yet public space has always been the expression of the will of some agency (person or institution) who names the space, gives it purpose, and monitors its existence. And often its use has been contested. These new essays, written for this volume, approach public space through several key questions: Who has the right to define public space? How do such places generate and sustain symbolic meaning? Is public space unchanging, or is it subject to our subjective perception? Do we, given the public nature of public space, have the right to subvert it? These eighteen essays, including several case studies, offer convincing evidence of a spatial turn in American studies. They argue for a re-visioning of American culture as a history of place-making and the instantiation of meaning in structures, boundaries, and spatial configurations. Chronologically the subjects range from Pierre L’Enfant’s initial majestic conceptualization of Washington, D.C. to the post-modern realization that public space in the U.S. is increasingly a matter of waste. Topics range from parks to cities to small towns, from open-air museums to airports, encompassing the commercial marketing of place as well as the subversion and re-possession of public space by the disenfranchised. Ultimately, public space is variously imagined as the site of social and political contestation and of aesthetic change.

While community quality-of-life indicators are gaining much needed attention in both scholarly work and practice, their application in the areas of parks, recreation and tourism management are not as well known. The applicability of indicator systems for natural resource and natural resource area management within the parks and recreation arena is very high, including urban parks and recreation programs and their influence on quality of life. Tourism is also an area that needs much more work in terms of assessing impacts as well as developing indicators for gauging progress in the long term. All three areas are an integrated discipline and most programs throughout the developed world are housed co-jointly. There are several researchers across the globe who are conducting innovative work in these areas. The editors feel that a volume on the topic will spur additional interests as well as serve to lead the research efforts.

China has witnessed a dramatic development of tourism in urban context in the past thirty years, especially with its success in hosting the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008 and the Shanghai World Exposition in 2010. Urban areas as tourism destination are receiving increasingly more popularity than traditional destinations such as national parks, natural reserves, and historical relics. Deriving largely from a special issue on "Urban Tourism Development and City Destination Marketing" (Journal of China Tourism Research), Urban Tourism in China presents the readers with a collection of nine independent research reports examining issues such as consumer behaviour in urban destinations, the social impact of tourism, destination image, leisure, regional collaboration, and heritage tourism in ancient towns. The investigations covered urban areas of different scales and diversified nature from major metropolises such as Beijing, and Guangzhou, to ancient towns like Lijiang and Pingyao. Readers who have interests of tourism research, business development, and in-depth understanding of urban life in China may find the book informative and interesting. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of China Tourism Research.