Innovation, Networks and Learning Regions? address key issues of understanding in contemporary economic geography and local economic policy making in cities and regions in the advanced economies. Developing the idea that innovation is the primary driving force behind economic change and growth, the international range of contributors stress the importance of knowledge and information as the 'raw materials' of innovation. They examine the ways in which these elements may be acquired and linked through networks, and demonstrate that there are empirical examples of innovative areas which do not have highly developed networks yet appear to be relatively successful in terms of local economic growth. In so doing, they raise crucial questions about the ways in which regions or localities might be described as truly 'learning' areas, and about the sustainability of future economic and quality of life success based on innovation and high-technology.

Why does Japan, with its efficiency-oriented technocracy, periodically adopt welfare-oriented, economically inefficient domestic policies? In answering this question Kent Calder shows that Japanese policymakers respond to threats to the ruling party's preeminence by extending income compensation, entitlements, and subsidies, with market-oriented retrenchment coming as crisis subsides. "Quite simply the most ambitious and strongly argued interpretation of a key dimension of Japanese political life to appear in English this decade."--David Williams, Japan Times "Historically dense and conceptually rich.... [Forces] readers' attention to the domestic underpinnings of Japanese foreign policy."--Donald S. Zagoria, Foreign Affairs "Punctures the myth of Japan Inc. as a cool, rational monolith...."--Kathleen Newland, Millennium "A bold reinterpretation of Japanese politics that will force us to rethink many of our current assumptions and will influence our research agenda."--Steven R. Reed, Journal of Japanese Studies

Over the past thirty years, transnational investment, trade, and government policies have encouraged the decentralization of national economies, disrupting traditional patterns of urban and regional growth. Many smaller cities -- such as Seattle, Washington; Campinas, Brazil; Oita, Japan; and Kumi, Korea -- have grown markedly faster than the largest metropolises. Dubbed here "second tier cities, " they are home to specialized industrial complexes that have taken root, provided significant job growth, and attracted mobile capital and labor. The culmination of an ambitious five-year, fourteen-city research project conducted by an international team of economics and geographers, Second Tier Cities examines the potential of these new regions to balance uneven regional development, create good, stable jobs, and moderate hyper-urbanization. Comparing across national borders, the contributors describe four types of second tier cities: Marshallian industrial districts, hub-and-spoke cities, satellite platforms, and government-anchored complexes. They find that both industrial and regional policies have been important contributors to the rise of second tier cities, though the former often trump the latter. Lessons for local, national, and international policymakers are drawn. The authors are critical of devolution and argue that it must be accompanied by strong labor and environmental standards and mechanisms to overcome differential regional resource endowments.

This book will undoubtedly become one of the classics of the project management literature ... There will be a growing need for project managers who can look beyond the internal processes of their projects to the organisational, technological and socio-economic contexts in which projects must be managed. A good starting point would be for all project managers to read this ... book.'- Construction Management and Economics.

Technopoles - planned centres for the promotion for high- technology industry - have become a key feature of national economic development worldwide. Created out of a technological revolution, the formation of the global economy and the emergence of a new form of economic production and management, they constitute the mines and foundries of the information age, redefining the conditions and processes of local and regional development. This book is the first systematic survey of technopoles in all manifestations: science parks, science cities, national technopoles and technobelt programmes. Detailed case studies, ranging from the Silicon Valley to Siberia and from the M4 Corridor to Taiwan, relate how global technopoles have developed, what each is striving to achieve and how well it is succeeding. Technopoles of the World distills the lessons learnt from the successes and failures, embracing a host of disparate concepts and a few myths, and offering guidelines for national, regional and local planners and developers worldwide.

This Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper on Kyrgyz Republic highlights that the period 2009 through filled with symbolic events marked a new milestone in the Kyrgyz Republic development and will enter the country’s history as the period of strength test for the Kyrgyz statehood and entire public administration system including socio-political, economic, environmental, financial and other areas of development management. The country development background during that period included the world financial crisis and growing uncertainty on world markets which created risks for all market actors including the Kyrgyzstan’s key trade partners such as Russia, Kazakhstan, and China. The government officially declared the country’s sustainable development-oriented policy. For Kyrgyzstan as a country with its still high poverty level, particularly in rural areas, and limited natural and financial resources, the sustainable development policy seems today’s logically and politically justified choice. The sustainable development model itself suggests striving for systemic, comprehensiveness, and balance in development. Transition to sustainable development suggests considering economic growth through the prism of human values and reasonable use of natural resources.