Search

The changing modal composition and volume of work travel in London, Birmingham, and Manchester and their resultant energy consumption implications are considered in this research. Essentially, the mechanism is to calculate the passenger km travelled by mode and then to apply mode-specific energy consumption parameters to calculate energy consumption. By classifying work-travel trips according to their travel mode and their location and orientation (within, out of, and into town) it is possible to determine where the major forces for commuting change are and, more important, assess the implications of these forces for energy consumption. Average energy intensities per person trip are not the same everywhere or for every energy-consuming mode; furthermore, the magnitude and direction of change in average energy intensities are not the same either. Many of the trends seem to be moving rapidly away from positions of energy sustainability. The data are derived from the 1981 and 2001 special workplace statistics of the Population Census for small areas, and from fuel consumption technical parameters calibrated by engineers. One important objective of the paper is to understand the relative importance for energy consumption of changing travel modes for work journeys and changing trip orientation caused by urbanisation trends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although economic-geographical research has recently been the subject of ‘cultural’, ‘institutional’, and ‘relational’ turns that stress the situated, relational, and embedded nature of economic activity, these concerns are usually elaborated through analyses of industrial, not financial, circuits of capital. In this paper I address the neglect of the financial elements of production networks by exploring the geographies of some of the financial practices of a group of microbusinesses in Birmingham's Jewelry Quarter. I argue that the Jewelry Quarter is an important financial space for these firms and illustrate how their production regimes are produced and reproduced through different spatiotemporal financial relationships with suppliers, customers, and financial intermediaries. By contrast with the undersocialised treatments of agency that predominate in firm finance literatures in economics and finance, I illustrate the situated, idiosyncratic, and often very personal nature of the financial knowledges, practices, and networks that reproduce these firms. This financial ‘cut’ through the Jewelry Quarter treats firm finances as integral to firm behaviours and strategy and uses this vantage point to assess the potentials and predicaments facing these firms that are regarded as strategically important for the future of the Quarter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]