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The purpose of this study was to examine internal and external supports of an information technology themed (whole school) urban magnet high school located in a low-income urban community within the Southeastern region of the United States. We found the academy to be an exemplary case study for how schools can build a high profile reputation with investment from key stakeholders within the district and school as well as with the community, business/industry, and postsecondary partners. The internal investment of the school was spearheaded by not only the principal, but also district leaders (e.g., superintendent) as well. The career specialist opened the doors to external investment (e.g., business/industry, community members, postsecondary partners). Characteristics that contributed to the academy's success included effective school leadership, effective communication, and ongoing collaboration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay will focus on the relations between food, gender, and generation among Italian Americans at the beginning of the XX century. Four different issues are explored: the generational connections related to food consumption, the roles of wives/mothers, husbands/fathers, sons and daughters and their relations inside the ethnic family, the transnational business based on family-run companies and their Atlantic trade network, and the influence of the American society among second generation Italian Americans. Familieshad been the center of a generational shock, in which parents forced sons and daughters to accept an "invented" tradition to keep the power on new generations. Food also played an important role in family business development in Italy and United States. These transnational companies established a well-structured network thatmolded the Italian and American industrial landscape. This article will correlate cultural and social history of the Italian American families with economic and business history to show the way Italians shaped their ethnic identity in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that independent TV channels releasing narratives of intersecting identities innovate in the organization and technological dissemination of representations, specifying cultural production in ways that more fully value communities in the United States and at times abroad. Through interviews with founders of ten currently running and defunct independent channels, I show how the value of intersectionality is not simply in branding corporate channels or supplying them with new narratives but also in critiquing and reinventing industrial practices to accommodate communities historically excluded from the system. These indie channels allow scholars to see the work of development itself, chronically understudied despite its rapid expansion through net-neutral web distribution and its legacy as the process from which all TV shows emerge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parachurch organizations are Christian, heavily evangelical Protestant, 501(c)(3) public charities focused on providing religious goods and services outside of any congregational or denominational sponsorship. The parachurch sector in the United States has been growing rapidly in recent decades, yet this growth has been highly uneven across communities. Many communities have very few parachurch organizations, while a few exhibit incredibly higher concentrations of them than would be expected based only upon their religious composition. Using IRS records, we isolate communities with the greatest concentrations of parachurch organizations, and then, drawing upon ideas developed in studies of industrial districts, we address this puzzle by exploring four of those communities, which we refer to as spiritual districts: Tulsa, Oklahoma; Nashville, Tennessee; Colorado Springs, Colorado; and Washington, D.C. We utilize interviews with organizational leaders and archival records to attempt to account for the makeup of and dynamics of each of the four unique clusters of parachurch organizations, concluding with a discussion of how understanding spiritual districts can contribute to greater understanding of the phenomenon of industrial districts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In Chicago, the resolution of the fervent debate surrounding a certain land-use restriction known as the planned manufacturing district ("PMD") zoning designation will have a direct impact on Chicago's future PMDs protect industrial operations by preventing all residential and many commercial uses of land in certain areas of the city. In 1988, Chicago began implementing PMDs to protect industrial operations that an influx of residential development--which had forced industrial companies to consider selling, relocating, or closing--threatened. Chicago continues to rely on PMDs. Fifteen PMDs currently operate, but some of these districts face increased scrutiny as Chicago's industrial sector steadily declines. The Clybourn Corridor PMD is the PMD that has faced the greatest scrutiny. Those who advocate for the elimination of the Clybourn Corridor's PMD designation argue that the current land- use restriction is a relic of a different economic era and that the historic justification for preventing residential and commercial growth is not applicable in the current Chicago economic market. But those who support the Clybourn Corridor PMD argue that Chicago should protect the few industrial jobs left in the area. This Article ultimately advocates for the City of Chicago to eliminate the Clybourn Corridor's PMD designation. In place of the current land- use restrictions, this Article calls for the creation of a new set of zoning laws that maximize the value and efficiency of the land in the Clybourn Corridor by allowing residential and commercial uses. Under these new land-use laws, Chicago can shed an outdated and inefficient set of restrictions and create a new hub of economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do two similar places respond to the same renewable energy technology development proposal in contrasting ways — as a problem in one community, and a non-problem in the other? In response to William Freudenburg's call to examine the role of ideologies in the social construction of both environmental problems and non-problems, and drawing from Ann Swidler's concept of cultural resources, this paper develops and applies an integrative framework the author calls industrial culture. The paper examines how industrial cultures — the stories, discourses, orientations, and practices around industrial development and accompanying environmental degradation that are commonplace in particular locales — shape community responses to proposed future development by both constraining and providing opportunities for new trajectories of action. This process is illustrated with a comparative case study of two adjacent and outwardly similar industrialized northern Michigan communities with legacies of environmental degradation that encounter the same bioenergy development proposal but respond in contrasting ways. Findings suggest community residents construct industrial cultures around both a) past industrial development and environmental degradation and b) the imagined future impact bioenergy development would have on the community. The paper extends the literature on environmental non-problems by showing how the social construction of non-problems is driven not only by explicitly articulated ideologies, but also by unquestioned common sense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data on inventors and assignees of patents are used to analyze the mobility of semiconductor inventors. Exploiting data on the origins of semiconductor producers with larger sales, we argue that the higher mobility of semiconductor inventors in Silicon Valley is in great part due to the entry of spinoffs there. Our empirical evidence suggests that spinoff entry promoted mobility in Silicon Valley even before the industry was clustered there. Agglomeration economies and the ban on noncompete covenants may influence spinoff entry, but spinoffs promote mobility even in the absence of those conditions. Because most of the greater inventor mobility in Silicon Valley corresponds to inventors moving from incumbents to recent entrants, the benefits that arise from greater mobility rates will be disproportionately reaped by new firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The influence of airports on the distribution of employment within fifty-one large US metropolitan areas is measured in the context of three important elements of urban spatial structure: centers, corridors, and clusters. Analysis of tract-level census data for 2000 using spatial regression models for each metropolitan area revealed that central cities have a varying, but generally strong, effect on the distribution of metropolitan employment, as do highways and employment subcenters; favored quarters had less certain impacts while the airport influence was weaker and more variable among regions. Regressing metropolitan airport-anchored distance-decay parameters on a series of regional explanatory factors suggests that airport cities develop primarily as cities expand outward rather than as a direct consequence of air transportation. These results inform plans relying upon airports to help shape and perhaps accelerate regional development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the history, purpose and significant application of the U.S. trade secret law in the trial courts serving the high-technology industrial districts of Route 128 region of Massachusetts and Silicon Valley in California for protection of business secrets from departing employees. Topics include the difference between the trade secret law in California and Massachusetts, findings of Professor Ronald Gilson on effect of employee mobility and employment agreements.

The article focuses on the adoption of cluster development strategies by states and larger communities in the U.S. to target industrial gaps and disconnects for community economic development. Several common elements of industrial clusters are cited. Three ways in which competition can affect clusters are suggested including increasing the productivity of companies within the area. Several reasons for a disconnect are also noted.

The article discusses the concept of industrial districts and draws on the way in which they can be applied to economic theory. Thus, a methodological debate is presented, which focuses on case studies from Italy, Spain, France, French-speaking Switzerland and the United States. It thereby concentrates on themes such as: the cooperation between small and medium-sized companies in bringing together their regional networks; the impact of institutional arrangements, and the common marketing of goods through the introduction of regional trade marks. The theoretical framework of the article is contrasted with other approaches, such as the cluster economies. As a last point, the article discusses the reasons responsible for the concept's lacking presence in German-speaking academia.

A case study of the cancer risk to humans posed by persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in an industrial area of China, which has a long history of contamination from many sources, is presented. Relatively great concentrations of POPs around the chemical industrial parks have the potential to be chronically carcinogenic to local people. Sixteen individual PAHs listed for priory control by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA), metabolites of DDTs, and isomers of HCHs were measured in soils and a human health risk assessment was conducted by use of USEPA exposure models for children and adults, respectively. Geostatistical methods were used to simulate the spatial diffusion of potential carcinogenic risk, and non-parametric Mann-Whitney U and Kruskal-Wallis tests were employed to analyze the impact of point sources on the surrounding area. The mean value of the sum of Excess Lifetime Cancer Risk (∑ELCR) exceeded the generally acceptable risk level of 1.0E-06 recommended by the USEPA for carcinogenic chemicals. The maximum ∑ELCR was 2.9E-04 for children, which was observed inside the chemical industrial parks. Contamination at the chemical industrial parks caused significant spatial diffusion of ELCR values caused by PAHs, DDT, and HCH. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article shows, using data from both the USA and the UK, that average plant size is larger in denser markets. However, many popular theories of agglomeration—spillovers, cost advantages and improved match quality—predict that establishments should be smaller in cities. The article proposes a theory based on monopsony in labour markets—firms in all labour markets have some market power but that they have less market power in cities—that can explain the stylized fact. It also presents evidence that the labour supply curve to individual firms is more elastic in larger markets, consistent with the monopsony hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Direct voting by property owners is a widespread but controversial tool for re- solving disputes over local collective goods. Direct voting has powerful advantages, in that it can harness the superior knowledge of many local minds, resolve controversies in a way that is perceived to be legitimate, and eliminate corrupt dealmaking. But it also has serious pitfalls, if local voters are poorly informed, or if they ignore external effects on other communities, or if the process is distorted by majoritarian or minoritarian bias. To capitalize on the advantages of local voting, and minimize the risks, this Article proposes that direct voting be limited to local property owners, in a one-owner, one-vote fashion. The issues chosen for resolution by direct voting should also be ones with uniform high stakes for property owners, and minimal spillover effects outside the voting community. Applications to controversies over the creation of local historic districts and the use of eminent domain for economic development are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SolarWorld USA'S two main manufacturing facilities in Camarillo, CA, and Hillsboro, OR, represent the past, present, and future of crystalline-silicon solar photovoltaic manufacturing in the United States. The Southern California site, which sits in a small industrial park across from a verdant expanse of strawberry fields, was home to one of the world's first (and at one time the largest) solar factories in the late 1970s, a historic campus that has changed corporate hands several times, from Arco Solar to Siemens Solar (1990) to Shell Solar (2001) and finally to SolarWorid (2006) over the three decades since its inception. This article provides a look inside the factory doors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, it is argued that the North American industrial district was a metropolitan-centred one that drew extensively on regional resources, skills, capital, and information. The Chicago printing industry between 1880 and 1950 is used as a case study to demonstrate that industries were linked at various scales: from the factory district to the metropolis and the region. A wide range of sources (manufacturing censuses, government reports, industrial journals, bankruptcy records) is employed to establish how the intricate set of relations and transactions formed metropolitan industrial districts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a research study, which analyzes and estimates the effects of district efficiency on student achievement in Michigan. Data were collected from public files present on the websites of Michigan Department of Education (MDE) and Center for Educational Performance and Information (CEPI). In addition, the study established the relationship between student achievement and district efficiency, and provided a detailed guidance concerning the scope of choices and qualitative components of district efficiency. Moreover, it supplied an introductory, but substantial, part to Michigan school finance policy area.

Using nonparametric descriptive tools developed by Duranton and Overman (2005, Review of Economic Studies, 72, 1077–1106), we show that both new and old auto supplier plants are highly concentrated in the eastern United States. Conditional logit models imply that much of this concentration can be explained parametrically by distance from Detroit, proximity to assembly plants, and access to the interstate highway system. New plants are more likely to be located in zip codes that are close to existing supplier plants. However, the degree of clustering observed is still greater than implied by the logit estimates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The lack of significant efforts at the national level to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) in the United States has provided the impetus for a number of state programs. This article assesses the efficiency of these programs in making real progress in GHG reductions. It also explores the effect of state programs on the eventual adoption of a strong national GHG mitigation policy. While state programs are likely to demonstrate the viability of new mitigation approaches, they are also likely to create a set of expectations and precedents that will make a strong and coherent national policy more difficult. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

University research parks are important as a mechanism for the transfer of academic research findings, as a source of knowledge spillovers, and as a catalyst for national and regional economic growth. We develop a model to describe the growth, or productivity, of research parks, and we test this model using the newly constructed National Science Foundation database on university research parks. We find that parks closer to the university, operated by a private organization, and with a specific technology focus—information technology in particular—grow faster than the average of 8.4% per year. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corporate incubators for technology development are a recent phenomenon whose functioning and implications are not yet well understood. The resource-based view can offer an explanatory model on how corporate incubators function as specialised corporate units that hatch new businesses. While tangible resources, such as the financial, physical and even explicit knowledge flow, are all visible, and therefore easy to measure, intangible resources such as tacit knowledge and branding flow are harder to detect and localise. Managing the resource flow requires the initial allocation of resources to the corporate incubator during its set-up as well as a continuous resource flow to the technology venture and, during the harvest phase, also from it. Two levels of analysis need to be distinguished: (1) the resource flow between the corporate incubator and the technology venture and (2) the resource flow interface between the corporate incubator and the technology venture. Our empirical findings are based on two phases: First, in-depth case studies of 22 companies through 47 semi-structured interviews that were conducted with managers of large technology-intensive corporations' corporate incubators in Europe and the U.S., and second, an analysis of the European Commission's benchmarking survey of 77 incubators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents abstracts of articles related to city planning. "Promoting Retail Innovation: Knowledge Flows During the Emergence of Self-Service and Supermarket Retailing in Britain," by Andrew Alexander, Gareth Shaw and Louise Curth; "The Nature of Op Art: Bridget Riley and the Art of Nonrepresentation," by Simon Rycroft; "Was the 1937 U.S. Housing Act a Pyrrhic Victory?," by D. Bradford Hunt.

Analysts and policy makers frequently measure industrial localization and regional specialization. However, they rarely examine the nation's full array of industries or regions. So local indices, appropriate for specific industries or selected regions, are typically estimated. But in some instances global indices would be preferable in order to assess the wider features of the entire space-economy. This article constructs global indices from the local indices already used in assessing localization and specialization. Global localization and global specialization are shown to be identical when all local indices use the dissimilarity logic. Two-digit standard industry codes manufacturing data, taken from the U.S. during 1958–1995, are used to illustrate the results. The values of these global coefficients, like their local constituents, are shown to vary with geographic scale. The discussion addresses spatial distributions (evenness) but not geographic arrangements (clustering). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Looks at the potential impact of expected changes in U.S. job structure on employment in the Tenth District. Description of the U.S. industrial structure; Importance of industrial structure for state employment growth; Discussion of the projected changes in the mix of occupations nationally.

This article highlights the present state of development of the global competition between high-tech centres. Special attention is paid to science parks as a development policy option and the extent to which this policy has been adapted in the USA and major European and Asian countries. Another important framing theme of the article is to outline the development of science parks and clarify the science park terminology. In addition, the functions, performance and new directions of science parks are briefly discussed. Lastly, the structure of the special issue of IJTM at hand is outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whereas business incubator facilities focus resources on 'hatching' new technology-based businesses, the equally substantial need for maturing existing businesses in their formative years has received less attention. Many economic regions are recognising the importance of providing continued business development support after a new company is established. Business accelerators have been conceived as a means to support businesses as they meet the challenges of sustaining growth and realising market potential. Recently, one such accelerator known as Technology to Management, or T2M, has been established in the Intermountain West of the USA. T2M provides content knowledge, access to financing and networking support to maturing companies. Whilst T2M is composed of representatives from business, government and academe, the catalysts for the program are the service provider organisations, including investment banks, insurance providers, accountants and law firms. Recently, T2M has begun an aggressive expansion program through which it will coordinate a regional network of accelerators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The planned industrial district contributed to the planning of the twentieth-century metropolitan landscape. Using Chicago as a case study, this article examines the early history of the planned district. Two aspects are emphasized. First, the article outlines the manner in which a coalition of business and political actors planned and created a new industrial landscape. Second, the article looks at the interaction between firm boundaries, industrial networks, and urban space. This interaction is illustrated through an examination of three aspects of the planned district: incubators, clubhouses, and factories. The article combines recent research on the dynamics of industrial activity with historical evidence on Chicago's industrial districts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After being emblematic of the U.S. economic surge in the late 1990s, urban areas that specialize in information technology (IT) products have more recently been struggling with the aftermath of the IT spending bust. To what degree can they bounce back and reemerge as leaders of innovative activity and production in the IT sector? We examine the characteristics of some of the nation's leading IT centers, linking these characteristics to a discussion of economic research concerning the sources of growth in urban industrial centers. Although each of these IT centers was hit hard by the IT bust beginning in 2000, the full impact varies depending on the size, density, and composition of the local IT sector. Some IT centers are better positioned than others to resume a rapid growth path as the IT sector recovers, depending on factors such as reliance on manufacturing versus services, diversity of the product base, innovative capacity, and ability to respond to changing conditions such as the recent rise in IT imports and overseas production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the transformation of Five Points area from industrial district into a working class neighborhoods in New York, New York. Presentation of demographic and physical changes; Construction of palisade in 1745; Establishment of a City Hall in the public Common.

Expounds on the growth of metropolitan Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, from 1870 to 1920. Dispersal of industrial development; Manufacturers' search for large sites with railroad and river accessibility; Accentuation of industrial dispersal due to dispersed natural resources of coal and gas; Dependence of industrial districts on transportation, capital and labor markets.

Tracks the suburbanization of manufacturing in San Francisco Bay Area, California, from 1850 to 1940. Creation of the sprawling form of the American metropolis through industrial dispersal; Establishment of peripheral nodes of employment and working class residence within and beyond the city limits; Business leaders' orchestration of development.

Data from one industrial district in Baltimore can show the impact of contamination on demand for and supply of industrial land. A survey that covered 69% of the land in Canton/ Southeast Baltimore found that land purchases and redevelopment are occurring on the area's largest parcels when sellers are willing to lower their prices to compensate for the risks and costs associated with owning a site with a history of contamination. Brownfield sites sold for an average of 55% of the average price per acre of clean sites, and those that sold had an average sale price of 25% of the average price per acre of contaminated sites that did not sell. We found little evidence of land hoarding by the private sector. Surprisingly, the City of Baltimore appears to be more reluctant to redevelop contaminated parcels than does the private sector. We conclude that documented land contamination is not deterring buyers from purchasing land in the area. This analysis was conducted prior to the passage of Maryland's 1997 Voluntary Cleanup Act, which limits an owner's legal liability for future remediation costs once an agreed upon standard of cleanup has been met. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a study which analyzed the embeddedness, milieu and innovation in industrial districts through a case study of high-technology firms in Richardson, Texas. Concepts of embeddedness and milieu; Description of the city of Richardson; Results of the study; Conclusion.

Focuses on the impact of strategic intervention on the trajectories of two medical industrial districts in the United States. Impact of the structure and functioning of social networks on strategic interventions; Diversity in the biotechnology sector of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Dominance of Medtronic in Minneapolis, Minnesota.