Energy and Water Development Appropriations for 2008


Book Description




Regional Economic Development


Book Description

Regional economic development has attracted the interest of economists, geographers, planners and regional scientists for a long time. And, of course, it is a field that has developed a large practitioner cohort in government and business agencies from the national down to the state and local levels. In planning for cities and regions, both large and small, economic development issues now tend to be integrated into strategic planning processes. For at least the last 50 years, scholars from various disciplines have theorised about the nature of regional economic development, developing a range of models seeking to explain the process of regional economic development, and why it is that regions vary so much in their economic structure and performance and how these aspects of a region can change dramatically over time. Regional scientists in particular have developed a comprehensive tool-kit of methodologies to measure and monitor regional economic characteristics such as industry sectors, employment, income, value of production, investment, and the like, using both quantitative and qualitative methods of analysis, and focusing on both static and dynamic analysis. The 'father of regional science', Walter lsard, was the first to put together a comprehensive volume on techniques of regional analysis (Isard 1960), and since then a huge literature has emerged, including the many titles in the series published by Springer in which this book is published.







Strategizing Societal Transformation


Book Description

This book is dualistic in its nature: it seeks to combine two approaches to the analysis and assessment of societal development prospects and to strengthen the capacity of each. The book describes the strategic development of regional economies as well as worldwide trends. The theory and methodology of strategy should extend much further and deeper than what is obvious to everyone. Strategy is aimed at the effective movement of the object of strategizing to the reality that does not exist and will only begin to form within a certain period of time, which is determined by long-term prospects. One approach has at its core managing the information and technological development of society—its social and economic transformation—through developing and implementing a particular strategy with a concept or doctrine of the planned guidelines as its first stage. Strategizing the information-technological transformation of society is proved to be most effective when it covers long-term development periods, which will lead to significant and even fundamental changes in the values and priorities of socio-economic development. Another approach described in this volume, which is implemented in conjunction with strategizing, is connected to the conceptual understanding of long-term development. The concept of noonomy represents a complex theory of transformation based on technological change and the resulting shifts in social organization. It demonstrates not only trends but also qualitative social shifts to which these transformations lead. In this way, the approach put forward in the theory of noonomy makes it possible to anticipate and evaluate distant horizons of social development and to grasp the transitions from one stage to the next. Employing the concept of noonomy in the processes of strategy is a prognostic phase, immediately preceding the processes of strategy and creating a reference point for them. This book represents the unique strategy concepts (V. L. Kvint) and noonomy (S. D. Bodrunov) have been brought together. The idea of uniting the authors’ views on the problems of civilizational development has a common scientific platform: the definition of long-term goals and the choice of economic and strategic tools to achieve them. This book summarizes the authors’ main approaches to the issues at hand to facilitate the applied problem set by the authors, which is to demonstrate the productivity of synthesizing these approaches to the study of societal development patterns for subsequent use in their theoretical and practical implementation.







Strategic Plan


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Rise and Decline of Industry in Central and Eastern Europe


Book Description

In the course of the tremendous political and economic upheaval starting in 1989/1990 many industrial cities and regions in Central and Eastern Europe have been confronted with profound problems. This book presents eleven detailed national reports which describe the situation in such cities and regions as well as the strategies which have been employed to cope with structural change. The country reports are complemented by short case studies of selected cities and regions. An introduction gives background to such topics as structural change and the ramifications of EU enlargement. Finally some conclusions are drawn and recommendations offered for future policy.