Strategic spatial planning has been suggested as a means for environmental sustainability. However, there are significant challenges with operationalising and integrating policy-driven strategic spatial planning within the standardised and process-oriented management systems of local authorities. This aspect has motivated discussions on how implementation of strategic spatial planning with a focus on environmental sustainability is conditioned by management systems. The empirical case is local planning and management practices in a local authority in Sweden. Interviews with planners, together with planning and policy documents, make up the empirical material. The analysis proposes that the integration of environmental perspectives into strategic spatial planning processes depends on (i) the overall concerns for environmental issues in local policy, and (ii) how administrative management systems can facilitate transformative practice in planning. In conclusion, this article illustrates how environmental sustainability in strategic spatial planning is formed and conditioned through interplay between local policy and administrative management procedures.
This paper brings a geographical perspective to debates in research on knowledge and learning for the innovation of products and firms. The importance of understanding the development of "composite knowledge," which should be understood as knowledge developed through the bridging of different knowledge fields, is stressed. The empirical focus of the study is medical technology. The arguments in this paper are based on a literature review, secondary data, and a "knowledge biography" case study of a firm located in Stockholm, Sweden. The discussion describes how knowledge networks may be multilocal, thus connecting partners in local, national, and international geographical settings. This paper shows that synergies and complementary relations between regional, network, and corporate spaces are focal points for the processes of knowledge dynamics. It also illustrates how "soft" factors in innovations (in addition to important and "hard" factors of technology and functionality improvements, for instance) are important. "Soft" factors include market, process and input innovations, and aesthetic expressions. discussions about emerging industries and with the development of information and communication technologies (ICT), it is a field with a long tradition that includes such products as X-ray equipment and pacemakers. Medical technology has closely followed the development of health services and work in hospitals and other health care institutions.Sweden, which is the geographical context for the empirical study presented in this paper, has a strong tradition in the engineering industries and in ICT, areas that underlie the development of medical technology firms. In 2009, there were 480 medical technology firms in Sweden with five or more employees and at least 1 million SEK in turnover (approximately 100,000 euros). This corresponds to more than 20,000 employees in all. Eighty percent of the firms were small-and medium-sized enterprises. Export income from medical technology in 2009 was 24 billion SEK (approximately 240 million euros), with slightly more than one-third of the exports going to the U.S., one-third to Europe, and one-tenth to Japan (Swedish Medtech n.d.). In the major markets for Swedish medical technology firms-the U.S., Europe, and Japan-the health care sector has historically developed in national settings that are strongly regulated and controlled.Knowledge fields in medical technology comprise medical and technical research, software and hardware ICT, management, business intelligence, and marketing. Knowledge interactions occur in the relationships among different types of actors such as firms, organizations, universities, and public agencies. Hospitals with professional staff, including physicians and nurses, and patients have particularly crucial roles. In this study, these complex knowledge dynamics are analysed and conceptualized through a literature review of medical technology research, using secondary data on the sector and a case study of the knowledge dynamics of one medtech product and ...
Previous research has shown that the comprehensive-integrative planning model seems to be expedient for modernising planning systems, specifically regarding the relation between spatial planning and sectoral policies. However, contemporary, and particularly comparable studies are non-existent. Based on empirical findings from a European research project our comparative analysis explores whether spatial planning in nine countries conforms to key features of this idealised planning model. Our analysis reveals discrepancies regarding how spatial planning is positioned in relation to sectoral policies across the various countries. We argue that this planning model appears rather to be in a state of dissolution than of consolidation.
Many scholars argue that regional planning has lost its political significance and practical relevance in recent years. Based on a comparative analysis of formal regional planning in eight European countries, this study questions and nuances this view. It is concluded that the institutional conditions for regional planning are still extensive and have been adapted to changing contexts since the year 2000, but along different pathways across the analysed countries. The investigation highlights that multiple forms of planning regions have been incorporated in the planning systems through multipurpose planning instruments that have further added to the existing dynamic and diversified regional planning landscape across Europe.
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