Professor Jen Nelles

Tackling the issue of healthy aging in society is complex. It requires an interdisciplinary perspective and different forms of innovation. This article provides a commentary on the role of innovation policy in addressing healthy aging, particularly in the UK context. We argue that the wide range of economic activities related to healthy aging is part of a hybrid domain rather than a single sector. This represents a new generation of innovation policy for healthy aging which prioritizes understanding how different actors can be connected to support a spectrum of types of innovation which will contribute to providing better goods, services, and practices for older people. We explore social innovation as it relates to hybrid domains such as healthy aging and discuss the role of place in creating policy which generates both societal and market value. We recommend that policymakers use these concepts to build a better understanding of the economies that are evolving around healthy aging and where opportunities exist to better conceptualize, connect, and support actors, initiatives, and places to optimize economic potential and social outcomes.

Community businesses contribute to the economic and social wellbeing of the communities in which they operate. As a subset of hybrid organizations, community businesses have unique challenges and opportunities related to their community embeddedness. Our study adopts an institutional logic perspective to understand the evolutionary boundaries of community business, which we argue, are shaped by the interplay of tensions between the social, market and community logics. While existing literature discusses institutional logics from a dichotomous angle, focusing mainly on the social and market logics, we argue that the introduction of a third logic (i.e. community logics) has ramifications for the evolution of hybrid organizations. The different trajectories may have implications for the social, community and economic impact that organizations can have. We draw on 39 qualitative interviews to provide useful insights for policy and practice on supporting community businesses.

There is a clear consensus amongst both academic commentators and the professional community that current arrangements for strategic planning in England are inadequate. The withdrawal of central government from leadership of the proposed ‘Oxford-Cambridge Arc’ in early 2022 marks a particular nadir, not least given the ambitions for the planning of the area set out only a year earlier. This paper offers a conjunctural reading of the failure of the proposed Arc Spatial Framework, emphasising that not only was the process of planning the Arc itself problematical, but it also faced wider governmental and political headwinds which fuelled public opposition to the scheme, reduced central government commitment, and redirected political priorities elsewhere. In this context the prospects for the future of strategic planning in England appear rather bleak.

Innovation can be a key mechanism to address some of society's greatest challenges, or it can contribute to them. There is extensive conceptual academic literature focused on how policy can be used to create more positive societal and environmental impacts through innovation, however, little empirical evidence exists to understand to what extent innovation policy in particular embeds the principles of social and environmental sustainability into its discourse. We aim to address this lack of evidence by using a critical discourse analysis and corpus linguistics approach to explore how UK Innovation Policy embeds the concepts of societal and environmental impact, and how it balances these at times conflicting paradigms into policy documents. We find that although there is some inclusion of key environmental and societal words these are predominately secondary to economic themes, signalling a ‘business as usual’ approach to innovation policy.

This editorial explores the importance and power of regional graphics for communication in both academia and practice. This journal regularly publishes regional graphics, which feature one or a series of visualizations accompanied by short text that frames the value of the research and includes methodological points. In the relatively short life of the journal, regional graphics have generated a significant amount of engagement and regularly appear on the list of most viewed and trending articles. This collection assembles a diverse range of regional graphics to showcase the variety of ways that visualizations can be used to convey regional arguments, to raise the profile of this type of contribution to Regional Studies, Regional Science and to highlight innovations in visualizations that can also be used to enhance standard length articles and academic engagement beyond this medium.

This article argues that the concept of civic capital affords considerable insight into systems of urban economic development, usefully bridging gaps in both institution-centric and social capital approaches. While the concept has been applied in the literature on urban governance and economic development, its use has been fragmentary and has not seen broad engagement. This review of the state of the literature situates the concept of civic capital relative to existing literature in the field, highlights its relationship to other concepts, and reviews several qualitative approaches that apply the concept to case studies. It provides an overview of the concept and a description of the way it has developed alongside the rich literature on governance and social capital in urban development to illustrate its potential for further analytical study.

In this colloquium, we explore the variety of actors involved in the cross-boundary cooperation that we associate with American regional governance and the evolving connections and relationships between them. We aim to produce a cutting-edge review of the state of the field of American regionalism that is accessible, thought provoking, and forward looking. In bringing together scholarship on different mechanisms for cross-boundary cooperation, and highlighting common themes, we hope to transcend some of the barriers in our field and begin to develop a comprehensive, grounded, and modern understanding of the dimensions of regional governance. The contributing scholars approach this broad question of regional activity with original quantitative data, case studies, interviews, and new arguments for theory development or research. We further hope to spark some lively debate that can generate sustained interest in the important work happening in American regions. We begin this colloquium with our introduction and four posts that consider different mechanisms and their interactions in American regional governance.

An interdisciplinary ‘infrastructure turn’ has emerged over the past 20 years that disputes the concept of urban infrastructure as a staid or neutral set of physical artefacts. Responding to the increased conceptual, geographical and political importance of infrastructure – and endemic issues of access, expertise and governance that the varied provision of infrastructures can cause – this intervention asserts the significance of applying a regional perspective to the infrastructure turn. This paper forwards a critical research agenda for the study of ‘infrastructural regionalisms’ to interrogate: (1) how we study and produce knowledge about infrastructure; (2) how infrastructure is governed across or constrained by jurisdictional boundaries; (3) who drives the construction of regional infrastructural imaginaries; and (4) how individuals and communities differentially experience regional space through infrastructure. Analysing regions through infrastructure provides a novel perspective on the regional question and consequently offers a framework to understand better the implications of the current infrastructure moment for regional spaces worldwide.

An ‘infrastructure turn’ across the social and policy sciences is generating a new wave of interdisciplinary enquiry into how infrastructure is shaping urban and regional space. This editorial introduces a virtual special issue that charts the evolution of infrastructure as an empirical and conceptual concern within Regional Studies. The issue demonstrates that analysing regions through infrastructure – whether large, capital-intensive projects or more mundane infrastructures – provides a novel and necessary perspective on the regional question.

This paper explores the potential and limits of using the concept of metropolisation to describe the emergence and evolution of metropolitan spaces (process) and particularly focuses on its utility as a tool to specify the limits of the metropolitan (lens). To that end, it asks to what degree this alternative and multifaceted conceptualization of the metropolitan challenges existing models. It explores this question by outlining the main tenants of the metropolisation approach and engaging in a preliminary attempt to more firmly operationalize its political-institutional dimension. This paper focuses on unpacking this contrast in the United States and argues that applying metropolisation as a lens returns a very different interpretation of the extent of metropolitan areas than widely used statistical definitions (such as MSAs).

In the absence of consensus about which organizations matter or are the “right” manifestations of American regional intergovernmentalism scholarship has had to develop an imprecisely defined and tacitly circulated perception of regions and the cross-boundary organizations that embody them. Even where effort has been made to establish a broad and consistent definition for regional cross-boundary organizations these standards have been applied loosely and with notable exceptions. We argue that the lack of conceptual precision and consensus, to date, makes large-scale comparative research difficult and prone to potential blind spots. We offer a framework within which we can unify these different pieces. Rather than focusing on organization type, or geographical scales, we propose a system of identifying and studying regional organizations by five core attributes. We submit these regional intergovernmental organizations (RIGOs) as a conceptual lingua franca that transcends organizational nomenclature and statistical constructs and enables broad, methodologically rigorous, comparative research.

The role of governance networks in building metropolitan scale – Territory, Politics, Governance. The broad aim of this comparative study is to examine the relationship between governance networks and the emergence (or lack thereof) of metropolitan scales through an analysis of metropolitan development-policy processes. It explores the characteristics and substance of policies that purport to be metropolitan in scope through a set of six case studies of global city-regions lacking a formal metropolitan-scale government: Berlin, Delhi, New York, Paris, Rome and Shenzhen. This is done to obtain a better sense of the networks, strategies and approaches used in various contexts to tackle boundary-spanning issues in regions. Three paired case studies analyse what interests and actors were involved, how central each actor was to the policy process, and what territorial scales and interests dominated to identify commonalities across cases and to look for evidence of the emergence of new actors in metropolitan policy-making and of political rescaling.

The literature on metropolitan governance is replete with examples of collaborative efforts that have fallen short of expectations and grim prognoses of the potential for voluntary forms of regional governance. This article analyzes something often sought, and rarely found, in American metropolitan politics: successful, effective, and sustained interjurisdictional and interagency cooperation. TRANSCOM, a non-profit transportation organization, stands out as an instance of successful collective cooperation. Operating behind the scenes in one of the world’s most politically fragmented metropolitan areas, its secret has been (a) engaging and building upon a clear and focused mission; (b) demonstrating organizational legitimacy by providing tangible benefits to members; (c) executing its mission without impinging on members’ organizational autonomy; (d) creatively tapping into available resources; (e) sustaining buy-in by developing strong relationships with members; and (f) seeking out champions and empowering decisive and strategic leadership.

This paper introduces a new approach to the comparative analysis of multilevel governance (MLG). Using water governance in North America as an illustrative example, it advances an innovative approach for scrutinizing the varieties of actor constellations in multilevel settings. While MLG is commonly conceptualized rather broadly as a system, we define MLG instead as an instance of a specific actor configuration that can rigorously be distinguished from other configurations, most notably intergovernmental relations (IGR). With this more conceptually bounded classification, we suggest that scholars can now more fruitfully engage in systematic analyses of MLG and IGR across different types of political systems (e.g. unitary, federal and supranational). Our hope is that this paper will provide some much needed conceptual and analytical clarification to an increasingly nebulous debate on what MLG actually is and what it means for students of political science, public policy and public administration.

The impact of governance on multicentered development is examined by surveying the political responses of two leading North American global city regions (GCRs): New York and Toronto. Although both GCRs have experienced very similar policy tensions during recent decades, their process of economic restructuring is strongly mediated by four systemic features in regional governance: concentration of political authority, prevailing social cleavages, civic group resources, and intergovernmental coordination. Differences in these characteristics are found to influence collective action to manage tensions in three major policy areas. Their impact is not entirely cumulative, however. Even though there is evidence that having more of certain governing attributes enhances the possibilities for joint intervention on a regional scale, interaction among system components affects forms of intergovernmental collaboration. Further, the impact of governance systems on collective action also varies with policy area.

While the relatively free and frequent flow of traffic across international boundaries is an essential foundation of cross-border regions, cross-border public transit systems are the ultimate symbols of metropolitan integration. This paper investigates the governance of the cross-border transit system in Eurometropolis of Lille-Kortrijk-Tournai between France and Belgium. It relies on a qualitative analysis of actors and institutions as well as social network analysis to more precisely fix the positions and roles of actors on either side of the border. The new cross-border institution, the EGTC agency, is a central actor in public transit policy networks and its function is more complex than the institutional analysis implies. Evaluating these roles in evolving cross-border public transit policy enables an assessment of the effectiveness of this new governance institution and the challenges faced by general-purpose cross-border governance structures in affecting policy areas in which political authority is fragmented.

Over the past fifty years, Indigenous peoples in settler countries have mobilized to demand policy and institutional changes from their respective states. Although some scholars have employed multilevel governance (MLG) to make sense of these developments, none has examined systematically whether MLG accurately describes these phenomena. We address this lacuna by creating a more robust definition of MLG and applying it to a sample of Indigenous–settler interactions in Canada. Our findings suggest that MLG is an applicable concept for some, but not for all of the Indigenous–state interactions that are typically assumed to be instances of MLG. This conceptual clarification should help scholars from a variety of countries to use MLG more effectively to analyze the relationships between Indigenous peoples and their respective states.

There has been growing interest among practitioners and academics in the emergence of intergovernmental relations between local and Aboriginal governments in Canada. Initial research has focused on describing the nature of these relations but has yet to develop any theoretical expectations regarding why some communities are more likely to cooperate than others. We address this lacuna by developing a theoretical framework for explaining the emergence of cooperation between Aboriginal and local governments. After identifying a set of variables and specifying how they are likely to affect the propensity of communities to cooperate, we conclude with a discussion of how future researchers might use this framework to investigate cooperation and noncooperation between Aboriginal and local governments in Canada and in other settler societies.

In the last 20 years, the number of cross-border cooperation structures in Europe has exploded owing to political and financial support by the European Union aimed at encouraging cohesion and developing peripheral regions. These policies are part of processes of de-bordering and political rescaling that have profoundly affected cross-border areas by creating new institutional territories and political structures. The purpose of this paper is to study the institutional history of cross-border metropolitan governance in Europe through the comparison of two of the most advanced cross-border metropolitan regions: Lille and Luxembourg. This paper asks how these cross-border structures have developed and changed. What can their patterns of institutional evolution contribute to understanding governance in other cross-border regions? Are these new spaces evidence of political rescaling? This paper presents and redefines cross-border governance as a cyclical and a long-term process and also explores the challenges that these partnerships face in becoming functionally effective and autonomous policy actors. Ultimately, we find that there is no replicable ideal of cross-border governance and that even long-standing partnerships are in a period of exploration and reinvention. Establishing a competitive and coherent cross-border metropolitan region is ambitious and complex, and it necessitates the coordination of policies at multiple scales and across institutionally diverse territories. This project requires the modification and/or construction of new institutional and legal frameworks. This reorientation of political attention has resulted in a reconceptualization of political space but not the empowerment of new political actors, indicating that the process of rescaling may be a work in progress.

Scholarship abounds on the importance of city-regions to regional and national prosperity, and to the wider global economy. But little is known about their capacity to function as effective, legitimate and robust policy actors. This article begins to address the important question of what determines the governance capacity of city-regions by unpacking the concepts at the core of this research. It focuses on sources of horizontal capacity as a function of the strength of intermunicipal partnerships. Research suggests a variety of determinants of the strength of inter municipal partnerships, from rational choice to institutional perspectives. This article acknowledges the contribution of these approaches, but argues that none of the approaches presented to date can alone explain observed variations in the strength and capacity of city-regional partnerships. Instead the article presents an alternative theoretical framework that reimagines and combines existing approaches, and introduces the concept of civic capital as a critical determinant of governance capacity.

The policy actions of senior levels of government can often be important catalysts to collective action for metropolitan governance. This article compares the challenges that actors in metropolitan Detroit have faced in attempting to establish metropolitan transit governance in response to the promise of federal funding for regional transit in 1967 and the grants announced in the 2000s. How has the region responded differently to the challenge of regional transit in the most recent wave of funding? What accounts for governance failure even when, at various points in the historical debate, local actors have been in agreement on a metro transit agenda? What has changed since the 1960s and will these differences empower the metro region to finally establish metropolitan transit governance? Finally, what can the lessons of these two periods teach us about governing regional transit in fragmented political contexts?

Universities are increasingly challenged to become more socially and economically relevant institutions. While this phenomenon has prompted a growing literature documenting the evolution of the contemporary university, it remains at once both too broadly conceptualized and overly fragmented. Thus, while these literatures continue to grow, they remain largely undertheorized. This paper employs the concept of “entrepreneurial architecture” as a more nuanced perspective to understand this new mission of contemporary universities. This newly emphasized mission has been politically driven through public policy and funding. While providing a theoretical contribution to the study of the entrepreneurial university/university entrepreneurship, the paper also has broader implications for institutions and policymakers as a pragmatic approach.

Despite a rich and well-developed literature on Canadian federalism, multilevel governance, and aboriginal–settler relations, scholars have tended to ignore the variety of inter-governmental agreements that have emerged between aboriginal and municipal governments in Canada. This article examines ninety-three such agreements to construct a typology of aboriginal–municipal inter-governmental partnerships in British Columbia. It finds that over time there has been a shift from mundane, service-provision agreements towards more collaborative, cooperative and sometimes decolonizing, horizontal and multilevel governance partnerships. As a result, the authors suggest that scholars study these agreements to further explain and understand the evolution of aboriginal–settler relations and multilevel governance in Canada.

Since their introduction in 1973, comprehensive land claims (CLC) agreements have become important mechanisms for Aboriginal peoples to achieve their political, social, cultural, and economic goals. Although the literature on CLC negotiations is a rich and varied one, it has tended to ignore the role that municipal governments have on influencing negotiation outcomes. This lacuna is surprising since a number of treaty negotiations in the Yukon Territory and BC involve lands located in major municipalities. This paper develops a theoretical framework for understanding the influence that municipal governments can have on treaty negotiation outcomes. Using a case study of the Kwanlin Dün First Nation treaty negotiations in the Yukon Territory, we find that institutional and milieu factors are important. However, leadership was the most important and decisive factor.

Knowledge, innovation and institutions: global and local dimensions of the ICT cluster in Waterloo, Canada, Regional Studies. This paper presents research findings on the information and communication technology (ICT) cluster in Waterloo, Ontario. Cluster dynamics in Canada do not conform to some of the key assumptions in the literature on clusters that emphasize the importance of local intra-cluster dynamics based on inter-firm linkages at the local level. The results of this case study indicate that many inter-firm linkages in the Waterloo ICT cluster are non-local, and that extra-firm institutional supports, such as the local university and industry association, are critical in sustaining and strengthening the cluster. Knowledge-based cluster theories that emphasize the role of local and global knowledge flows and learning processes, and the interaction effect of civic capital and local institutions in supporting the development of a local ‘learning economy’, provide more compelling explanations for the resilience of the ICT cluster in Waterloo, Ontario.