IN THE BUBBLE JOHN THACKARA - witz cultural

Notes to Pages 80–82 247
16. Local Futures (http://www.localfutures.com) runs a research program, European
Regions in the Knowledge Economy, that examines how cities and regions of Europe
are planning for the knowledge economy and tackling its many policy issues.
17. ‘‘The ideal city needs to contain a rich mixture of craft-based workshops, consultants,
law firms, accountants, distribution and logistics companies, advertising
agencies, universities, research labs, database publishers, and local or regional government
offices. Unique skills, clusters of specialized suppliers, local roots, and a variety
of human skills that are unique to a region—all these are a powerful advantage
for local cities and regions on today’s economic stage.’’ Will Hutton, The State We’re
In (New York: Vintage, 1996).
18. The emergence of modern urban and regional networks can be traced back to the
formation of the International Union of Cities in 1913. Jennifer Mills, ‘‘The Hanseatic
League in the Eastern Baltic’’ (SCAND 344, May 1998, part of the Encyclopedia of
Baltic History, available on the website of the Baltic Studies Program of the University
of Washington, Seattle [http://depts.washington.edu/baltic/papers/hansa.html]);
‘‘The Baltic Lands and the Hanseatic League in the XIV, XV, and XVI Centuries’’
(map), available on the website of the International History Sourcebooks Project, ed.
Paul Halsall (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/maps/hanse.jpg).
19. For a bibliography and numerous papers by Christopher Alexander, see the
Project for Public Spaces website at http://www.pps.org/info/placemakingtools/
placemakers/calexander.
20. For an explanation of how the notion of territorial capital has been applied in a
European context and the lessons learned, see Mikel Landabaso, Bénédicte Mouton,
and Michal Miedzinski, ‘‘Regional Innovation Strategies: A Tool to Improve Social
Capital and Institutional Efficiency? Lessons from the European Regional Development
Fund Innovative Actions’’ (paper presented at the Regional Studies Association
conference ‘‘Reinventing Regions in a Global Economy,’’ Pisa, Italy, April
12–15, 2003, available at http://www.ebms.it/SS/documents/Landabaso%20et%20al
_2003_Regional%20Innovation%20Strategies_a%20tool%20to%20improve%
20social%20capital%20and%20institutional%20efficiency.pdf. For a more general
account, see Robert Putnam, ‘‘Social Capital, Measurement and Consequences,’’
ISUMA: The Canadian Journal of Policy Research 2, no. 1 (Spring 2001), 41–51, available
at http://isuma.net/v02n01/index_e.shtml.
21. The Open Planning Project website is at http://www.openplans.org/.
22. The Regionmaker decomposes a city’s environment into functional units (housing,
services, commercial, industry ) and then runs through millions of combinations
and suggests the optimal combination according to a given input of desires. The ‘‘access
optimizer’’ function, for example, determines the physical structure of the city
based on such parameters as preferred time expenditure, transportation means used,
level of sustainability, economic efficiency, and ecological control.