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Featuring model Harley Viera-Hewton and photographer Mick Rock at New York City's ACE Hotel.

Styled by CITY Fashion Director Julie Ragolia. Video by Liran Okanon.

Posted 04/24/09

Get On Top -- Topshop opens in NYC . . . finally!

In case you haven't heard, anticipation for Topshop has hit a fever pitch throughout New York, where the flagship store opens April 2. After being delayed for months, the store at 478 Broadway, is finally ready to open its doors and compete for Soho-shoppers' dollars. Featuring a dizzying array of clothes delivered weekly, Topshop, and its men's shop, Topman, prides itself on offering something for everybody.

Until now, Topshop has retained an aura of exclusivity (even at its affordable prices) being available in the U.K. only. Now that this is about to change, we're excited to see how the department store fares against nearby H&M and ZARA outposts and influences young street fashion.

What you might not already know is that this week the new NYC store will feature intermittent DJs (including a set by LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy), complimentary makeovers and manicures, and a free Britannia t-shirt with purchases over $100. All these perks and more add up to (literally) the biggest store opening the area has seen in years.

Posted 04/ 2/09

Photos: Stocked -- The Art Dealer's Photography Show comes to New York

Art Dealers and photography lovers should get to the Park Avenue Armory beginning March 26, when 70 of the world's leading fine art photography galleries, including The George Eastman House in Rochester, Robert Mann Gallery in New York, and Robert Koch Gallery in San Francisco, present a wide range of museum-quality work by contemporary, modern, and 19th-century master photographers. On Saturday, a series of special events will take place at the Armory, one of which is The Art of Fashion Photography seminar at 2 p.m., which comes free with admission. The show runs throughout the weekend until March 29 and tickets are available on apaid.com beginning at $25 for a day pass.

Posted 04/ 2/09

Cheap Shot -- Limited Edition Cheap Mondays available in New York

Not a day goes by in the CITY office where at least one member of the staff isn't wearing a pair of Cheap Mondays. So imagine our excitement when Cheap Monday's highly customized line of distressed denim hit New York on March 17 -- simultaneously launching the new store location for street-chic boutique, Inven.tory (237 Lafayette St.). After touring Stockholm, Copenhagen, Berlin, and London, the brand's design team came to New York with 50 pairs of jeans (hand numbered from 200 to 250) selling for $70 a pop. The designers were eager to explain how each pair takes roughly half a day's work with patching, sewing, and punching treatments, which served as a reminder of the pride involved with wearing handmade products.

With pieces like Levi's Capital E line (seen on the cover of CITY's Spring Fashion issue), we feel it's a great time to get back to basics and place value on wearing handmade, humble goods. Call us suckers for limited-editions and personalized detailing -- if you must.

Posted 04/ 2/09

Get Your Fix: EVA New York presents an exhibition by Cecilia Jurado

On March 8, Stephanie Pappas will further her mission to combine fashion and art at EVA New York. The boutique owner, who recently moved her store from Mulberry Street in New York to a 2,400-square-foot, two-level store and studio at 355 Bowery, welcomes artist Cecilia Jurado and her photo exhibition entitled, "Oral Fixation," curated by Adriana Farietta. Oral Fixation is the culmination of Jurado's photographic series "Oral Cute" which uses blurred supermodel portraits taken at fashion shows in New York to illustrate beauty that is highly consumable, yet far beyond our reach. And for that consumable, oral fix, model Marie Hansen will be covered in chocolate at the show's opening to represents consumption as the ideal luxury food, and will invite the audience to take a lick. Eva is located at 355-A Bowery in New York.

Posted 03/ 4/09

Universities, Innovation and the Economy

Helen Lawton-Smith.

Routledge (2006), 256pp, £80.00, ISBN: 9780415324939, ISBN-10: 0415324939.

Reviewed by Tim Vorley, University of Oxford.

Over the past twenty years universities have come to constitute an important focus of interdisciplinary research agendas, and so this book makes a timely contribution to these debate. By presenting empirical evidence from Europe and North America the book provides an overview of the changing geography of university-industry relations to understand the emergence of alternative academic paradigms. The book sets out its aim to ‘record the paradigm shifts articulated in policies that are a response to and further reinforce trends already taking place and in which universities are being repositioned in society’s expectations in relation to industry’ (p.4). Until comparatively recently universities were almost conspicuous by their absence from much social, economic and political discourse, but as the long history of collaboration between academia and industry is more explicitly brought to the fore it again warrants examination. As governments across the world have sought to realise the potential of higher education nationally, universities have become central to government policy frameworks to stimulate national, region and local economic growth. The territorial or geographical perspective which Lawton Smith assumes, while not privileged, provides a useful vantage point from which to examine the role and ability of universities to enhance prosperity through participating in the innovation process.

While there has been much work on university-industry-government relations, most notably by Leydesdorff and Etzkowitz, it is evident within the context of prevailing policy models that the role of the university is multiple, with a wide range of intended benefits to society. However, the focus of the book, as with the focus of much policy, is on the economic forms of university engagement and does not detail more intangible, sustainable and/or community forms of engagement except where they have an explicit economic dimension. More specifically in examining the complex dynamics between universities, innovation and economic development the book draws on a range of geography, economic and management literatures, as well as multiple forms of theory, data and methodologies. The structure to the book is two main sections. The first part is a contextual and conceptual discussion of universities, university-industry interaction and territoriality, while the second part is a wellbalanced comparative of Europe and North America, presented in the form of regional overviews and placed based studies which provide interesting illustrations.

The first chapter usefully draws together the histories of universities and territorial development that are currently prominent on political and academic agendas through eight paradigms which characterise the twenty-first century. The eight paradigms serve to provide a useful analytical framework for the book, identifying how universities are positioned in relation to the process of economic development. While the paradigms identified individually constitute an interesting approach, collectively they aptly articulate how universities have become more central to regimes of governance associated with the innovation process and economic development. The second chapter places geography; distinguishing between the forms and rationales of economic engagement by the university. With a focus on primarily science and engineering-based industries, the distinction is made between the co-presence of universities and economic activity, linkages which arise from proximity and those which stem from relationships in shaping geographical patterns of economic and innovative activity. While the book is in itself an overarching review of university transformation in an era defined by the knowledge-based economy, chapter 3 engages with the difficulties associated of metrics and measuring the impact of universities on economic development. Indeed Lawton Smith concludes that the significance of universities for (regional) economic development and innovative activity is overstated, and finds the scant data available can be selectively used to support a variety of arguments. In sum the first three chapters setup the remainder of the book by careful identifying the contemporary universities and situating it in relation to innovation and the knowledge-based economy.

The second section of the book advances the more generic and conceptual discussions through examples drawn from Europe and the United States. Universities and innovation systems constitute the focus of chapter 4 in a European context. Drawing on a range of European countries the implications of shifting EU innovation policy between the 1960s and 1990s were illustrated through the eight paradigms identified in chapter 1. The chapter concludes that policy is intrinsic to creating a more integrated European innovation system, or rather network of national innovation systems, capable competing with the US. Indeed Lawton Smith observes the new system(s) of governance to have seen universities repositioned in relation to the eight paradigms, and seen universities adopt a more instrumentalist position within society. Conversely chapter 5 presents an appraisal as to the evolution of national (innovation) policy in the US, which as in Europe emphasised the role of universities for economic development. However, it is, and historically has been the close relationship between and the shared interests of universities and industry which are a key source of the US’s comparative competitive advantage. Having outlined the policy context of both Europe and the US, chapter 6 identifies the contemporary universities role as an important source of highly skilled labour. A prerequisite of innovation and economic development are local/regional/national labour markets, yet they remain comparatively unacknowledged and under researched. Through the eight paradigms, the contribution of European and US universities to innovation (systems) and economic development is emphasised through understanding the supply, training and mobility of labour

The penultimate two chapters are case studies drawn from Europe and the US. Chapter 7 presents a case study of the twinned towns of Oxford, UK, and Grenoble, France, both of which are ranked second in their respective innovation systems. The case studies serve to illustrate how even within the European context the difference between national (and regional) innovation systems university engagement specific to regions and localities. Furthermore the case studies, through the eight paradigms, show the engagement in realising innovation and economic development to include actors beyond the university, although the university remains central to them. Chapter 8 is based around three case study universities; Stanford, Louisville and Princeton. All three assume different positions within the US national innovation system as well as their respective regional/state innovation systems. In the choice of the US case studies Lawton Smith aptly distinguishes between how universities are positioned within the different innovation systems, and apparently more so than in the European case studies. In both the US and European case studies there is a strong emphasis on the role of universities to contribute to, and deliver, economic development through different forms of innovative activity despite national and regional tensions and difficulties.

The conclusion is again structured around the eight paradigms which provide the framework for the book. Indeed the paradigms serve to provide a series of implicit, normative and positive assumptions from a number of stakeholders about the position of universities in relation to innovation and economic development. The book argues there to be a convergence between the relationships of universities and the economy through the eight paradigms and the collective governance of the state and key stakeholders. Indeed the paradigms serve to illustrate the complexity of the governance systems as well as the complex association between universities, the knowledge-based economy and economic development. Amidst these debates Lawton Smith also addresses a more long-term view about the newfound role of universities as engines of economic development in relation to the sustainability and quality of the research base. Despite these concerns the more generic conceptual discussion in the first part of the book and empirical case studies in the second part show both European and US universities to be driven by normative political agendas as well as being intrinsically territorial. Subsequently the principal themes identified within the book frame the distribution of power in terms of (national and regional) innovation systems, which encourage and promote reciprocity between universities and the economy.

The structure of the book, through the eight paradigms, provides an original and insightful account of the increasing engagement of universities with the (knowledgebased) economy and as a source of innovation. The combination of conceptual analysis and case studies across different scales and sectors makes the book a comprehensive contribution to what have become prominent interdisciplinary debates. Indeed Lawton Smith aptly identifies the dynamics of (national, regional and institutional) governance and policy as central to the increasing prominence of the ‘entrepreneurial university’, but as much for political as economic reasons. While the book focuses primarily on biotechnology and defence, it lays the foundation for further work on non high-tech sectors which constitute a majority of university/industrial engagement. Furthermore with the focus of much (political) policy, and academic research, on more specific and more immediately economic forms of university technology transfer and commercialisation, therein lies an opportunity to extend subsequent projects to include more generic and diverse forms of technology transfer and commercial engagement. In conclusion the book is well positioned in the Routledge studies in business organisations and networks series, offering a valuable contribution and essential reading to those interested in the role(s) of universities in the twenty-first century

 

Regional Knowledge Economies Markets, Clusters and Innovation

Regional Knowledge Economies Markets, Clusters and Innovation

Philip Cooke, Carla De Laurentis, Franz Todtling, Michaela Trippl

Edward Elgar, Cheltenham (2007), 336 pages, Hardback (£71.96), ISBN: 978 1 84542 529 6.

Reviewed by Dr. Atle Hauge, Post Doctoral Fellow, Department of Geography, University of Toronto, Canada.

Regional knowledge economies markets, clusters and innovation deals with one of the key questions in the contemporary debate in economic geography and regional development: do firms in agglomerations and/or clusters perform better or worse than similar firms not located in a cluster? The book’s origin is a comparative research project focusing on collective learning in the knowledge economy.

This book may appeal to academics and students in economic geography and others interested in regional development, innovation and industrial dynamics. It provides clear and comprehensible policy recommendations, and as such so it could be an interesting input for policymakers at local, regional and national levels. The book is set firmly in the leading discourse on firm and regional competitiveness, which sees knowledge as the key resource and thus learning is a crucial process. Together, they underlie all innovative activity. Hence, innovation is best understood as relational based actions. In addition, by using comparative analyses between UK and Austria it highlights different modes of industrial organisation and which policy tools might be used to support regional based economic activity. These two countries are presented as different varieties of capitalism; Austria close to a ‘coordinated market’ model and UK as representative of a ‘liberal market’. 

The book is divided in two parts. In the first, the theoretical framework is laid out. In the second, empirical evidence from the ICT and biotechnology industries is used to develop analytical case-studies. Together, the book seeks to explore and develop conceptual issues, both theoretically and empirically. Concepts such as ‘platform policy’, ‘knowledge economy’, ‘knowledge bases’, ‘related varieties’ are first discussed theoretically and then informs the empirical study.

The theoretical section explores some of the main concepts discussed in contemporary economic geography and related disciplines. It starts out with an engagement on the theory of ‘varieties of capitalism’, and how political and institutional frameworks affect innovation governance. It continues by presenting ideas on the knowledge economy, and the spatiality of knowledge production and diffusion. This chapter both presents conceptual issues and empirical evidence. The next section takes the reader through a discussion of the knowledge based sectors, presenting key drivers of innovation and how knowledge moves and transfers between different economic actors. This section engages in a discussion on different knowledge bases, namely synthetic, analytical and symbolic. The fourth chapter deals with a discussion of the local milieu’s role and the global nature of the contemporary economy. This chapter concludes that the region is the most relevant analytical level for innovation support, but that the national component should not be overlooked. The theoretical part of the book ends by highlighting variations among regional economies.

The empirical part of the book is divided between UK and Austria. The former is portrayed as a first mover towards the knowledge economy, whereas the latter is a “latecomer”. A similar set of data is used for a comparative analysis of ICT and Biotech in the two countries; they look at same two industries in two different nations. As such, the authors deserve credit for keeping the variables at a minimum. This makes the empirical findings comprehensible, and useful for comparison. The investigation is clear on the fact that institutional set up plays a role in how the economy performs. Interestingly, even though the two countries can be seen as different varies of capitalism, the analysis concludes that the clear cut distinctions might not be that relevant as the countries are moving towards each other. The book calls for a methodology that steps outside the rather rigid industrial sector distinctions common in economic geography. This is important both for researchers but also for policy representatives. The economy is best understood in systemic terms; as a system of different actors, their mutual relationships and how they form, and the socio-economic settings in which they operate. In addition there is a call for a contextual approach, which recognises the characteristics of the “regional knowledge ecosystem”.

One of the main contributions of the book is the unpacking of some of the theoretical discussions on regional industrial clusters. Much of the recent debate has focused on theoretical viewpoints. This book, on the other hand, uses empirical findings that inform the argument. The findings and assertions in this book give interesting depth and new insights to this debate. For example, the empirical data show that ICT and biotechnology firms have somewhat contrary motivations for location in clusters. For biotech firms, proximity to important research and development institutions is the main argument for cluster location. ICT, on the other hand, wants to be close to their customers. The different industries seek different sources for their knowledge bases.

The last section of the book comes with advice and recommendations for policymakers and academics working on analysis of regional development. The guidance rests heavily on arguments on ‘related varieties’ – economic activities and regions benefit from diverse economic landscape. However, the diversity cannot be totally random; some types of activities profit more from being close to each other. An innovation related regional growth strategy should rest upon a so-called ‘platform policy’. This is a policy that acknowledges the contextual varieties of firms and regions, and seeks to overcome rigid sectoral barriers.

In my opinion, the empirical part of the book is the strongest. Unfortunately, the theoretical chapter is not as solid and it does not add much insight to the current debates. There is a certain lack of flow in the discussion and the argument, and bridging the chapters could be improved. Some parts of the text seem unnecessarily complicated, and some of the central concepts are discussed multiple times in the text. The debate on the benefits of specialisation versus diversification is, for example, handled very similarly on pages 32 and 96. This is a shame, because many of these weaknesses could be avoided with firmer editing. The book would be more interesting and sound as whole if the theoretical framework had the same high standard as the empirical section.

However, this reviewer has no problem in recommending the book; the empirical findings offer valuable and very interesting contributions to the field.

(Added 11 February 2008

 

Deciphering the Global: Its Scales, Spaces and Subjects

Saskia Sassen (Editor)

New York: Routledge (2007), 366 pages. Paperback (£22.99) ISBN: 0415957338.

Reviewed by Henry Wai-chung Yeung, National University of Singapore.

For at least over a decade now, the heated debate on globalization has been mapped onto complex rescaling processes in urban and regional territories. Human geography is clearly at the frontier of such mapping exercise. But its allies in urban and political sociology are equally important in this “scalar turn” in the social theorization of globalization and its manifold outcomes. In this volume brought together by one of the world’s foremost urban sociologists, the celebration of key concepts in geography such as scales and spaces is clearly evident and welcome. Indeed, Saskia Sassen explicitly noted in her introductory chapter that “Two disciplines more than any others have contributed significantly to the study of the global as it gets constituted subnationally. They are geography and anthropology, specifically, particular branches of each. Economic and political geography have done so especially through a critical development of scale and scaling. This work recognizes the historicity of scales and thus resists the reification and naturalization of the national scale as present in most of social science” (p.4). How else should we not endorse such a friendly overture by our intellectual allies?

This collective volume is indeed very much a collective and yet laudable effort that seeks to bring together diverse theoretically grounded empirical studies conducted by some sixteen graduate students at Chicago spanning almost one decade. The one common thread amongst these dissertations and their post-doctoral refinement is that each of them is concerned not so much with the grand claims of globalization theorists. Rather, they are interested in unpacking what it means to be global and how “global” processes are constituted at different scales, in diverse spaces, and through variegated subjects. This strong central theme of the book is undoubtedly its core competence, as all chapters have a common theoretical focus on examining the global via its local constitution and formations. Their collective argument leads to a reframing of the global as neither necessarily the only privileged scale of action nor an anti-thesis of the nation-state. To them, the global is expressed in the complex interwoven scaling of processes beyond a single scale, be it global, national, subnational, or local.

I particularly like this translocal approach to the study of globalization and its variegated outcomes for two important reasons. First, the book conveys a sense of a relational approach that constantly interrogates different scalar relations, from the global to the regional, the national, and the local. This relational approach connects very well with the kind of relational economic geography since Doreen Massey’s call for a relational thinking in human geography during the late 1990s. Second, the collection offers an explicit recognition of the multiscalarity approach to globalization, an approach equally well recognized in recent work in economic and political geography. While none of the authors is a geographer, their appreciation of cutting-edge geographical studies is unusual and highly welcome. Indeed, most chapters have referenced major contributions by geographers to the debates on scales, networks, and globalization.

More specifically, the book is organized into three parts. After Sassen’s excellent introduction that lays down the project’s intellectual foundation, each part presents some five to six chapters each of which deals with solid empirical case materials mostly drawn from detail ethnographic work over many years. In Part 1, five authors offer a refreshing re-reading of the global via microspaces in different localities as diverse as bohemian neighbourhoods in Chicago, public concerts in Los Angeles, the Old Havana in Cuba, religious centres in Russia, and slums in Sao Paulo. These different stories point to the complex scaling of global microspaces that crosscut different territories and social formations. In Part 2, another five authors further extend these scalings to notions of translocal circuits and their mobilities through diverse empirical investigations into social movements in the US, global nomadism, transnational expatriation in Nepal and Japan, and localized transformation of the London Gold Fix. These chapters bring to the forefront critical dynamics of globalization through circuits of flows and mobilities of their key subjects. In the final part, another six chapters focus more specifically on the political in globalization. These authors draw upon diverse examples in such shifting spaces and subjects as translocal Sudanese politics in London, Chicago’s ghetto cosmopolitanism, extra-state legal policing in coffee-growing regions in Mexico, human rights in Israel, documentary citizenships in Malaysia, and sovereign debt restructuring in developing countries.

With such richness in empirical materials driven by a central analytical concern, one will expect a thorough integration of theory and evidence. Still, some of the chapters may be overtly descriptive, focusing too much on the detail “stories” and losing sight of some of the generality of their arguments. This perhaps reflects an ethnographic approach to writing and presentation commonly found in anthropology. Another minor quibble I have is that the book, for its size and diversity, includes virtually no graphics at all. I can literally find only three tables and one photo in three different chapters. As a geographer, I often found it hard to follow the excessively detail descriptions of particular places and spaces that were not indicated in maps.

Notwithstanding these minor defects, the collection has certainly succeeded in its core mission in deciphering the global to the extent that we are confronted with diverse examples of how the global is constituted well beyond the national and its naturalized territorial spaces. Given the common origin of the authors in the Chicago school, there is a good deal of complementarity and consistency among most chapters. This is not surprising as many authors attended the same series of workshops organized by Saskia Sassen, Arjun Appadurai, and Neil Brenner. The book appeals very much to graduate students who may often wonder how grand theories about globalization can be “operationalized” in their own doctoral studies; this book has at least a dozen well done examples! Academic geographers will also find much fun reading these diverse articulations of translocal processes at a variety of spatial scales.

(Added 02 July 2008