THE STATE OF SPATIAL ECONOMICS WE'RE IN

"Rerum Causas Cognoscere" or "To Know the Causes of Things" is the motto of the London School of Economics and Political Science (known as the LSE) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_School_of_Economics - whose rather attractive coat of arms is shown above. Incidentally, I am also a big fan of beavers who are amongst the great builders of the animal kingdom, and construction is one of the key themes of this post.  Moreover, the LSE has an excellent mission statement, to use a modern expression, and one whose aspirations I very much support. Indeed it would serve as a fine motto for all higher education research institutions. Unfortunately, the wider ambitions of the UK universities sector, much of which now resembles a property development enterprise, rather than a fountain of knowledge, often work against these loftier aims.

I was reminded of this academic state of affairs earlier this week, when trying to post a comment about an article on some LSE spatial economics research on the Planning Resource website - please see http://www.planningresource.co.uk/article/1291801/discriminatory-green-belt-policies-causing-housing-affordability-crisis-says-lse-professor - I found myself suddenly censored. Therefore, having been cut short and fearing further censorship, I shall endeavour to answer the question of a fellow Planning Resource contributor on my own blog: thank goodness for Google! In response to my expression of concern about the impartiality of LSE research, due to the funding regime for this and similar institutions, a  Lawrence Revill (whom I suspect is a planning consultant) asked: "Just what, precisely, has that got to do with the Emeritus Professor of Economic Geography and his views on the Green Belt? Please show some perspective." Indeed I will, Mr Revill, in the following account. "Rerum Causas Cognoscere"!

The Emeritus Professor, and member of the LSE's Spatial Economics Research Centre, in question is Paul Cheshire  http://www.lse.ac.uk/researchAndExpertise/Experts/profile.aspx?KeyValue=p.cheshire%40lse.ac.uk The Spatial Economics Research Centre  http://www.spatialeconomics.ac.uk/SERC/about/default.asp -  describes its mission thus: "Economic prosperity in the UK is very unevenly distributed across space. Tackling these persistent disparities is a key policy objective. The Spatial Economics Research Centre (SERC) aims to provide a rigorous understanding of the nature, extent, causes and consequences of these disparities, and to identify appropriate policy responses." This sounds highly admirable so it comes as a surprise to me that Professor Cheshire's research article* - http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/cp417.pdf - should advocate policies likely to exacerbate persistent regional disparities in economic prosperity.

So let's look at what the Professor had to say. The basic thesis is that not enough housing has been built nationally, and, particularly, in the Home Counties around London in the past 20 years. Leaving aside the national picture, about which his article doe not really concern itself, the real bete noir for Cheshire is the capital's green belt of which he says: "What SERC research has shown is that the only value of greenbelts is for those who own houses within them (gibbons et al, 2011). What greenbelts seem to be is a very British form of discriminatory zoning, keeping the urban unwashed out of the Home Counties - and of course helping to turn houses into investment assets rather than places to live in". Given that the whole modus operandi of British economic policy has been driven by rentier capitalism during the period in question, this seems to be a remarkably naive statement from an "Emeritus Professor of Economic Geography" at the LSE!

Indeed, my censored comment on the Planning Resource website highlighted a "popular" post from the LSE SERC's blog - http://spatial-economics.blogspot.co.uk/ - entitled "How many French people live in London?" which opens thus: "According to the BBC London is now France's sixth biggest city: "The French consulate in London estimates between 300,000 and 400,000 French citizens live in the British capital" which compares to city populations as follows: Paris - 2.3m; Lyon - 488,000; Marseille - 859,000; Toulouse - 447,000; Nice 344 000." What this illustrates is the increasing globalisation of London since the 1990s. In terms of capital flows, London vies with New York as the world's most globalised city http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_city The capital has become a magnet for international property investment and uber wealthy people, as well as a preferred destination for an increasingly globalised workforce. This has been the major factor in the increasing cost and shortage of London housing.

Although I have suggested that Professor Cheshire is naive, I do not believe this to be the case. The LSE and other British universities have capitalised on the attraction of London for international students. Moreover, there does seem to have been something of a "London effect" as foreign students spread around the country and universities court them with increasingly high-specification (and expensive) campuses. It is quite possible that the LSE has its sights on a new greenfield site in the Homes Counties, with supporting development, including possibly a world-class golf course. For my own part, I shall be delighted if the main activity of London's green belt remains intensive agriculture. As an economic geographer, the Emeritus Professor should know very well that this is one the most suitable roles for it.

*  Some of the claims in this article (eg as much land given over to golf courses as housing in England) were subsequently challenged in a BBC radio 4 More or Less programme http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b044jh75

A CONTEXT FOR INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION

Having signed up for a Coursera Mooc (Massive Open Online Course) entitled "Understanding Russians: Contexts of Intercultural Communication" https://www.coursera.org/course/russians I've been wondering whether this course may be too highbrow and time-consuming, on the one hand, or the ideal opportunity to engage in a timely critical discourse, given the Ukraine-Russia crisis, on the other. Fortunately the need to make an immediate decision is unnecessary because an email from course leader, Mira Bergelson from the Higher School of Economics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Research_University_%E2%80%93_Higher_School_of_Economics, earlier today informed me that: "May 1 through May 9 is Russian big holiday time. That’s why we had to postpone the course for two weeks altogether." Let's hope this message is also received by Russian separatists in Eastern Ukraine. A week's break to celebrate "The Day of Spring and Labour", which might extend to the release of peace observers and others recently taken prisoner, would be very welcome just now.

NUCLEAR POWER: IS THERE NO TURNING BACK?

The above graphic is taken from an article on the Aljazeera website this week - http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/04/antagonising-iran-strategic-mis-201442161724450258.html - by Seyed Mohammad Marandi, a professor of North American Studies and dean of the Faculty of World Studies at the University of Tehran. This came to my attention, incidentally, via Iranian Vice President Massoumeh Ebtekar's "Persian Paradox" blog yesterday (please see my earlier post). Aside from offering an interesting back story to the present controversy surrounding Iran's civil nuclear programme, the article has a wider relevance for international energy policy in an age of so-called transition to sustainable development.

Professor Marandi's article opens as follows:

"Even though it was a major exporter of crude oil and held some of the world's largest natural gas reserves, Iran made a compelling case over half-a-century ago that it needed, almost immediately, to produce an additional 20,000 megawatts of electricity by constructing 23 nuclear power plants. At the same time, Iran's government made the case that the country needed to acquire the capacity to enrich uranium in order to fabricate the reactor fuel for such an ambitious programme.

Western governments eagerly endorsed these arguments, praising Iran's then Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's ambition to rapidly modernise Iran while overlooking the reality that he was presiding over a ruthless dictatorship and diverting much needed capital to purchase massive amounts of weapons from the US and other Western countries. And so, during the 1960s and 1970s, billions of dollars were invested in establishing an Iranian nuclear programme and training thousands of Iranian nuclear experts in the West - until Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution replaced the monarchy with an Islamic Republic..."

In short, Iran's energy pathway has very much reflected that of Western nations, although a number of these, including the United States and, most recently, Germany, have moved away from civil nuclear power in the period since the 1980s for reasons of cost and safety associated with both generation and waste disposal. Meanwhile, other countries, notably Russia and China, have forged ahead with nuclear development programmes notwithstanding major accidents at Chernobyl in the Ukraine (then part of the Soviet Union) during 1986 and Fukushima in Japan following the earthquake and Tsunami of 2011. It should be noted that Iran is also located in a major earthquake zone:  http://www.ibtimes.com/iran-earthquake-strikes-near-bushehr-nuclear-power-plant-1489402

The current popularity of nuclear power has much to do with the need to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide that are the major contributor to the green house effect associated with global warming. However, the nuclear option also offers the prospect of national energy security for countries increasingly concerned about their dependency on foreign gas supplies. Whilst Iran, "with the world's second-largest proven reserves of natural gas", as Professor Marandi notes in his article, does not have such concerns, much of Europe is reliant upon Russian supplies, and this is a key factor in the current Ukrainian crisis.

Nevertheless, it should be remembered that the accident at Ukraine's Chernobyl plant was probably the single most important event in turning the world against nuclear power in the last decade of the twentieth century. Moreover, the former Soviet regime's attempt to cover up the seriousness of this incident is widely cited as a major contributory factor in its demise only five years later. The problem with nuclear energy is that the conseqeunces can be very serious indeed if things go wrong. Iran, along with the rest of the world, would be wise to remember this.

THE HISTORY OF A VERY IRANIAN REVOLUTION

A young woman protests in Iran's so-called "Green Revolution" (for greater democracy) in 2009. The country is currently experiencing a wave of environmentalism, in part supported by Iranian Vice President Ebtekar

I had a look at - as distinct from a full reading of - Michael Axworthy's "Revolutionary Iran" over the Easter Bank Holiday. Whilst the book is now on my "To Read" list, just thought I'd share a few thoughts on a history which has just been brought bang up to date by Penguin (an updated paperback version came out this spring).

However, let me first caveat my comments by saying that I have never visited Iran and met very few Iranians. Other reviewers have described Axworthy as an "Iranophile" and some people may not share all his views. Nevertheless, the book resonates with my own limited knowledge and experience.

Ironically, perhaps most of all for the Americans, Iran has been an unexpected beneficiary of the  former United States-led "War on Terror" in Iraq and Afghanistan (countries where previous regimes and extremist groups had received US assistance before they turned against their western benefactors). As Axworthy points out: "The Iranians helped the coalition powers to set up the new democratic structures in both countries, though this has often gone unacknowledged. Instead, Iran has perversely been blamed for the fact that the removal of these enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan has enhanced Iran's regional (ie Middle Eastern) influence".

Although Axworthy locates the Iranian Revolution of 1979 - and the removal of American together with other western powers from the country - within the great revolutionary trajectory which started in France and moved through Russia and thence to Tehran, I see Iran more as the location of the 20th century's third great revolution, following on from the Soviet and the Chinese. The question will be whether the key religious dimension of "Revolutionary Iran" will be sustained in the future, or whether Iran, like Russia and China, will be overcome by the same kind of secular materialism which has engulfed these and most other countries. Only time will tell.

For the 2014 Penguin edition of  "Revolutionary Iran" see  http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780141046235,00.html
Iranian Vice President Massoumeh Ebtekar's "Persian Paradox" Blog can be found at  http://ebtekarm.blogspot.co.uk/

THE EUROPEAN UNION IN GLOBAL GOVERNANCE

The Berlin-based Iversity's Mooc (Massive Open Online Course) on the subject of the European Union in Global Governance starts next week. This course could hardly be more timely given current events in Ukraine. For information please see - https://iversity.org/courses/the-european-union-in-global-governance