IMF Survey Magazine

The recent IMF survey magazine has some interesting articles, covering topics such as the recovery of Haiti or how to reestablish growth in Europe's emerging economies. The institution may be tilted towards a particular view of the world, but its access to a wide breadth of knowledge means the magazine allways offers interesting insights.

High Speed Rail

There has been a lot of discussion recently about high-speed rail in the US, (check for instance this webpage on the NY Times) following the agenda of President Obama and the strategy implemented in countries such as Spain. But a study published recently shows that it would also benefit the UK economy and generate revenues for the Treasury in the long run.

Blogs

Here are two blogs that can be interesting for people wanting to know more about economic geography and regional development. The first is by Richard Florida, who is now a regular contributor to the magazine The Atlantic. I must say that I am not a big fan of Florida's creative class thesis, but this blog talks about much more than that and provides a lot of interesting information.


The second is a collective blog linked with the website of the NY Times, that includes contributions by Edward Glaeser, an economics professor at Harvard who does work on Economic Geography.

As you will probably notice these are blogs based in the USA. I have tried to find similar ones based in Europe, but I haven't been able to. If you know of any please contact me.

Economic Geography trickling down

This story is an interesting example of how the Economic Geography jargon of recent decades is trickling down to influence local development. Notice the implicit references to the creative class thesis, and the notions of regional innovation systems.

Job creation map in the US

Here you can find an interesting map with job creation rates for the 50 US states, and a brief commentary by Richard Florida.

Is Paris becoming uglier?

These people seem to think so.

Also an article measuring levels of happiness in the 50 US states concludes that people living in sunny states are happier! So much for regional development policies trying to address quality of life...

Democracy Journal

The Democracy Journal, available here, has several interesting articles on topics that could be of interest to Economic Geographers, Planners and Regional Scientists. For instance, this one, talks about policies implemented in the US in the 1960s to deal with pockets of inner city deprivation and asks what can be done to emulate them today.

OECD publication

'Cities, Towns and Renewable Energy - Yes In My Front Yard'

This book includes several case studies chosen to illustrate how enhanced deployment of renewable energy projects can result from local policy regardless of a community’s size or location. More information here.

Planning Studies news from Routledge

The following journals are all celebrating their anniversaries with free article downloads:

15th anniversary of The Journal of Architecture. Download 15 free articles here

25th anniversary of Planning Practice & Research. Download 25 free articles here

30th anniversary of Transport Reviews. Download 30 free articles here

Routledge are also offering 30 days free access to the complete back file of Transport Reviews in July. To receive the free access voucher code on 1 July please email: Alexandra.Dann@tandf.co.uk

An interesting chat

The National Post from Canada had an interesting chat with three experts on creative economies and what can be done to win job-creating investment. You can read it here.

World Economic Outlook by the IMF

The International Monetary Fund just published it's World Economic Outlook update. The title is: 'A Policy-Driven, Multispeed Recovery' and the synopsis starts with the sentence: "The global recovery is off to a stronger start than anticipated earlier but is proceeding at different speeds in the various regions". More here.