Cyhoeddiadau

Set within the context of UK devolution and constitutional change, People, Places and Policy offers important and interesting insights into ‘place-making’ and ‘locality-making’ in contemporary Wales. Combining policy research with policy-maker and stakeholder interviews at various spatial scales (local, regional, national), it examines the historical processes and working practices that have produced the complex political…

It is uncontested that Wales has a relatively short history of administrative devolution when compared to Scotland and Northern Ireland, if not England (see Osmond, 1978). Jenkins’s cutting analysis makes some of this clear: After its conquest by Edward I in 1278, and its incorporation into England three centuries later by the Tudors, it had…

The constitutional reform programme pursued by the Labour Government following the 1997 General Election fundamentally recast territorial politics and administration within the United Kingdom (UK). The introduction of devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, the regional agenda pursued in England and the creation of an elected mayor in London challenged the already somewhat…

Wales is often regarded as being a uniform country, but, as has been highlighted in the previous chapter, it is very diverse with distinct geographical differences in population and other socio-economic and cultural characteristics. This chapter reveals and discusses some of these differences through official statistics presented at a variety of spatial scales with the…

Few places could better illustrate the complexities of locality making than the Heads of the Valleys. The area selected as the south Wales WISERD locality is today highly recognisable as a locality of both political and popular construction. It is enshrined in much Welsh government policy and recognised as a particular bounded space by many…

This chapter concerns itself with interrogating the multiple, sometimes contested, ways of knowing, narrating and locating contemporary mid Wales as a political-economic context, and its contingent social relations. This analysis proceeds through the specific spatial lens of what we term the Central and west Coast Locality (CWCL); an area arcing across central Wales and the…

This book has been about the WISERD locality research programme, which has operated in the context of a devolved Wales. The spatial backdrop has initially been the Wales Spatial Plan (WSP) and its fuzzy boundaries, and more recently notions of ‘spatial complexity’ associated with the Williams Commission on Public Governance and Delivery. As detailed in…

This chapter examines ways of understanding and knowing north Wales, which in this instance, constitutes the six local authorities from Wrexham in the east, through Flintshire, Denbighshire, Conwy, Gwynedd, to Anglesey in the west. It encompasses the coastline of north and north west Wales, Snowdonia National Park and deep rural areas to the south of…

The territorialisation of rural places has long been a focus of inquiry by geographers. On the one hand, rural places are culturally perceived as deeply embedded in their territories, if understood etymologically as a connection to the land or terroir. The traditional industries of rural areas have been based on exploiting the land and its…

In recent years there has been an increase in awareness of social justice, equality and rights issues among Chinese citizens including university teachers (Li, 2011). The higher education (HE) sector is an important example of this because of its potential for developing and disseminating new ideas about a just society, and in influencing policy-makers. An…