Changing places; placing change

Citation

(2016), "Changing places; placing change", Journal of Place Management and Development, Vol. 9 No. 1, pp. 2-8. https://doi.org/10.1108/JPMD-02-2016-0007

In this first issue of 2016, the Journal of Place Management and Development (JPMD) is entering into its ninth year of publication. With this, there are some significant and ongoing changes to the journal that warrant articulation here. It is helpful to consider these under the following headings: journal ranking, editorial board, journal scope and mission and journal content. Following this, we will move to focus attention on the content of the current issue.

Journal ranking

JPMD is a relatively new journal in a niche, but growing, area of academic inquiry. Building up a reputational head of steam for such a recent entrant to the sea of scholarly titles in the social sciences was always going to be challenging. That said, over its short lifespan, JPMD has already made an impact in this respect. In 2014, we were delighted to see that the journal rose into the top quartile of the Scimago academic journal rankings for the discipline areas of urban studies, geography, planning and development and business and international management, with a journal impact factor of 0.66 (see, www.scimagojr.com). Undoubtedly, one of the reasons for this strong showing is the fact the JPMD articles are cited in higher ranked journals in these disciplines, such as Environment and Planning A and Cities. This emphasises the impact JPMD is having on wider academic thinking about place and space across the social sciences.

Building on growing impact and visibility of the journal, the editorial management team is currently making a case to the Chartered Association of Business Schools (CABS) for inclusion of JPMD in the next CABS Journal Quality Guide, scheduled for release in 2018. We are aiming to enter this list with a 2-star rating, and an ambition to increase this to a 3-star rating by 2025. However, such an aspiration will undoubtedly require a continuation of the upward trend in the volume of submissions to JPMD. These submissions must be academically rigorous in their theoretical and empirical execution and have real relevance for practitioners working in the field of place management. Growing the reputation of the journal may also require other changes down the line, such as the move to a triple-blind review system for academic research papers, more issues per year and a higher paper rejection rate. Currently, however, there are no plans to make any immediate changes in this regard.

Editorial board

There have been some changes to the editorial structure of JPMD over 2015. The most notable developments are the appointment of Professor Dominic Medway as Academic Editor, taking over from Dr John Byrom, and the appointment of Dr Cecilia Pasquinelli as Associate Editor. Professor Cathy Parker continues in the role of Editor-in-Chief. All of these individuals have an excellent track record of publishing well-cited work about various aspects of place management and development in highly ranked academic journals. This should hopefully deliver the collective expertise and understanding to help elevate the academic standing of the journal to the next level. Over 2016, we intend to appoint another Associate Editor to help strengthen this editorial management team further. In addition, we will be reviewing our wider editorial board membership to bring on representation that better reflects the broadening scope of the journal into areas such as tourism and public administration, as well as into other geographical areas such as Malaysia and Brazil.

Journal aims and scope

In the current aims and scope of JPMD, we identify that the journal is open to “bringing together research from management, real estate, marketing, tourism, retailing, geography, public administration, sociology, planning and design to advance understanding of place management, marketing and development” (see www.emeraldinsight.com/journal/jpmd). However, such an ambitious and multi-disciplinary breadth to the journal only serves to highlight some areas of place management inquiry that are ripe for further research insights. For example, disciplines such as geography have a long-established and sophisticated understanding of how we experience and interact with space as human beings, with particular attention being paid to those senses other than sight (Hetherington, 2002; Porteous, 1990; Tuan, 1974), particularly through the realm of non-representational theories (Lorimer, 2005; Thrift, 2003). However, place management and related place marketing and branding activities are only just beginning to latch on to the importance of such multi-sensory viewpoints (for early efforts in the area, see Henshaw et al., 2015; Medway, 2015), and this is an area where JPMD welcomes further research.

Another evident area of concern in disciplines such as public administration is that of financial accountability and sustainability, particularly in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and the resulting squeeze on public sector spending in many jurisdictions. Activities associated with the management and development of places, such as place branding and marketing, have received heavy criticism in the press as encouraging the squandering of public money (Black, 2014; Copping, 2010; Salisbury Journal, 2011). If this is true, then research is needed on how we make place management and development activities more financially accountable and sustainable. If it is not true, and amounts to an unfair media perception of place management activities, then research is required on how we might correct such misperceptions through public engagement and public relations activities.

Overall, we believe the aims and scope of JPMD are aligned with a research agenda focused on revealing those management and development activities that make places better to live in for residents, do business in for companies and visit for tourists. Of course, in undertaking and presenting such research there will inevitably be a focus on what works well. This is likely to involve examples and case studies of places that, through good management and development activities, have become a more attractive proposition for all their stakeholders. But we also need to focus on what has not worked well. We need to expose those instances where place management has gone wrong or failed to deliver, making places more challenging or unpleasant to be in, and worse still doing this in an unequal manner across stakeholder groups. And we also need to understand why these things happen. In this sense, we can learn as much, if not more, from the cases of place management and development failure as we can from those of success.

Much of the above will require a more critical focus in how we interrogate the place management and development activities. There is undoubtedly an emergent critical turn in place management research, but this needs to grow, and we hope this can happen through the pages of this journal. Part of this might involve our collective reflection as scholars and practitioners on the use of the word “management”, when talking about places. One might argue that it conjures up an image of a place (and its stakeholders) having things “done” to it (or them). This emphasises a “top down” rather than “bottom up” perspective on how places are planned and organised, which has been criticised elsewhere in respect of place marketing activity (Warnaby and Medway, 2013). An alternative approach is to view the “management” aspect of place management as involving a facilitating role, which allows the good and unique things that many places already do to continue without the hindrance of red tape, and in doing so help celebrate and “make” those places. Indeed, in a recent comment piece in this journal, (Medway et al., 2015) the notion of “place curation” was proposed, and perhaps this is one way of thinking about what place management could ultimately become. More research on this please.

Journal content

Throughout 2015, the managing editorial team have had a number of face-to-face and virtual meetings to discuss what type of content our journal might carry in the future. There was also some discussion of this in the closing plenary session of this year’s third IPM conference in Poznan, Poland. The general feeling, both amongst the editorial management team and those at that conference session, is that whilst academic research papers will remain the backbone of JPMD content, we wish to widen the scope of contribution forms to hear different voices and viewpoints. This should help strengthen the journal’s appeal to a range of audiences, and in certain instances deliver published material that has direct utility in the form of, for instance, teaching cases. As such, standard JPMD content will take the following four forms:

1. Research papers, which report on any type of research undertaken by the author(s), empirical or conceptual. These should be 4,000-6,000 words, including references, and will be subject to the current double-blind peer review process.

2. Case studies, which report on place management and development activities within a given location and draw out the lessons from these. Whilst the learning points from cases may have direct applicability to practitioners, we would also encourage cases that can be used in teaching. The maximum length for cases is 5,000 words, including references, and they are also subject to the current double-blind peer review process.

3. Commentaries or viewpoints, which are shorter pieces raising issues of current debate, concern or topical interest in the place management and development field. These should be no longer than 3,000 words, including references, and will be reviewed by two members of the editorial management team.

4. Book reviews of new publications in the place management and development field. These should be no longer than 1,000 words, including references, and will be reviewed by two members of the editorial team.

We will be updating the journal website over the next few months to publicise these revised content formats. A linked vodcast is planned so that we can explain for the requirements for content in a more accessible manner to potential contributors.

JPMD has previously published three issues per year, but this year we have an additional Open Access Special Issue, to celebrate the IPM’s tenth anniversary through publishing the findings of the recent ESRC-funded High Street UK 2020 project. We are delighted to announce that Professor Kim Cassidy, Nottingham Trent University and Retail Sector Initiative Coordinator for the ESRC, and Ojay McDonald, Association of Town and City Management and Public Policy Manager, have agreed to guest-edit this issue, which will be published as Volume 9 Issue 4 at the end of 2016.

With the volume of submissions steadily rising and a healthy demand for special issues (typically one or two every year), there is a future possibility of increasing the number of issues, every year, to four. Proposals for special issues from potential guest editors are welcomed. Recent suggestions from a number of quarters have been for a special issue on place management and development in the emerging economies, a place management and responsible tourism special issue and a special issue devoted to the work of doctoral students studying in the place management and development field. If anyone is interested in taking forward any of these suggestions, or has other ideas, they should contact a member of the editorial management team outlined above.

Whatever the nature of the content published in JPMD, it is always our intention to try and publicise this as widely as possible, thereby maximising the impact of the journal and the work of the authors who publish within it. In future, we will therefore be taking selected contributions from each issue of the journal and, with the necessary author permissions, reporting on these as short pieces for the IPM website backed up with a social media campaign. Overall, it is in the interests of all the journal stakeholders (authors, editors, publishers and readers) that the work within JPMD receives maximum exposure to ensure the best chance of meaningful impact. Indeed, without such impact, one could argue that work published within this journal is not truly advancing the understanding of place management and development, which is the whole purpose of the journal.

Content of the current issue […]

In our first article, “Motivations, challenges and desires of revitalizers working in smaller cities under neoliberal policies”, Mowery and Novak are concerned with those responsible for urban revitalisation. Their approach is different to much existing work in this field in that they look at a medium-sized urban centre, Spokane in Washington. Further, they examine the views of those key agents responsible for planning and enacting urban revitalisation, rather than looking at the outcomes of such a process. They conclude that the prevailing view that development under neo-liberalism is purely economically driven is too narrow and that non-fiscal imperatives may be especially strong in mid-sized cities like Spokane, where those responsible for revitalisation may have stronger connections to the local community. This suggests that big cities may have something to learn from smaller urban areas where regeneration and redevelopment projects are concerned.

Next, we have Opawole and Jaqboro’s “Benchmarking parties’ obligations in the execution of concession-based PPP projects in Nigeria”, which provides useful detail as to how the public and private sector can work together more effectively in concession-based development projects. The authors surveyed 81 professionals involved in concession contracts in southwestern Nigeria, including architects, estate surveyors, engineers and builders as well as accountants, bankers, economists and lawyers. They found 47 different contractual obligations, then looked at how these were allocated (to the public sector, or private sector or shared). This is very useful as it enables a general framework to be built which can then guide the future allocation of obligations to parties. This could significantly improve the success of PPP projects, not only in Nigeria, but in other countries too, where the operation of such contracts is often criticised for being unfair to one or more of the parties.

Our third paper, “Place branding as a strategic spatial planning instrument: a theoretical framework to branding regions with reference to northern Portugal”, also offers a framework to improve collaboration, but this time it is through place branding and planning. Here, Oliveira writes a very useful paper that links place branding to spatial planning, through relevant findings from a case study on the significance of a regional branding initiative, integrated in a wider planning strategy for northern Portugal (NUTS II). In the study, primary data were gathered through 16 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with key-regional actors and organisations with a stake (and expertise) in the region. The inter-relationship between place planning and branding processes has been poorly appreciated, before now, so this paper contributes to the advancement and maturation of the place-branding field, by lending a more strategic approach and geographical/spatial consciousness to the process of place branding. The paper also sheds light on the challenges and complexity of branding regions, a scale of analysis seldom explored in place-branding literature.

Our next paper, “Towards network place branding through multiple stakeholders and based on cultural identities: the case of ‘The Cultural Landscape’ in Colombia”, also continues the theme of regional place branding, through examining the development of place branding involving multiple stakeholders and cultural identities. Martinez’s article looks at the key considerations in modern place branding and the particular role of place identity and shared image. It illustrates the issues involved by examining the place-branding process in Colombia’s coffee region. In a detailed case study, which makes comparisons with wine-growing regions, the article explores the development of an effective place brand and the development of tourism in the region and provides insight into place branding in a tropical country that is a raw material supplier.

Next, continuing the theme of development for marketing and touristic purposes is Rasoolimanesh and Jaafar’s paper, “Residents’ perceptions toward tourism development: a pre-development perspective”, which focuses on the potential for tourism development in the Bujang Valley – a site of archaeological interest in one of the least-developed areas of Malaysia, which is nominated for World Heritage Site inscription. Through the use of a survey approach, the paper indicates that the residents’ perceptions of this potential tourist development were more strongly towards the potential positives it may bring (e.g. infrastructural improvement and job creation) than the negatives (e.g. destruction of the natural environment). This is perhaps not surprising, as the main livelihood amongst those residents is farming and fishing, suggesting any growth in tourism may be seen as improving local people’s economic fortunes. However, such findings perhaps have a wider implication from a place management and development perspective. Namely, the proposed development of tourism in archeologically and environmentally sensitive sites such as the Bujang Valley may benefit from impartial advice and guidance from those from outside the area. This is to try and ensure that any tourism development does wander blindly down the path of insensitive and unsustainable development in the wake of residents’ positivity towards it.

Our final article is our regular “Place in Practice” paper which provides a very interesting account of an approach to graffiti that at first may appear self-defeating. Yet, as the results of the initiative have shown, by taking the cause of the problem and transforming it into the solution, a favourable outcome can be achieved.

Graffiti has long been the subject of discourse in place-related literature, and indeed at one time or another most people will have been exposed to it in the places we reside or work. Whereas some consider graffiti an art form, others deem it a nuisance synonymous with crime. One area where graffiti has been particularly prevalent over the years is in our transport infrastructure. Arroyo Moliner and Clayell’s paper “The TramArt experience: domesticating Graffiti in public transport”, provides an overview of the Crime Prevention through Environmental Design (CPTED) initiative. This initiative has sought to tackle the issue of graffiti on Spain’s tram networks by using it to transform stations from simple transit points into spaces which generate a sense of belonging, all whilst reducing the perception of crime.

To create these “poetic spaces”, the initiative involved the participation of artists, who through working with transport operators, transformed a number of stations and vehicles into pieces of art with a singular identity, essentially co-opting the original cause of the issue and transforming it into the solution. As the authors suggest: “the value of this case relies in the constructive approach towards graffiti, which goes one step further than the broken windows theory and the criminalisation of graffiti by default. It departs from prevention to enhancement of the pro-social aspects of graffiti, as well as providing a new conception of transit spaces”.

This last paper provides a taste of what will come next in 9.2, which is a special issue for “Crime Prevention through Urban Design, Planning and Management” guest-edited by Dr Ares Kalandides, to be published May/June 2016. This special issue will be complemented by a free conference in Athens this November, to bring together the work of a European-funded COST action in crime prevention through design and management. For more details visit the IPM website or contact ares@placemanagement.org