Table Of ContentDeveloping Frontier Cities
The GeoJournal Library
Volume 52
Managing Editors: Herman van der Wusten, University of Amsterdam,
The Netherlands
Olga Gritsai, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow,
Russia
Former Series Editor:
Wolf Tietze, Helmstedt, Germany
Editorial Board: Paul Claval, France
R.G. Crane, U.S.A.
Yehuda Gradus, Israel
Risto Laulajainen, Sweden
Gerd Luttig, Germany
Walther Manshard, Germany
Osamu Nishikawa, Japan
Peter Tyson, South Africa
The titles published in this series are listed at the end of this volume.
Developing Frontier Cities
Global Perspectives- Regional Contexts
edited by
HARVEY LITHWICK
Negev Center for Regional Development,
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev,
Beer-Sheva, Israel;
Emeritus Professor, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada
and
YEHUDA GRADUS
Negev Center for Regional Development,
Department of Geography and Environmental Development,
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev,
Beer-Sheva, Israel
Negev Center for Regional Development
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Beer Sheva, Israel
SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.
A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
ISBN 978-90-481-5352-7 ISBN 978-94-017-1235-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-1235-4
Typeset by WordByte, P.O.B. 3102, Beer-Sheva, Israel
Printed on acid-free paper
AII Rights Reserved
© 2000 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 2000
No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording ar by any infarmation storage and
retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner.
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction
The Unique Nature of Frontier Cities and their Development Challenge
Harvey Lithwick and Yehuda Gradus
Negev Center for Regional Development, Israel JX
Part One: Frontier Urban Development in a Global Context
1. Moving Frontiers: A Local-Global Perspective
Peter Nijkamp
Free University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands 3
2. The Frontier Metropolis in the Twenty-First Century
Derek R. Diamond
London School ofE conomics and Political Science, England 27
3. Institutional Requirements for New Local, National and Multinational
Planning Realities in Europe
].M. (Hans) Mastop
Faculty of Policy Sciences University ofN ijmegen, The Netherlands 45
4. The Future of Frontier Cities
]oelKotek
CERIS, Free University of Brussels, Belgium 65
5. Living on the Edge: Conditions of Marginality in the
Canadian Urban System
Larry S. Bourne
University of Toronto, Canada 77
6. Innovation Networks, Dynamic Externalities and
Peripheral Cities in a Global Context
Niles Hansen
University of Texas at Austin, U.S.A. 99
Part Two: Case Studies
7. Developing Frontier Cities: Lessons from the Cities of the Prairie Program
Daniel]. Elazar
Bar-Ilan University and Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Israel 117
vi
8. Modernization and the Mobilization of Public Capital:
Developing Pueblo, Colorado, 1960-1997
Stephen L. Schechter
Russell Sage College, U.S.A. 141
9. Globalization and Cities in Frontier Regions:
A Case Study of Northern Australia
Kevin O'Connor
Monash University, Australia 167
10. Competitive Advantage in Frontier Regions of Europe:
Redefining the Global-Local Nexus
Shirley P. Dawe
University of Guelph, Canada
John M. Bryden
University ofA berdeen, Scotland 189
11. Alternative Models of Urban Development in Frontier Regions:
The Case of Friuli, Italy
Elena Saraceno
Universita degli Studi di Ancona, Italy 215
12. Local Initiatives in Peripheral Areas: An Intercultural Comparison
Between Two Case Studies in Brazil and Austria
Walter StOhr
Prof. Emeritus, University of Economics and Business Administration, Austria 233
13. The Polyurban Frontier in Post-Industrial Israel
Saul B. Cohen
Prof. Emeritus, Hunter College and City University of New York, U.S.A. 255
14. The Challenge of Industrial Development for Israel's Frontier Cities
Harvey Lithwick and Yehuda Gradus
Negev Center for Regional Development, Israel 273
15. New Egyptian Desert Cities
Dona]. Stewart
Georgia State University, U.S.A. 301
16. Urban Development at the Ecuador Amazon Frontier:
Boom Towns or Gloom Towns
Roy Ryder
University of South Alabama, Mobile, U.S.A.
Lawrence A. Brown
Ohio State University, U.S.A. 313
Acknowledgements
This book is the fourth in a series published by the Negev Center for Regional Devel
opment on various aspects of frontier development. The three previous volumes
include: Frontiers in Regional Development ( eds. Y. Grad us and H. Lithwick, Rowman
and Littlefield, 1996); The Arid Frontier: Interactive Management of Environment
and Development (eds. H. Bruins and H. Lithwick, Kluwer, 1998); and Ethnic Fron
tiers and Peripheries: Landscapes of Development and Inequality in Israel ( eds. A.
Meir and 0. Yiftachel, Westview, 1998). A fifth volume, by Y. Grad us and S. Krakover,
on tourism in frontier regions, is in preparation.
The Center was founded in large part to assist in bringing to these often neglected
regions the benefit of scholarly research on a variety of subjects that are of importance
to their development. While the Center's work has emphasized the application of
these findings to Israel's own frontier region, where we are located, we believe that
they may be applied as constructively to other frontier regions in the developing as
well as the more developed countries.
We would like to offer our most sincere thanks to our colleagues, the authors of
the various chapters included herein, for having been both our teachers and friends.
Their valuable insights have enabled us to trace a rather clear picture of a complex
problem, and to identify ways to deal with it. We sincerely hope we have done justice to
our interpretation of their important contributions, and that readers will be en
couraged to delve further into their other works in this and related fields.
Preparing a manuscript is usually the most frustrating and least rewarding of
academic pastimes. We are pleased to note that such was not the case here. Our
publisher, Kluwer, assigned Petra D. van Steenbergen to this project, and based on
past experience, we knew we had a winner. And she was. She provided encouragement,
useful criticism and most of all expedited the process from start to finish. And
always with great courtesy and the highest possible level of professionalism. Herman
van der Wusten, Managing Editor of the Geojournal Library at Kluwer, reviewed
our original proposal with a very critical eye. As a result of his many useful sugges
tions, we believe this final product is vastly improved over what we had envisioned,
and we thank him for extracting the extra effort from us.
All of the chapters were peer reviewed. Unfortunately, revealing the names of the
reviewers could breach the confidentiality we ensured them, but they know who
they are, and we want them to know how their efforts have helped make this a
much better volume.
For our own chapter, Rani Blustein-Livnon prepared the graphics, and we are
grateful to her for her usual excellent work.
viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The copy editing was performed by Amiel Schotz, and the actual typesetting of
the entire manuscript was done by Margo Tepper-Schotz, the two being the formi
dable partnership ofWordByte Technical Publishing of Beer Sheva.
Financial assistance for preparing this publication was provided by Prof. Jimmy
Weinblatt, Dean of the Faculty of the Humanities and Social Sciences, and by the
supporters of the Negev Center for Regional Development, including Els and Martin
Wyler and the Legacy of Massad Foundation. We are grateful to all of them for
their friendship and kindness.
Prof Harvey Lithwick
Prof Yehuda Gradus
NEGEV CENTER FOR REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Introduction
The Unique Nature of Frontier Cities
and their Development Challenge
Harvey Lithwick and Yehuda Grad us
The advent of government downsizing, and globalization has led to enormous com
petitive pressures as well as the opening of new opportunities. How cities in remote
frontier areas might cope with what for them might appear to be a devastating
challenge is the subject of this book.
Our concern is with frontier cities in particular. In our earlier study, Frontiers in
Regional Development (Rowman and Littlefield, 1996), we examined the distinction
between frontiers and peripheries. The terms are often used interchangeably, but
we believe that in fact, both in scholarly works and in popular usage, very different
connotations are conveyed by these concepts. Frontiers evoke a strong positive image,
of sparsely settled territories, offering challenges, adventure, unspoiled natural land
scapes, and a different, and for many an attractive life style. Frontiers are lands of
opportunity. Peripheries conjure up negative images, of inaccessibility, inadequate
services and political and economic marginality. They are places to escape from,
rather than frontiers, which is were people escape to. Peripheries are places of and
for losers.
Because frontiers tend to be found in remote areas, the above distinction is not
always made. We believe it is most useful to define a frontier as a distinct subset of
some peripheral regions, which manifests some substantial developmental potential,
broadly defined. Their frontier character derives from their being in a state of tran
sition, located either on borders between countries that are subject to conflicting
national interests and/or possess overlapping communities, or in as yet unfinished
regions, whose potential remains to be realized. It is this very unsettled (in both
senses) nature that fosters both the constraints and opportunities facing cities, large
and small, in the frontier.
Most analysts have emphasized that a frontier's potential was a result of its resource
endowment, for mining, for agriculture, and more recently for tourism. Newer
works, reported on in this volume, consider also the endowment of personal and
