Eran Razin

Are Fragmentation and Sprawl Interlinked? North American Evidence

The association between municipal fragmentation and suburban sprawl is examined, based on a cross-sectional analysis of all U.S. and Canadian metropolitan areas with more than 500,000 residents in the 1990s. Results reveal that this association is rather weak but significant and is sustained even when the less fragmented and more compact Canadian metropolitan areas are excluded from the analysis. The impact of residential sprawl on fragmentation is significant, but fragmentation does not predict sprawl. Low levels of fragmentation do not guarantee compact development, but lack of excessive fragmentation might be a precondition for compact development in North America.

Ethnic Entrepreneurs in America's Largest Metropolitan Areas

Using 1990 census data, the authors compare 77 immigrant and ethnic groups in the 16 largest metropolitan regions in the United States. They find that the interaction effect of location and ethnicity on ethnic entrepreneurship is evident not only in self-employment rates but also in niche concentrations and niche competition. Their results reveal a distinction between main-stream groups and nonmainstream groups. Compared to mainstream groups, nonmainstream groups are more context resistant. That is, they concentrate in few entrepreneurial niches and display high niche continuity across metropolitan regions. Group competition influences niche concentrations, but an adverse impact on black entrepreneurship is not apparent.

Metropolitan Characteristics and Entrepreneurship among Immigrants and Ethnic Groups in Canada

This study assesses the influence of metropolitan characteristics on self-employment among immigrant groups and ethnic minorities in Canada. It compares self-employment among 65 immigrant and ethnic groups in Canadas 25 metropolitan areas and is based on a special tabulation from the 1991 Census of Canada. Results show that locational variations in self-employment among groups that are clearly distinguished from Canadas mainstream population, and among the more entrepreneurial groups, differ markedly from locational variations among the rest of the population. These groups gravitate to self-employment, particularly in peripheral metropolitan areas where entrepreneurial opportunities are few. Neither does a large local community of co-ethnics positively influence the propensity to become self-employed. However, immigrants and minorities in peripheral metropolitan areas cluster in relatively narrow entrepreneurial niches. While benefiting from less competition by co-ethnics, the immigrants are probably constrained there to self-employment due to the lack of alternative opportunities.

Enclosed Residential Neighborhoods in Israel: From Landscapes of Heritage and Frontier Enclaves to New Gated Communities

Contemporary studies of gated communities largely associate this phenomenon with global forces, emphasizing recent urban processes that operate across national borders. However, the Israeli experience demonstrates that multiple forces work simultaneously to produce various forms of enclosed residential communities that follow very different evolutionary routes. Older forms of gated spaces such as traditional and frontier enclaves, characterized by religious–cultural or ethno-national identities, coexist and evolve alongside newer forms of postwelfare-state market-driven enclaves also referred to as neoliberal enclaves. Although gated enclaves share some similar defining features, they differ significantly in reasons for enclosure, developmental mechanisms and gating effects. The diverse landscape of enclaves results from ongoing interactions of macrosocietal processes influenced by global trends, with place-specific institutional and cultural settings.

The Impact of Local Government Organization on Development and Disparities — A Comparative Perspective

Results of the comparative study presented in this paper suggests that local government organization influences land-use planning, and local development strategies and disparities. Local government reforms can, therefore, serve to modify spatial patterns of development and disparities. Based on a review of studies made in the developed and the developing world, the author provides a comparative perspective on these influences. Five major dimensions of local government organization—territorial, functional, political autonomy, fiscal, and electoral—are used to define four extreme models of local government. The American self-government model leads to substantial inequalities and to considerable sprawl. The Western welfare-state model alleviates these problems somewhat, but at a cost to central government. Its positive impact is also dependent on norms of administration at the central level, whereas reduced competition over economic development has its negative sides. Developing-world-type centralism has no real advantages in terms of development or disparities. The developing-world decentralized model can be regarded as a transitional phase towards either the self-government or the welfare-state models. Its implementation has been partial; hence its impact has, so far, been rather small.

Needs and Impediments for Local Government Reform: Lessons from Israel

ABSTRACT: I argue that calls for local government reform and prospects for implementation are largely a product of images and external sociopolitical circumstances rather than of particular needs and attributes of the local government system. A discussion of images and facts in the case for local government reform in Israel shows that the need for reform was real, but debates were often based on inaccurate perceptions of extreme fragmentation and centralization. Attributes of the sociopolitical environment that form extremely high barriers for reform include ethno-religious heterogeneity, sociopolitical fragmentation, increasing role of courts as the arenas for societal conflicts, and deep involvement of national parties in local politics in a multiparty coalition government structure. The 2001–2003 political and economic crisis in Israel provides insights on the endurance of barriers for reform. It shows that crisis climate and the creation of unfavorable public image of the present local government system have a role in overcoming such barriers.

Conclusion The economic context, embeddedness and immigrant entrepreneurs

Concludes that the impact of the economic context on entrepreneurship among immigrants is group specific. The concepts of embeddedness, which acknowledges that economic action is embedded in the structures of social relations, and mixed embeddedness, which incorporates both roles of co‐ethnic networks and linkages between immigrants and the broader society, could have a major role in explaining these variations. However, these concepts could be criticized as being fuzzy and hard to verify empirically, and as presenting an idealistic image on the favorable role of intra‐ethnic networks. Case studies demonstrate various aspects of the economic milieu that influence immigrant enterprise and provide some evidence for the embeddedness and mixed embeddedness concepts, although not fulfilling the need for a broader and more formal verification of arguments based on these concepts. An imbalance between too intensive intra‐ethnic ties and lack of sufficient instrumental inter‐ethnic networks is revealed in some of the studies.

THE INCOME CONSEQUENCES OF ETHNIC ENTREPRENEURIAL CONCENTRATIONS

Based on the 1990 census data for Americas 16 largest metropolitan regions, this study assesses the propensities of immigrants and minorities to become self-employed and concentrate in particular niches in different metropolitan regions in relation to earnings. Massive gravitation of nonmainstream groups into self-employment was found to be associated with a low earnings advantage of self-employment, particularly where the self-employed concentrated in a few low-income traditional niches. These niches, however, could still contribute to the economic progress of immigrants and were particularly attractive for less-educated males. High earnings advantage of self-employment, associated with high rates of self-employment, characterized several large communities located in the largest metropolitan regions, where immigrant entrepreneurs expanded from traditional specializations into a broader range of entrepreneurial niches.

Urban-rural boundary conflicts: the reshaping of Israel's rural map

Abstract This study examines boundary conflicts between urban and rural local authorities in Israel. It focuses on three basic questions: what are the reasons for urban-rural boundary conflicts?; do these reasons vary across time and space?; and, what are the underlying structural causes that shape these variations? The study is based on a quantitative and qualitative analysis of boundary conflicts involving Israeli rural regional councils between the 1960s and the early 1990s. It demonstrates that macro-societal structural processes are at the root of urban-rural boundary conflicts. Mounting pressures on regional councils have arisen from political, economic and ideological processes which have shaken the foundations of the councils and produced unprecedented pressures on their territory. Processes of counter-urbanization have played a substantial role, but have been deeply intertwined in a political-ideological context. These processes may either lead to: (1) further fragmentation and contraction of areas managed by rural local government; (2) transformation of rural local governments into entities of a new type; or (3) formation of new forms of urban-rural regional co-operation.

The impact of decentralisation on fiscal disparities among local authorities in Israel

Abstract This study examines fiscal disparities among local authorities in Israel between 1972 and 1995. It argues that political and fiscal decentralisation increase disparities. Analysis is based on regression models and ranking of local authorities according to selected financial measures. Results confirm weakness of small municipalities in a system that lacks strong regional administration or sufficient inter‐municipal co‐operation. Arab municipalities are weak and suffer from discrimination, of a decreasing level, in the allocation of grants. Peripherally located municipalities weakened, but were compensated through equalisation grants. Decentralisation in Israel was an unplanned transition towards an ‘American’ self‐government model. It led to increased fiscal disparities directly, and indirectly by encouraging municipal fragmentation, urban sprawl and competition over tax‐generating development. Policy implications focus on the allocation of equalisation grants and on indirect measures to alleviate...