Scott Baum

Attracting and retaining knowledge workers in knowledge cities

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate ways to attract and retain knowledge workers in a globally successful knowledge city or a city aspiring to become one.Design/methodology/approach – The paper reviews the literature on knowledge work and workers and provides useful recommendations on the fundamentals of how to attract and retain knowledge workers.Findings – The paper sheds light on attracting and retaining knowledge workers that knowledge industries, knowledge‐based development and knowledge cities rely on.Originality/value – The paper provides an in‐depth discussion on the concepts of knowledge work, knowledge workers and what these workers want when they are not at work.

Sydney, Australia: A Global City? Testing the Social Polarisation Thesis

It has been argued that the global city-social polarisation thesis put forward by scholars looking at North American cities cannot be easily transferred to global cities in other parts of the world. Recent research has illustrated that whilst there may be some change in levels of social polarisation in global cities outside the US, the form, structure and causes of social polarisation are different. This paper extends the debate by looking at Sydney, Australia. It is argued that whilst changes in occupational structure and income polarisation are partially explained by economic restructuring associated with globalisation, global processes alone cannot fully explain these changes. The paper points to the significance of the inclusion of factors such as the unemployed, the gendered structure of occupations and migration.

Networks and geography: Modelling community network structures as the outcome of both spatial and network processes

This paper focuses on how to extend the exponential random graph models to take into account the geographical embeddedness of individuals in modelling social networks. We develop a hierarchical set of nested models for spatially embedded social networks, in which, following Butts (2002), an interaction function between tie probability and Euclidean distance between nodes is introduced. The models are illustrated by an empirical example from a study of the role of social networks in understanding spatial clustering in unemployment in Australia. The analysis suggests that a spatial effect cannot solely explain the emergence of organised network structure and it is necessary to include both spatial and endogenous network effects in the model.

Measuring community strength and social capital

Western J., StimsonR., Baum S. and Van Gellecum Y. (2005) Measuring community strength and social capital, Regional Studies 39 , 1095–1109. Five case study communities in both metropolitan and regional urban locations in Australia are used as test sites to develop measures of ‘community strength’ on four domains: Natural Capital; Produced Economic Capital; Human Capital; and Social and Institutional Capital. The paper focuses on the fourth domain. Sample surveys of households in the five case study communities used a survey instrument with scaled items to measure four aspects of social capital – formal norms, informal norms, formal structures and informal structures – that embrace the concepts of trust, reciprocity, bonds, bridges, links and networks in the interaction of individuals with their community inherent in the notion social capital. Exploratory principal components analysis is used to identify factors that measure those aspects of social and institutional capital, while a confirmatory analysis based on Cronbachs α explores the robustness of the measures. Four primary scales and 15 subscales are identified when defining the domain of social and institutional capital. Further analysis reveals that two measures – anomie, and perceived quality of life and wellbeing – relate to certain primary scales of social capital.

Short-term effects of the 2008 cold spell on mortality in three subtropical cities in Guangdong Province, China.

Background: Few studies have been conducted to investigate the impact of extreme cold events on mortality in subtropical regions. Objective: In the present study we aimed to investigate the effects of the 2008 cold spell on mortality and the possibility of mortality displacement in three subtropical cities in China. Methods: Daily mortality, air pollution, and weather data were collected from 2006 to 2009 in Guangzhou, Nanxiong (no air pollutants), and Taishan. We used a polynomial distributed lag model (DLM) to analyze the relationship between the 2008 cold spell and mortality. To observe the mortality displacement of the cold spell, we estimated the cumulative effects at lag0, lag0–6, lag0–13, lag0–20, and lag0–27 separately. Results: During the 2008 cold spell, the cumulative risk of nonaccidental mortality increased significantly in Guangzhou [relative risk (RR) = 1.60; 95% CI: 1.19, 2.14] and Taishan (RR = 1.60; 95% CI: 1.06, 2.40) when lagged up to 4 weeks after the cold spell ended. Estimated effects at lag0–27 were more pronounced for males than for females, for respiratory mortality than for cardiovascular mortality, and for the elderly (≥ 75 years of age) than for those 0–64 years of age. Most of the cumulative RRs increased with longer lag times in Guangzhou and Taishan. However, in Nanxiong, the trend with cumulative RRs was less consistent, and we observed no statistically significant associations at lag0–27. Conclusion: We found associations between the 2008 cold spell and increased mortality in the three subtropical cities of China. The lag effect structure of the cold spell varied with location and the type of mortality, and evidence of short-term mortality displacement was inconsistent. These findings suggest that extreme cold is an important public health problem in subtropical regions.

Social Transformations in the Global City: Singapore

In recent years, there has been increased interest in testing the thesis that global city emergence is accompanied by increases in social polarisation. Given the growing importance of the Asia-Pacific region in the global economy, this paper makes a timely contribution to the social polarisation debate by discussing the social transformations occurring with reference to Singapore. It is suggested that within Singapore, rather than the development of a polarised structure, there is a trend towards a professionalised occupation structure and a growing middle-upper income-group.

Happy people in mixed up places: The association between the degree and type of local socioeconomic mix and expressions of neighbourhood satisfaction

The potential impacts that a range of social, economic, demographic and structural factors have on an individual’s level of perceived satisfaction with their neighbourhood continue to be an important focus of research interest. This paper concentrates on a specific feature of the neighbourhood satisfaction literature by considering the impact of local neighbourhood socioeconomic mix on satisfaction. It suggests that, if neighbourhood satisfaction is associated with strong and sustainable communities, then understanding the drivers of neighbourhood satisfaction remains an important part of the empirical investigation. Using a combination of survey data and aggregate census data, the paper considers how, net of other factors, the socioeconomic mix of the local neighbourhood impacts on satisfaction. It finds that the socioeconomic mix characteristics of the neighbourhood do matter in understanding neighbourhood satisfaction and suggests that this has important implications for polices aiming at strengthening and sustaining local communities.

Advantage and disadvantage across Australia's extended metropolitan regions: A typology of socioeconomic outcomes

New national and international economic and social forces have reshaped national geographies in general and the characteristics of cities in particular, resulting in a range of diverse social and spatial outcomes. These outcomes, which include greater differentiation across, within and between cities has become a feature of the economic and social forces associated with post-Fordist social structures. Taking localities across Australias metropolitan regions, this paper develops a typology of advantage and disadvantage using a model-based approach with clustering of data represented by a parameterised Gaussian mixture model and confidence intervals of the means providing a measure of differences between the clusters. The analysis finds seven clusters of localities that represent different aspects of the socio-spatial structure of the metropolitan regions studied.

Space and Place: Social Exclusion in Australia's Suburban Heartlands

As a prolonged period of Australian prosperity ends, attention has now begun to turn to the likely impacts of a severe economic downturn. The pain of recession is unlikely to be evenly distributed across the population or across space. Not that the previous economic good fortune was evenly spread across society. It is, therefore, expected that a new layer of socio-economic stress will be laid over existing patterns of social and spatial disparity. In this context, questions of deprivation and social exclusion are an important ongoing concern. Deprivation and social exclusion are operative at a number of levels of society. Neo-liberal thought and policy has been directed at the level of the individual. However, space and place are also important, as spatially concentrated disadvantage has structural consequences for both individual fortunes and the broader social fabric. This article considers the spatial distribution of disadvantage across our major metropolitan regions and considers potential approaches to address social exclusion in our suburban heartlands.

The social and economic performance of Australia's large regional cities and towns: implications for rural and regional policy.

Australias large regional cities and towns display wide variation in how they are adjusting to the socio-economic transitions occurring in Australia. That variation is exposed using a multi-variate model analysing performance on a range of socio-economic variables over the decade 1986 to 1996 for 122 cities and towns with populations of 10 000 and above at the 1996 census. Those places are classified into seven clusters of community performance reflecting opportunity/vulnerability, and their spatial patterns are mapped. The resulting framework is then used to show how the recent geography of the socio-economic performance of the large regional cities and towns has a distinctive selectivity and contributes to opportunity in some places and the vulnerable performance of others. The influence of that selectivity can be seen in the mismatched geographic patterns evident from an analysis of shares of national population and employment change, investment in non-residential construction, levels of welfare dependency, and the ratio between household income tax generation and transfer benefits received. The paper uses the insights drawn from that analysis to pose questions suggesting the need to rethink national policy perspectives for addressing change in non-metropolitan Australia.