Tim Bunnell

Spaces and scales of innovation

Contemporary research on innovative processes makes use of a range of scales, from the global to the regional/local. In addition, network-based approaches have introduced a nonterritorially bounded dimension to studies of innovation. While much of the latter has, to date, been concerned with local networks, recent work has pointed to the importance of non-local interconnections. This paper seeks to build upon such insights suggesting that greater attention be given to extra-local connections in studies of innovation. We explore ways in which extra-local interconnection may be extended beyond the globalization of formalized R&D by, and between, transnational corporations (TNCs), which is the overwhelming preoccupation of existing research. The paper is divided into two main parts. The first consists of a review of work on the three key scales of innovation. The second considers the role of firms and individuals as key actors in systems of innovation, and suggests how network-based approaches may offer the best way for analysing how these actors operate through and across spatial scales. In conclusion, we emphasize the need to further investigate non-TNC-based dimensions of extra-local interconnection.

‘Spatializing’ knowledge communities: towards a conceptualization of transnational innovation networks

In this article we seek to move beyond existing conceptualizations of innovation systems in two key respects. First, we identify the need for a shift away from research that focuses on discrete scales as the locus for understanding innovation towards that which places more emphasis on network relationships operating between and across different scales. Second, we illustrate the need for approaches that recognize the significance of innovative networks that extend beyond firms and, in particular, those associated with the movement of knowledgeable individuals. By synthesizing recent insights from three literatures on ‘communities’ of varying kinds — namely communities of practice, knowledge communities and transnational communities — we propose a conceptualization of transnational innovation networks based around three overlapping and mutually constitutive domains. In addition to the much-studied ‘corporate-institutional’ domain, we also identify ‘social network’ and ‘hegemonic-discursive’ domains that may be important components of transnational innovation networks operating across different localities.

Geographies of friendships

Friendships are an important part of what makes us, and our geographies of various kinds, human. We consider how geographers can contribute to efforts to afford friendship greater prominence in the social sciences. The main part of the article considers three strands of work on friendship that push the boundaries of research in human geography: (1) geographies of affect/emotion and the ontological construction of the human; (2) children’s and young people’s geographies and the (re)production of social ordering; and (3) geographies of mobility and transnationalism in a world of increased human spatial movement and social relations at a distance.

Malaysia, Modernity and the Multimedia Super Corridor : A Critical Geography of Intelligent Landscapes

List of figures Acknowledgements List of abbreviations 1. Introduction Part I: Framing Malaysia: Concept and Context 2. Modernity, Space and the Government of Landscape 3. Positioning Malaysia: Connections, Division and Development Part II: On Route 2020 4. Kuala Lumpur City Centre (KLCC): Global Reorientation 5. Putrajaya and Cyberjaya: Intelligent Cities, Intelligent Citizens 6. Beneath the Intelligent Cities: Socio-spatial Dividing Practices 7. Conclusion Reference

Multimedia Utopia? A Geographical Critique of High‐Tech Development in Malaysia’s Multimedia Super Corridor

For all the supposed novelty of the “Information Age”, high-tech development in Malaysia perpetuates existing patterns of social and spatial inequality. The Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC), a 50-km-long high-tech zone stretching southwards from the federal capital, Kuala Lumpur, is imagined in state discourse as part of a transition to a “multimedia utopia” benefiting all Malaysians throughout the national territory. This article seeks to contest such utopian imaginings. In the first place, informational forms of economy and society are dependent upon complex physical infrastructure, the distribution of and access to which is highly uneven. The MSC and other major investment in information infrastructure in Malaysia are overwhelmingly concentrated in the main national city-region. Second, already marginal groups and individuals are subjected to new forms of social and spatial exclusion. Apart from financial exclusion arising from the privatisation of high-tech spaces, incorporation into Malaysian high-tech futures is dependent upon the possession of skills deemed appropriate for an emerging information economy and society. These processes are exemplified by the displacement of plantation workers in the construction of Putrajaya, one of the MSC’s two new “intelligent” cities. While such negative social impacts have a long association with large-scale modern development projects, the article argues that it is specifically a pervasive discourse of “high-tech”—and the way in which this has been refracted in the national context—which legitimises the financial and social costs of new high-tech urban development.

Kuala Lumpur metropolitan area: A globalizing city–region

Abstract The Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur is the national capital of Malaysia and forms the core of the nation’s most populous urban region. It is the increasingly global orientation of the city and its implications for the wider urban region which form the focus of this profile. Material infrastructure and spectacular symbolic spaces facilitating the globalization of Kuala Lumpur have overwhelmingly concentrated in a new southern growth corridor over the past decade or more. We detail the rise and socio–spatial implications of an expanded Kuala Lumpur Metropolitan Area (KLMA). Three interrelated dimensions – information and communications technologies (ICTs), transport and housing – are critically evaluated in turn.

Views From Above and Below: The Petronas Twin Towers and/in Contesting Visions of Development in Contemporary Malaysia

Large-scale urban transformation in Malaysia is the most visible sign of the rapid development which has accompanied the premiership of the current Prime Minister, Dr. Mahathir Mohamad. The national capital, Kuala Lumpur, has seen the development of a new city centre (Kuala Lumpur City Centre, KLCC) which includes the world’s tallest building, the Petronas Twin Towers. Using techniques from cultural geography, this paper provides a “reading” of the building. The paper first considers the symbolic role of the Petronas Towers in realising a state vision of national development, the so-called Vision 2020. The building is seen to both image Malaysia as a “world class” national player (and Kuala Lumpur as a “world city”) as well as to promote new “ways of seeing” among national citizens. However, the paper also considers ways in which intended symbolic meanings are contested and the would-be hegemonic state vision reworked “from below” through everyday experiences of life in the city and the nation.

Antecedent Cities and Inter-referencing Effects: Learning from and Extending Beyond Critiques of Neoliberalisation

Cities around the world are likened to, and remade with reference to, imaginings of antecedent urban experiences elsewhere. The paper begins by identifying inter-referencing effects associated with three different imaginings of urban antecedence in and beyond academic urban studies: the prototypical, paradigmatic city; the city which charts pathways to world city-ness; and the model or ‘best’ city. It is the effects of the third of these imaginings that has received the most sustained critical examination to date. The currently burgeoning literature on urban policy mobilities has proceeded methodologically by following actually existing intercity referential effects. The key argument in this paper is that critical policy mobilities research is problematic in largely reducing inter-referencing effects to neoliberalisation from above, but potentially very helpful for efforts to move beyond the EuroAmerican-centredness that has prevailed in imaginings of urban antecedence in Anglophone urban theory more widely.

‘New Economy’ Discourse and Spaces in Singapore: A Case Study of One-North

In this paper we examine government-led attempts to transform Singapore into, or for, a so-called ‘new economy’. We show how ‘new economy’ may be understood as a powerful discourse rationalising a range of policy and planning interventions. We focus in particular on ‘one-north’, a would-be technopole for biomedical, information technology, and media industries in the southwest of Singapore. We show how the planning of one-north has included the selection and reworking of residential areas as ‘little bohemias’ considered conducive for fostering new-economy cultures. Though it has been gaining prominence, specifically following the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s, one-north is contextualised in terms of broader new-economy interventions by the state in Singapore, which, in turn, have resonances for similar initiatives elsewhere.

(Re)positioning Malaysia: high-tech networks and the multicultural rescripting of national identity

Abstract Transnational processes and imaginings valorise the putative cultural networks, connections and affinities of Malaysia’s ‘non-Malay’ (Indian and Chinese) communities. In this paper, I argue that this signals neither the end of nation building—which naturalised such communal difference in the first place—nor of the nation-state as a social, political and economic actor. Rather, attention is given to discursive practices through which the state seeks to ‘reposition’ Malaysia in/for the ‘networked’ information economy and society. Multicultural ‘rescripting’ of the nation/national identity is thus highlighted as part of broader state strategies to negotiate, facilitate and capitalise upon transnational phenomena. Increasing state emphasis on multiculturalism unsettles Malay-centred constructions of post-colonial national identity. However, the paper cautions against a celebration of the high-profile accorded to multiculturalism in ‘information age’ Malaysia. The Malay ‘special position’ continues and the lowering of ethnic barriers in various domains remains dependent upon domestic political contest. In addition, the socio-economic benefits of less Malay-centred state means of development associated with Malaysia’s ‘k-economy’ push are highly uneven. Non-Malays wooed to the high-tech showcase Multimedia Super Corridor are a highly-skilled professional elite.