Journal of Place Management and Development now indexed in Scopus

We have just found out that the Journal of Place Management and Development is now going to be indexed in Scopus.

Scopus is the largest citation database after Thomson Reuters (ISI) and the second most influential journal ranking and citation tool for scholars worldwide. It is particularly influential in Asia Pacific (Australia). Being indexed in Scopus means that the JPMD is most likely to be better ranked in regional journal ranking lists, better known and considered more often for submissions. A point particularly for UK authors, is that Scopus has been chosen as the sole bibliometric provider for the 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF).

We thank Emerald, our publishers, for this achievement.

Personification of Place – RIP Drvar

drvar-4I was interested to hear about a funeral service for a town in western Bosnia-Hercegovina called Drvar. After the closure of the last employer in the town and with unemployment running at 80% the local people have held candle-light vigils and wrote obituaries for their town. According to the BBC, Drvar’s mayor, Stevica Lukac, “appeared at the mock funeral at the local Serbian Orthodox church but urged the crowd not to lose hope”. Many branding experts study the personification of brands – in other words how customers ascribe human personality characteristics to brands. This collective ‘mourning’ certainly demonstrates a strong sense of feeling and attachment to Drvar – and also how people see the negative consequences of job losses at a town level (rather than just what it means to them or their family). This collective involvement in such a symbolic act as a funeral for a town is, to my knowledge, the first of its kind. Maybe debating whether or not towns are brands is missing the point somewhat when they can achieve anthropomorphic status.

Smart City Manchester

It’s a conference about Manchester. It’s not often I come to place rather than sector or discipline-based conferences. First up, Sir Richard Leese to welcome us.

He tells us the vision for Manchester – its no different to most of the others I see (and believe me, in my job I see a lot).

But here’s something different, we are not going to be big anymore – we are going to be smart. As an analogy, Manchester is going to compete in the world beer market as a micro brewery.

So what’s smart. Invest in people. Build their skills and pay them a living wage.

38% of the Greater Manchester Area are graduates (or higher or equivalent). Putting that in some context – it’s about 50% more than Birmingham.

But there’s to do, especially in technical education and early years. Council employees are getting the living wage, but lots of local people aren’t.

The second smart point is to be more autonomous. Less controlled by Central Government and more financially independent (less ‘handouts’).

Barbara Spicer, CE of Salford City Council then explained the governance structure and strategies of the Combined Authority (of all the councils that make up the city region).

They are unique – but are also, for anyone not in ‘the club’ they are complicated.

This leads into a question from me about how to communicate what the Combined Authority does so it can engage people into achieving the vision. After all, surely it’s our vision? I live and work in Manchester.

The answer? I have nothing to worry about – it is just a big public body. Hmmmm.

The rest of the conference looked at the various facets of making, maintenance and marketing of Manchester.

This conference is actually a very effective way to engage this group of delegates into place management in Manchester, or at least raise awareness of it.

50th speaker at place conference confirmed

We have just confirmed our 50th speaker at our conference next year (13th to 15th February)

The response to our Call for Papers was really positive and we have reviewed over 90 submissions.  We have now confirmed speakers from 20 countries (see list below).  We are expecting competition for one of the five places for papers in the Special Conference Issue of the Journal of Place Management and Development to be fierce!  However, all authors that get a full paper to us by the 3rd December 2012 will be included in the ISBN conference proceedings.  There is an early bird rate for the conference until the 14th November 2012 and we are now taking bookings at http://www.business.mmu.ac.uk/place/book.php.

We look forward to seeing everyone in February (13th to 15th).