MacLachlan, Ian
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- ItemEconomic development and industrial employment: A thousand points of light?(Alberta Association, Canadian Institute of Planners, 1991) MacLachlan, IanThis paper disputes some of the empirical analysis on small firm job creation and argues that small enterprises are responsible for a relatively modest share of employment and employment growth at the national, provincial, and municipal levels. While the importance of small business should not be gainsaid, the traditional large firm sector is still a vital component in municipal economic growth and decline. The shortcomings of data on small enterprises are discussed to encourage a more skeptical interpretation of research findings on employment creation. Economic development strategy should include the attraction of new large enterprises and the needs of existing large employers must be addressed if the community economic base is to be sustained.
- ItemRegional diversification policy in Alberta(Alberta Association, Canadian Institute of Planners, 1992) MacLachlan, IanOn August 4, 1992 Western Diversification Canada (WD) celebrated its 5th birthday. This anniversary provides an excellent opportunity to examine WD's mandate and programs and to assess the allocation of funding under its various programs. This article opens with a framework for conceptualizing regional economic development policy in terms of sectoral diversification and spatial diversification. It then considers how the Economic Council of Canada's Western Transition (1984) contributed to WD's policy orientation. The circumstances surrounding the creation of WD, limitations of its initial program structure, and the principles underlying the newly created Western Diversification Program are described. The paper concludes with an analysis of WD approved projects in Alberta to highlight some of the trends in the regional and sectoral distribution of funding.
- ItemSubcontracting in Hokkaido's resource processing sectors(Center for Development Policy Studies, Hokkai-Gakuen University (Sapporo, Japan), 1992-02) MacLachlan, IanThe Japanese economic miracle has inspired considerable interest in the organization of the Japanese industrial system. One of the unique aspects of industrial capitalism in Japan is the vast array of contractual linkages articulating part-time and family businesses with multinational corporations. This paper begins with a brief definition of terms related to industrial subcontracting in Japan and then considers subcontracting in Hokkaido. While less pervasive than on the mainland, industrial subcontracting is a vital component in Hokkaido's space economy and it is found in every industrial sector. To explain the relations between small and large firms two conceptual models are introduced: dualism and flexible production. Data from primary and secondary sources are used to show that the dualism model is most germane to the resource processing industries of the Hokkaido region.
- ItemSpatial patterns of income and income inequality in Mexico City(Geografía y Desarrollo, México, 1998) MacLachlan, IanTo explain trends in inequality in Mexico, three theoretical approaches to income inequality are outlined: Kuznets' inverted "U", Mexican crisis theory, and the informal-formal duality. Empirical data are used to construct maps of the distribution of income in the Mexico City Metropolitan Zone. Due in part to the very large size of many districts in the city, there is enormous heterogeneity in each district. High levels of inequality in every district mirror the very high variance and inequality of employment income at the national scale.
- ItemLethbridge and the Trans-Canada Airway(Historical Society of Alberta, 2000) MacLachlan, Ian; MacKay, BruceFor the first nine years of transcontinental airline service, 1939-1948, Lethbridge was western Canada's principal airline hub. The city was ideally situated to fulfill this function due to its location on the southerly route of the Trans-Canada Airway and the limited operational ceiling of the unpressurized Lockeed aircraft then in use.
- ItemKill and Chill: Restructuring Canada’s Beef Commodity Chain(University of Toronto Press, 2001) MacLachlan, IanComprehensive in its treatment of the whole system surrounding the Canadian beef industry, Kill and Chill offers a history of the structural changes in Canada's cattle and beef commodity chain, beginning with calf production and cattle feeding on farms and feedlots. It goes on to describe the changes in cattle marketing, the historical development of meatpacking-in particular the emergence of Canada's 'Big Three' meatpacking firms-and the rise of meatpacking unionism. Carrying the story almost to the present with the takeover of Maple Leaf by the McCain family in the mid-1990s, the work concludes with a discussion of current trends in retail beef marketing.
- ItemSituational Factors and Urban Growth: The Case of Lethbridge and Alberta’s Metropolitan Centres(International Geographical Union, Commission on Monitoring Cities of Tomorrow, 2002-12) MacLachlan, IanThe concept of situation, or the relative location of a place, includes two subsidiary components: intermediacy and centrality. Urban boosterism, the promotion of growth in a local centre in competition with other places was typically founded upon intermediacy in an effort to create centrality. Lethbridge, Alberta is presented as a case study to illustrate these different situational factors and show the difficulty of translating a situational advantage into the foundation for sustained growth. In 1938, Lethbridge became one of the key hubs in Western Canada’s embryonic airline transportation system and a critical junction in Trans Canada Airlines’ route system. This new technology seemed to confer an enormous situational advantage, perhaps allowing Lethbridge to challenge the metropolitan dominance of Calgary and Edmonton. Twelve years later the city became host to a federally regulated stockyard which was held to be the key to industrial growth based on the livestock industry. These developments from private and public sector investment were intended to exploit the situational intermediacy of Lethbridge and create situational centrality for the city. Unabashed urban boosterism sought to build on these two apparently unlimited opportunities for the city to modernize, to compete with larger centres, and to take its rightful place on the urban map of twentieth century Canada. In the event, these situational factors proved insufficient for the city to take a more prominent place in Alberta’s urban system.
- ItemIntegrated Dis-Integration: Employment Structure of First Nations Communities on the Prairies Relative to their Local Regions(Canadian Indian/Native Studies Association, 2004) Townshend, Ivan; MacLachlan, Ian; O'Donoghue, DanAn exploratory study of the employment specialization/diversity of Prairie First Nations Communities (FNCs) in relation to the employment structure of five comparative settlement system base profiles that are found within their local regions. The FNCs are classified according to levels of settlement system integration. Findings reveal considerable differences in the employment structures at all levels of settlement system integration; a problem that is summarized as the paradox of integrated disintegration.
- ItemStockyards Districts as Industrial Clusters in Two Western Canadian Cities(Western Division, Canadian Association of Geographers, 2004) MacLachlan, Ian; Townshend, IvanThe stockyard was the nucleus of the livestock and meat processing agroindustry, one of the key propulsive forces in the rapid growth of western Canada at the turn of the century. In metropolitan centres such as Calgary and in smaller cities such as Lethbridge, stockyards functioned as transhipment points for livestock in transit and as markets for meat-packing plants. The activities typically drawn together by stockyards created a distinctly western Canadian industrial complex which benefited from agglomeration economies and industrial inertia. Nevertheless, public stockyards are now a relict urban land use and have all but disappeared from the urban landscape. The factors contributing to the waning role of stockyards are identified, with implications for the application of the theory of agglomeration economies and industrial clusters to resource-based industries.
- ItemBetting the Farm: Food Safety, Risk Society, and the Canadian Cattle and Beef Commodity Chain(House of Anansi Press, 2004) MacLachlan, Ian
- ItemIndustrial Development of Lethbridge: A Geographer's Interpretation(2004-01) MacLachlan, IanThis unpublished manuscript provides an account of industrial development in the City of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada from a geographical and historical perspective.
- ItemCultivating a New Cattle Culture: Beef Production and Grassland Management in Alberta(Springer, 2005) MacLachlan, Ian; Bateman, Nancy G.; Johnston, Thomas R. R.This chapter illustrates how views about pasture land management have developed in Canada.
- Item‘The greatest and most offensive nuisance that ever disgraced the capital of a kingdom’: The slaughterhouses and shambles of modern Edinburgh(University of Edinburgh, 2005) MacLachlan, IanThe slaughter of domesticated animals and their butchering for food has been an important component of urban economic activity since the Neolithic revolution. But since the dawn of the modern period, butchery has been cast in a pejorative light, and the slaughterhouse has been gradually excluded from urban life either by forcing its relocation to the margins of settlement or concealing it from the public gaze. Livestock slaughter is among the earliest examples of a common nuisance and strictures on the location of animal slaughter are among the earliest examples of urban land use regulation in Britain. In medieval cities, the marketing and slaughter of livestock was often proscribed within the walls of the city, forcing livestock markets to locate outside the gates. The enforced removal of slaughterhouses to the margins of the city became a recurring problem as cities grew out and around what had been the urban periphery. Yet meat was a perishable product and in the pre-industrial era, butchers needed to slaughter close to the marketplace to avoid decomposition. To avert enforced suburban banishment, the butchers of Edinburgh had only one option: to conceal their activities and minimize the nuisance caused by uncontrolled livestock slaughter which accounts for five distinct regimes in the location and spatial organisation of slaughterhouses in Edinburgh from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. This paper describes the locational dynamics and material culture of Edinburgh's Fleshers and their urban livestock processing industry. By providing an empirical account of the national and municipal regulation of animal slaughter, this primary research may inspire further study into the place of the Fleshers in the development of the urban crafts and of health conditions in Scotland's capital city.
- ItemFeedlot Growth in Southern Alberta: A Neo-Fordist Interpretation(CABI Publishing, 2005) MacLachlan, IanFollowing a discussion of fundamentally neo-Fordist character of cattle feedlots, this chapter describes the factors accounting for the recent surge in feedlot production in southern Alberta.
- ItemYour Call Is Important to Us: Call Centres in Lethbridge, Alberta(Western Division, Canadian Association of Geographers, 2006) Croil, Spencer; MacLachlan, IanIn-bound and out-bound call centres have developed due to the spread of information and communication technologies and growing demand for information and technical support on a round-the-clock basis. Intense cost competition in the call centre sector has been the impetus for the decentralization of call centre activity to smaller peripheral cities in western Canada. Lethbridge, Alberta provides an apt case study venue with the birth of five call centres in just four years. Locational factors such as Canadian dollar exchange rates, time zones, and business climate are identified and evaluated based on interviews with management respondents. While call centre occupations have been traditionally viewed as low skilled, low paid, and “dead-end jobs,” the Lethbridge experience suggests some basis for a more optimistic view.
- ItemCoup de Grâce: Humane Slaughter in Nineteenth Century Britain(Brepols, 2006) MacLachlan, IanCalls for humane cattle slaughter in Britain emerged as part of a broader urban-based animal welfare and slaughterhouse reform movement in the nineteenth century. Humanitarian groups advocated the humane slaughter principle: that no animal should be slaughtered without first being stunned into insensibility. Traditional techniques based on the pole-axe, nape-stab, and Jewish ritual slaughter were too unreliable or too slow to ensure insensibility prior to exsanguination. New stunning technologies including slaughter masks and captive bolt pistols were developed and tested through the nineteenth century but were successfully opposed by the butchers' trade organization. Thus the humane slaughter principle did not receive legislative sanction until the 1930s.
- ItemThe Historical Development of Cattle Production in Canada(2006) MacLachlan, IanThis unpublished manuscript details the history of cattle production in Canada.
- ItemPrairie People’s Packers Pending: The New Generation Cooperative Model of Cattle Slaughter(2006-06) MacLachlan, Ian; Townshend, Ivan; Aitken, Sheena
- ItemA bloody offal nuisance: The persistence of private slaughter-houses in nineteenth century London(Cambridge University Press, 2007) MacLachlan, IanBritish slaughter-house reformers campaigned to abolish private urban slaughter-houses and establish public abattoirs in the nineteenth century. Abolition of London’s private slaughter-houses was motivated by the congestion created by livestock in city streets, the nuisance of slaughter-house refuse in residential neighbourhoods and public health concerns about diseased meat in the food supply. The butchers successfully defended their private slaughter-houses, illustrating the persistence of the craftsman’s workshop and the importance of laissez-faire sentiments in opposition to municipalization in Victorian London.
- ItemRegional Impacts of BSE in Alberta(2007-07-17) MacLachlan, Ian; Townshend, IvanStructure of Talk: Global rural: Zoonosis!; Beef Production is Important in Rural Alberta; Alberta’s BSE Crisis in Context; Half full or half empty? (We dodged a bullet! Perfect Storm); Regional Impact of BSE Crisis.