Professor David C Gibbs

Department of Geography
University of Hull
Cottingham Road
Hull
HU6 7RX

tel: 01482 465330

d.c.gibbs@.hull.ac.uk

Professor David C Gibbs

Professor of Human Geography

Background

I completed my BA degree at the University of Manchester and then returned to Manchester after working for a year, to undertake my PhD, which dealt with spatial restructuring in the British clothing industry. After a very short period working as a consultant in London, I was employed as a research associate at the Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies at Newcastle University. In 1985 I moved to Manchester Metropolitan University (then Manchester Polytechnic) as a Lecturer in Geography, and subsequently became Senior Lecturer, Principal Lecturer and finally Reader in the Department of Environmental and Geographical Sciences. In 1996 I moved to Hull to take up the post of Professor of Human Geography. I am a director of the Centre for City and Regional Studies at the University (www.hull.ac.uk/ccrs), a director of the Hull Environment Research Institute ( www.hull.ac.uk/HERI/ ) and of the Hull and Humber City Region Observatory (www.hull.ac.uk/hhcro). I am also currently Director of the University's Graduate School responsible for all research postgraduates across the University (www.hull.ac.uk/graduateschool ).

I have also held visiting posts in the Department of Geography, University of Cincinnati, the School of Earth Sciences, Macquarie University, New South Wales, and Monash University, Victoria. I am a member of the editorial boards of Local Environment, Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, International Journal of Innovation and Sustainable Development and NETCOM.

Research Interests

Main Past Projects

From 1993 I have been involved with a number of research projects addressing the key issue of sustainable development and its incorporation into local and regional policy. This work developed through funding under the ESRC's Global Environmental Change Programme on 'Towards Sustainable Development: Integrating Economic Development and the Environment at the Local Level'. This research was useful in the sense that it sought to go beyond the fairly simplistic analyses of much work on the environment, to try and get at the social processes underlying the adoption or non-adoption of policy. Moreover, it also got beyond analyses of secondary data on sustainability which gives a false picture of the extent of integration between economic and environmental policies. Instead, the research pointed to important disjunctures between the two policy areas and the ways in which sustainable development is largely seen as marginal to the 'real' business of economic development. This project was followed by EPSRC-funded research on 'Carbon Flows, Jobs and the Environment' which sought to take a specific area of environmental policy (the need to reduce carbon emissions) and relate this to potential reduction strategies at the level of the city -region (using Greater Manchester as a case study example). Following the completion of the statistical analysis on carbon emissions and flows and the construction of alternative reduction strategies, the project focused on the employment implications of these alternatives.

With my colleagues Andy Jonas and Aidan While (now at the University of Sheffield), I worked on an ESRC-funded project entitled 'Governance and Regulation in Local Environmental Policy Making'. Our initial proposal was concerned to examine the processes at work in local environmental policy making, especially the integration of environmental and economic development policies. We aimed to see whether a range of actors was forming into distinct 'environmental policy regimes' at the 'local' scale. Our intention was to use a focus on environmental policy to investigate processes of state restructuring and the changing politics of economic development, drawing upon three bodies of literature: environmental policy, particularly ecological modernisation; urban regime theory; and neo-Gramscian regulation/state theory. Our contention was that the environment could be viewed as a particular 'extra-economic' condition of local governance and social regulation, thus allowing us to examine the wider economic and extra-economic (regulatory) contexts in which local regimes coalesce or fragment. (www.hull.ac.uk/geog/research/DCG1.htm ).

I then worked on another ESRC-funded project on 'Sustainability and the Local Economy: The Role of Eco-industrial Parks'. The research project was concerned with investigating whether the development of eco-industrial parks (EIPs) offers possibilities to implement sustainable development policies, combining economic, environmental and social aims. EIPs are based upon industrial ecology principles that suggest industrial systems can be made to operate in a similar fashion to natural ecological systems. Firms and processes can be connected so that the wastes from one firm or process are utilised as an input by other firms or processes with complete or nearly complete recycling of materials within the system. The project was intended to contribute to recent critiques of the EIP approach by focusing upon the key problems and dilemmas involved in developing EIPs. The original research outline proposed investigating EIP development from a more critical perspective, drawing upon concepts of clustering and networking in local and regional economic development (www.hull.ac.uk/geog/research/EcoInd/ ).

I worked with Frank Burnett, Jim Longhurst and Emma Weitkamp from the University of the West of England on a project on 'Consultation as Science Communication? The Case of Local Air Quality Management' funded under the ESRC's Science in Society Programme. This was concerned with public dialogue as part of science-based policy making. Local authorities in the UK have, for the first time, been required to consult with relevant stakeholders as part of the air quality management process. This air quality management process represented one of the largest locally based science policy and communication initiatives ever undertaken in the UK. In identifying areas unlikely to achieve national air quality objectives, local authorities were under a statutory duty to consult on their findings of scientific assessments as well as any measures designed to improve air quality. This research, through investigation of the science communication methods, sought to understand how the stakeholders involved in the consultation experienced and interpreted the process, rather than to evaluate whether the goals of any given process were met. (www.uwe.ac.uk/aqm/esrc ).

Current Projects

I am working with Andy Jonas and Aidan While (Sheffield) on two inter-related projects. First, we have funding from the British Academy for a project entitled 'Understanding the Growth Dynamic of New Economic Spaces: The Role of a Politics of Collective Provision' (www.hull.ac.uk/geog/research/AEJ2.htm). Second, we are beginning work on a project funded by the Nuffield Foundation entitled 'Growth Politics and Planning for High-Tech New industrial Spaces in Asia' which will extend the British Academy-funded work to studies of Bangalore and Kuala Lumpur. I am also working with Rob Krueger (Worcester Polytechnic Institute, USA) on a project entitled 'The New Economy, Sustainability and Regional Development' ( www.wpi.edu/Academics/Research/Sustainability/Home.html). I am currently engaged on two projects in the area of biosciences and genetics. First, together with Professor Chris Cocklin (James Cook University) and Dr. Jacqui Dibden (Monash University), I am currently working on an Australian Research Council funded project looking at regulation and governance of GMOs in the food and agriculture sectors in Australia and the UK. Details of the project are at www.hull.ac.uk/geog/research/DCG2.htm. Second, I am working on an ESRC-funded project entitled 'Genetics, Genomics and Genetic Modification in Agriculture: Emerging Knowledge-Practices in Making and Managing Farm Livestock' with Lewis Holloway, Ben Gilna (both at Hull), Carol Morris (Nottingham) and John Dupre. Details of this project are at www.hull.ac.uk/geog/research/LH01.htm.

Current PhD Supervision

PhD ESRC CASE Effective policy intervention in establishing sustainable local food systems (with East Riding of Yorkshire Council), Kirstie O'Neill.
PhD ESRC CASE The new ecologies of risk: promoting economic development and the management of flood risk in the Humber (with Environment Agency), Carl Lewis

Potential Research Topic Areas for PhD Supervision

Governance in local and regional development
GMOs and the biosciences sector
Sustainable consumption and production
Eco-industrial development and industrial ecology
Nature conservation and regional development
New technologies and regional development

Modules taught

16141 : World Cities
16275 : Economies, Politics and Space
16280 : Field Study and GIS
16463 : Contemporary Research in Human Geography

Recent Publications

Books and book chapters

Book cover illustration

Gibbs, D (2002) Local Economic Development and the Environment, London, Routledge.

Book cover illustration

Krueger, R and Gibbs, D (2007) The Sustainable Development Paradox: Urban Political Economy in the United States and Europe, New York: Guilford.

Journal articles

Gibbs, D (2003) Reconciling economic development and the environment, Local Environment, 8(1), 3-8

Bulkeley, H, Davies, A, Evans, B, Gibbs, D, Kern, K & Theobald, K (2003) Environmental governance and transnational municipal networks in Europe, Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning, 5(3), 235-254.

Gibbs, D (2003) Ecological modernisation and local economic development: The growth of eco-industrial development initiatives, International Journal of Environment and Sustainable Development, 2 (3), 1-17.

Gibbs, D (2003) Trust and networking in interfirm relations: the case of eco-industrial development, Local Economy, 18(3), 222-236.

While, A, Jonas, A and Gibbs, D (2004) Unblocking the city? Growth pressures, collective provision, and the search for new spaces of governance in Greater Cambridge, England, Environment and Planning A, 36, 279-304.

Jonas, A, While, A and Gibbs, D (2004) State modernisation and local strategic selectivity after Local Agenda 21: Evidence from three northern English localities, Policy and Politics, 32(2), 151-168.

While, A, Jonas, A and Gibbs, D (2004) The environment and the entrepreneurial city: the 'sustainability fix' in Leeds and Manchester, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 28(3), 549-569.

Deutz, P and Gibbs, D (2004) Eco-industrial development and economic development: industrial ecology or place promotion, Business Strategy and the Environment, 13, 347-362.

Gibbs, D and Krueger, R (2005) Exploring local capacities for sustainable development, Geoforum, 36, 407-409.

Gibbs, D and Deutz, P (2005) Implementing industrial ecology? Planning for eco-industrial parks in the USA, Geoforum, 36, 452-464.

Gibbs, D, Deutz, P and Proctor, A (2005) Industrial ecology and eco-industrial development: A new paradigm for local and regional development? Regional Studies, 39(2), 171-183.

Gibbs, D (2006) Prospects for an environmental economic geography: Linking ecological modernisation and regulationist approaches, Economic Geography, 82 (2), 193-215.

Dorfman, P, Beattie, C, Burnet, F, Gibbs, D, Longhurst, J, Weitkamp, E and Leksmono, N (2006) A conceptual model of the role of complex science in local authority consultations about air quality management, Local Environment, 11(4), 399-419.

Gibbs, D, While, A and Jonas, A (2006) Governing nature conservation: The European Union Habitats Directive and conflict around estuary management, Environment and Planning A, 39, 339-358.

Gibbs, D and Deutz, P (2007) Reflections on implementing industrial ecology through eco-industrial park development, Journal of Cleaner Production, 15, 1683-1695.

Atkinson, D, Gibbs, D and S. Reimer (2007) Quality Food, 'authentic' production and rural development in Campania, Rivista Geografica Italiana, CXIV (iii), 29-61.

Cocklin, C, Dibden, J and Gibbs, D (2008) Competitiveness versus 'clean and green'? The regulation and governance of GMOs in Australia and the UK, Geoforum, 39(1), 161-173.

McManus, P and Gibbs, D (2008) Industrial ecosystems? The use of tropes in the industrial ecology and eco-industrial park literature, Progress in Human Geography 32(4) (in press).

Krueger, R and Gibbs, D (2008) Third wave sustainability? Sustainable development, smart growth and regional development in the US, Regional Studies (in press).

Jonas, A, While, A and Gibbs, D (2008) Managing infrastructural and service demand in new economic spaces: The new territorial politics of collective provision, Regional Studies (in press).

Deutz, P and Gibbs, D (2008) Industrial ecology and regional development: Eco-industrial development as cluster policy, Regional Studies (in press)

Gibbs, D (2008) Industrial symbiosis and eco-industrial development: An introduction, Geography Compass (in press).

Gibbs, D (2008) Sustainable entrepreneurs, ecopreneurs and the development of a sustainable economy, Greener Management International (in press).