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The purpose of this paper is to present the growing relevance of natural smells – both pleasant and unpleasant – to park and protected area tourism and the need for more consideration of their role in the visitor experience.

This paper presents four observations – selected via an informal review of the tourism literature – relevant to the future of smellscapes research concerning tourism in parks and protected areas.

An emerging body of literature is indicating natural smells are central to the sensory experience of parks and protected areas. The iconic nature of park smellscapes underscores their role in the tourism experience.

This paper extracts the current trends in smellscapes research relevant to park and protected area tourism. It therefore provides value to both tourism practitioners and researchers, alike, through its attempt to compile significant trends.

In the early 1980s Montgomery Ward, one of the most renowned names in American retailing, was showing large losses. Its historic emphasis on mail order had long since failed and its merchandising policy had become unfocussed. In 1985 they set about “revamping” the entire group. Mail order was abandoned, and instead of a disorganised range of merchandise they sharpened the mix into clearly defined product groups — big ticket lines, garden furniture, children's wear all featured. In order to develop this strategy they needed, above all, rapid and comprehensive management information so as to get the inventory under control. The solution? An EPoS system supplied — not by one of the American giant suppliers on the doorstep — but by a leading European company, Nixdorf. Peter Newman went to Chicago to assess the nature of Montgomery Ward's radical change.

Transport infrastructure is fundamental for economic development and for enabling cities to shift away from unsustainable automobile dependence. These agendas are coming together but the tools and processes to create less automobile-dependent cities are not well developed. The purpose of this paper is to suggest how the planning and assessment process can help to achieve this goal of integration.

Understanding how cities are shaped by transport priorities through urban fabric theory creates an approach to the planning and assessment process in transport and town planning that can help achieve the purpose.

Four tools are developed from this theory: first, a strategic framework that includes the kind of urban fabric that any project is located within; second, benefit cost ratios that include wider economic benefits, especially agglomeration economies in each fabric; third, avoidable costs that assess lost opportunities from the kind of urban development facilitated by the infrastructure chosen; and finally, value capture opportunities that can help finance the infrastructure if they are used to create walking and transit fabric.

Detailed application to the standard transport and town planning tools should now proceed to see how they can be adapted to each urban fabric, not just automobile city fabric.

Recognising, respecting and rejuvenating each fabric can be implemented immediately.

Urban lifestyle choices are best understood by estimating the potential demand for each market and building to these.

The urban fabric tools outlined provide the best way of integrating sustainable development goals into how cities are planned and transport projects are assessed.

There are many whose chief goal in life is to get their bosses' jobs.

Advocates of the role of city‐regions in economic development seek lessons from other countries to boost the case. But processes of lesson learning raise many challenges and the purpose of this paper, therefore, is to argue that it is necessary to shift from descriptive comparison to a better understanding and explanation of what works where.

The approach taken in the paper is to review recent debates about the design of comparative studies and suggests a range of comparative questions.

The paper draws on insights from the ESRC Research Seminar and other papers in this issue and helps clarify some of the issues that may be involved in developing a better comparative understanding of the emergence and impacts of new “experimental”, time‐limited regional institutions.

The paper argues for more rigorous comparative research.

Questions are raised about current lesson learning concerning the governance of city regions.

The paper contributes to new debates about the potential of comparative study.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the regulatory, policy and market‐based approaches taken to incorporate biodiversity conservation in the management of urban growth in Sydney and more broadly in New South Wales, Australia's most populous state. Problems associated with managing Sydney's growth – particularly from the intersection of dealing with perceived property rights and the protection of natural resources such as biodiversity – are identified, and the scope for hybrid “smart regulation” is examined.

The relevant issues are illustrated through significant State Government development decisions relating to the retention of biodiversity in the new growth areas of Sydney.

The paper argues that to better integrate biodiversity conservation in Australian cities a mixed approach be adopted in which a number of tools are utilised – and that this needs to occur in the context of a sound overarching strategic planning framework. This constitutes a hybrid approach involving a “fixed” strategic spatial plan informing statutory‐based regulation primarily through zoning and other development controls, augmented by a range of market based tools implemented through statute and common law measures such as conservation covenants.

Singular reliance on traditional “command and control” regulatory approaches as both a cause and ineffectual solution to the problems faced in biodiversity conservation is highlighted. Newer “market based” mechanisms which are being introduced (e.g. biobanking), or should be adopted (e.g. transferable development rights), and management at the strategic level (e.g. biodiversity certification), are examined.

The focus of this paper is the economic theory of the plans for the European Monetary Union. Part 1 demonstrates that economists, bankers and policy makers know very little about monetary policy. Part 2 explains the errors of the common practice of defining money by its functions. Because any monetary policy must rest on a definition of money it seems reasonable to conclude that a flawed definition might lead to problems with monetary policy. Part 3 applies this insight to the plans for a common currency in Europe. Because of uncertainties about the timing and details of the implementation, some important considerations are necessarily speculative. They are relegated to appendices. Appendix 1 comments on the timing and authorship and responsibility for the official reports with their unspecified authors. Appendix 2 supplies some grounds for doubting the ultimate durability of the European Monetary Union focusing on reasons that are historical, economic and pragmatic. Because the entire movement is driven by politics, not economics, Appendix 3 considers some of the relevant political issues. The conclusions summarize and speculate on possible reasons for successful outcomes.