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Two metropolitan cities of similar size and less than 400 Kilometres apart, yet London and Paris display vastly contrasting patterns of retailing. Retailing, unlike manufacturing industry, has yet to go truly multi‐national in its organisation; but the trends in this direction are clear. Retail organisations in England and France, however, will have to contend with very different patterns of retailing in the two metropolitan cities should they decide to set up in them. The reasons for these differences are partly historical and partly administrative. Since 1945 the outward growth of London has been limited by an extremely powerful system of land‐use planning. This has had the effect of stopping London at the point that its outward growth had reached prior to the outbreak of World War II. By 1938, aided by the development of suburban electric railways in the two decades since 1918, the suburbs of London had sprawled out 19 to 24 Km from the centre. In that year, an Act of Parliament created the Green Belt, which provided a means of restraining further development. The area within the Green Belt is now the province of the Greater London Council, the strategic planning authority for London set up in 1964. Beyond the Green Belt, in the Outer Metropolitan Area, some 40 to 50 Km from Central London, a series of new towns has been built. While Greater London has lost population and jobs since the war, this area beyond the Green Belt has witnessed a major growth of population and jobs in the same period. (Milton Keynes, for instance, is planned to accommodate 500,000 people and by 1977 a covered shopping centre of 84,000 m2 will be open, rising to 172,000 m2 of shopping space by 1991 with 28,000 car parking spaces).

NL Chemicals/NL Industries Inc announce the acquisition of Victor Wolf Industries Ltd, the UK based producer of polyamide resins, plastics additives, and other speciality chemicals.

The provision of port services is an important link in international logistics. Historically, ports have constituted a bottleneck in maritime transport. Moreover, the quality of port services has been compromised by the complex internal port organisation and the considerable number of bodies that participate in the transfer of goods between ships and inland transport vehicles. The efficiency of port services affects not only the port authorities, service providers and customers, but also the port hinterland through the multiplier effect on the regional economy. The problems of port organisation are explained using principal‐agent concepts. The authors then explore the concept of quality in relation to port services, and discuss certification of service providers as a means of signalling quality to their customers. Finally, the accreditation system of the port of Valencia, Spain, is presented as a model, one that is superior to the accepted ISO standards, whereby port service quality and efficiency may be enhanced.

This paper aims to create a social constructivist perspective on collaborative architecture that is complementary to the rational‐analytic perspective as embodied in the “hard” project management tools.

Two theoretical perspectives from the field of design methodology, “design as co‐evolution”, and “design as a social process”, form the base for an integrated perspective of collaboration. This integrated perspective describes in detail the social process among multi functional actors involved in co‐creational processes. A third theoretical framework discusses the process of maturing conflicts and conflict prevention using the integrated perspective on collaboration. Data from two empirical studies are used to illustrate both perspectives. The first study used a protocol study approach and the second a grounded approach.

This paper shows the similarities in design methodology and conflict literature by introducing a social constructivist perspective on collaborative architecture. Especially, the notion of cognitive errors as root cause of “conflictuous” situations becomes apparent. The paper describes in detail the role of perceptual differences that can make and break collaborative architecture.

Based on these findings some hypothetical intervention strategies are proposed that collaborating actors can apply in order to prevent “conflictuous” situations to grow beyond control and even bend those situations towards innovations. Actors engaged in multi functional and multi actor creational processes might benefit from building a rudimentary mental model representing the world of the other function or other organization.

The paper brings together the intra‐subjective and inter‐subjective level in the context of co‐creating (architectural) processes by combining two very different streams of literature, design methodology and maturing conflicts. In both streams one could identify a similar distinction between cognitive processes and social processes. Collaborative architecture without having social‐emotional conflicts is realized by explicating implicitly held knowledge, understandings and perceptions. An individual cognitive effort as well as a social‐interactive effort is needed in which actors explicitly discuss differences in perception before these perceptions evolve into misleading truths. As a basis for such synchronizing discussions the actors need to have some sort of rudimentary understanding of each other's thought world and trust in each other's professionalism and factuality. Thus, preventing conflicts is not about having more communication, but about different communication!

THE Report of the Committee on Libraries, which was issued by the University Grants Committee in the summer of 1967, had for long been called the Parry Report after its Chairman, Dr. Thomas Parry, formerly Librarian of the National Library of Wales and at the time the Principal of University College of Wales in Aberystwyth. When it was first set up in June 1963 the terms of reference were as follows:

OPTIMISM as to the outlook is shown by the report from Sheffield of a book‐moving day, or perhaps returning‐day would be a better phrase, which involved the return from safe storage to the Central Library of 10,000 books, 5,000 manuscripts and plans, and 10 tons of newspaper files. This probably is the first record of a homeward pilgrimage for hundreds of thousands of volumes of books as well as artistic and other treasures from bomb‐proof concealment. It is, however, yet too early for the districts in southern England to undertake the risk involved in such return. The newspapers are wisely silent about the areas in which there is still risk, but they are quite inarticulate as to the nature of the risk and it is clear that it covers a large area. The recent mobilization of air defences at Edinburgh suggests too that the particular type of attack to which Great Britain is still subject may not be confined to the south of England—from the nature of the weapon there appears to be no reason why it should be. Nevertheless, the risk that we think Sheffield takes is a legitimate one. People have returned in large numbers to their own homes; they need libraries and within reasonable limits they should have them. Our best work cannot be done when the valuable part of our stock is in inaccessible places. This return of books will create in many towns a serious storage problem: we can point to libraries which distributed their stock and which through accessions, gifts from evacuated people and other sources of accession, have filled most of the space occupied by their ordinary stock. Most of us need new buildings and our priority for them must be low. The ingenuity of librarians will be severely taxed in this as in many other matters.

The classics will circulate wrote a public librarian several years ago. She found that new, attractive, prominently displayed editions of literary classics would indeed find a substantial audience among public library patrons.

Fumes, grit, dust, dirt—all have long been recognized as occupational hazards, their seriousness depending on their nature and how they assail the human body, by ingestion, absorption, inhalation, the last being considered the most likely to cause permanent damage. It would not be an exaggeration to state that National Insurance (Industrial Injuries) provisions, now contained in the Social Security Act, 1975, with all the regulations made to implement the law, had their birth in compensating victims of lung disease from inhalation of dust. Over the years, the range of recognized dust disease, prescribed under regulations, has grown, but there are other recognized risks to human life and health from dusts of various kinds, produced not from the manufacturing, mining and quarrying, &c. industries; but from a number of areas where it can contaminate and constitute a hazard to vulnerable products and persons. An early intervention by legislation concerned exposed foods, e.g. uncovered meat on open shop fronts, to dust and in narrow streets, mud splashed from road surfaces. The composition of dust varies with its sources—external, atmospheric, seasonal or interior sources, uses and occupations, comings and goings, and in particular, the standards of cleaning and, where necessary, precautions to prevent dust accumulation. One area for long under constant scrutiny and a subject of considerable research is the interior of hospital wards, treatment rooms and operating theatres.