Congestion Pricing and Demand Management: A Discussion of the Issues

This article reviews the political, technological, and economic issues involved in the formulation of congestion pricing policy. Increased urban congestion combined with increasingly scarce resources is making policymakers consider congestion pricing as an alternative to expanding highway capacity. Past experiences with congestion pricing and other types of demand management are discussed in an attempt to identify problems policymakers may expect to encounter in the US.     

新加坡小印度 充满咖喱味儿的幻彩世界

新加坡虽是个弹丸小国,却有着十分多元的文化。除了占人口总数3/4的华人外,还有马来人和印度人（泰米尔人）,各民族和谐共处,各自保留着独特的生活习性和灿烂的民族文化,为新加坡增添了独特的魅力。在新加坡,实笼岗路（Serangoon Road）一带是印度社群聚集的地方,这里充满了印度风情,好似印度的缩影,人们习惯把这里称作“小印度”。     

Evidence for Interaction from Recent Hunter-Gatherer Sites in the Caledon Valley

Evidence for contact between hunter-gatherers and agropastoralists from excavated sites in a well-documented frontier zone in the eastern Free State, South Africa, reveals varied intensities of interaction. These interactions range from clientship to relative autonomy. Comparison between recent (eighteenth- to early twentieth-century) hunter-gatherer occupations of rock shelters in the Caledon Valley also suggests that a variety of social relationships between hunter-gatherers and farmers, known ethnographically, occurred simultaneously.     

Theming Cities, Taming Places: Insights from Singapore

This paper explores the 'thematic development' of Singapore's Little Historic District and the socio-spatial effects of this thematic enhancement scheme. Specifically, I argue that when landscapes are 'themed', which is often the case in urban tourism planning, places will be 'tamed' as a result. This argument is substantiated by the case of Singapore's Little India which was designated a historic district in 1989. I contend that as Little India is redeveloped as an Indian theme district with a mix of modern and traditional activities, it is tamed in three ways. The taming process is exemplified by: (1) a decline in traditional Indian-owned retail outlets and activities; (2) Little India's conversion into a retail attraction rather a place of residence; and (3) a dimming of its rich Indian cultural identity. The taming of activities , community and identity , I shall show, has also generated vociferous reactions from the grass-roots which can be described as anything but tame. Indeed, as gross-roots agencies (comprising merchants and residents) resist the government's development approach, there has been a fundamental rethinking of what Little India means to its people and a re-evaluation of their communal ties to the place. As a result, a reassertion of Indian identity and community occurs even as Little India is being themed and tamed.     

Further Evidence for A Columban Iceland: Preliminary Results of Recent Work

Over 10 years ago, a study was completed which established a link between a tradition of simple incised crosses (with expanded terminals) and the important Early Christian monastic familia of St Columba, based in and around the small Scottish island of Iona. Intriguingly, this Columban expanded terminal cross-form bears a remarkable resemblance to a poorly understood body of cross-carvings in Southern Iceland. A connection between the two traditions would be especially interesting because the Scottish cross-form was short-lived, disappearing before the Viking Age. In other words, before the generally accepted dating of the Norse settlement of Iceland.     

Probing A Traffic Congestion Controversy: A Comment

Ohta (2001) claims to have resolved a die-hard controversy on traffic congestion modeling by defining an inverse aggregate demand function that has traffic density as its argument—in Ohta's terminology the 'primitive term.'Using this demand function, Ohta shows that 'hypercongestion' may very well be an optimal stationary state. This contribution argues that at least if what road users demand is completed trips, and if time spent on the road while traveling implies a cost, then Ohta's approach is fundamentally flawed. Also the conclusion that hypercongestion can be optimal is no longer valid.     

Gender representation in geography: Singapore

ABSTRACT

This paper explores key skills required by potential employers of geography graduates. Academic ability combined with a variety of transferable skills such as communication, organisation and self-motivation appeal to many of the employers questioned. Graduates can face potential difficulties expressing these key skills in standard application forms and interviews. Extracurricular activities and previous employment can provide impressive ways to display skills relevant to the job. Key skills are dynamic; graduates need to keep pace with ever changing expectations particularly with regard to information technology.     

新加坡构建和谐社会的几点成功经验

新加坡之所以能够在全国范围内成功构建和谐社会,主要得益于他们牢牢抓住了如下几个重要的环节:始终把民族和睦作为构建和谐社会的文化基础,把防微杜渐作为构建和谐社会的制度保证,把奖优济困作为构建和谐社会的政策导向,把保护环境作为构建和谐社会的外在动因,从而保证了国家经济的持续发展和社会的文明和谐。新加坡在构建和谐社会方面的许多做法和经验,值得我们去认真研究和思考。     

Rowing Ancient Warships: Evidence from a Newly-Published Ship-Model

A clay model of the 6th or 5th century BC may be evidence for the nature of ancient Mediterranean warships in general.
© 2007 The Author     

Climate shocks and conflict: Evidence from colonial Nigeria

This paper offers a historical micro-level analysis of the impact of climate shocks on the incidence of civil conflict in colonial Nigeria (1912–1945). Primary historical sources on court cases, prisoners and homicides are used to capture conflict. To measure climate shocks we use the deviation from long-term rainfall patterns, capturing both drought and excessive rainfall. We find a robust and significant curvilinear (U-shaped) relationship between rainfall deviations and conflict intensity, which tends to be stronger in agro-ecological zones that are least resilient to climatic variability (such as Guinean Savannah) and where (pre-) colonial political structures were less centralized. We find evidence that the relationship is weaker in areas that specialize in the production of export crops (such as cocoa and palm oil) compared to subsistence farming areas, suggesting that agricultural diversification acts as an insurance mechanism against the whims of nature. Additional historical information on food shortages, crop-price spikes and outbreaks of violence is used to explore the climate–conflict connection in greater detail.     

Probing A Traffic Congestion Controversy: Density and Flow Scrutinized

Probing a die-hard traffic congestion controversy, this paper scrutinizes two key variables, density and flow, under equilibrium versus optimal states. Optimization requires equilibrium flow to decrease under mild congestion, but increase under hyper-congestion. However, both increasing flow needed under hypercongestion and decreasing flow needed under mild congestion should be accompanied by decreasing density. Thus, inflow of vehicles should always be discouraged to either increase or decrease flow of vehicles for economic efficiency. Moreover, even when optimal policy requires equilibrium flow to increase, the optimal flow itself must decrease eventually as demand increases beyond a critical level.     

History, Memory, and Identity in Modern Singapore: Testimonies from the Urban Margins

In 2006–2007, I interviewed elderly Singaporeans on theirexperiences of resettlement from an urban kampong (village)to emergency public housing after a great fire in 1961. I learnedmuch about the lives of semiautonomous dwellers in an unauthorizedsettlement and the individual and social transformation followingtheir rehousing. My informants also highlighted what the experiencesmeant to them and their identity in a modern city-state. Thispaper treats the testimonies as both source and social memoryand seeks to avoid the essentialism into which many social historians,oral history practitioners, and memory scholars have fallenin their approach toward the craft. As a source of social history,when used in conjunction with other historical sources, thereminiscences are patently useful for understanding the roleof public housing in transforming a marginal population intoan integrated citizenry. This enables the writing of a new socialhistory of postwar Singapore that departs from the discursiveofficial accounts of urban kampong life and of the 1961 inferno.At the same time, the oral history also underlines powerfulsocial and political influences on individual memory, beingmarked by nostalgia for the kampong and ambivalence toward theimagined character of younger Singaporeans. Statements on therumors of government-inspired arson in the 1961 calamity, however,constitute a significant countermyth in contemporary society,revealing a more critical side to the social memory.     

Environmental Damage: Pricing and Public Perception

An alternative technique is proposed for estimating the annual value of environmental damage in Australia. Such estimates are rarely made and an alternative approach is proposed to ‘hypothetical’, ‘willingness to pay’ studies. Such studies tend towards overestimation from respondents who are aware of the ‘hypothetical’ nature of the study and are hence ‘willing to pay’ more than they can realistically afford. In order to minimise this, the study has confined responses to the Federal budget, an amount that actually could be spent. Results also reveal the extent of awareness of environmental problems in Australia. Politically these results indicate the high priority areas for environmental action.     

British Railways and the Challenge from Road Haulage: 1919-39

Interwar Britain witnessed the rapid rise of road transportas a serious competitor to the railways. This article examinesroad–rail competition for freight traffic. It demonstratesthat, contrary to previous accounts—which have been highlycritical of the railway companies—their failure to preventrapid loss of traffic to the roads was the inevitable consequenceof the regulatory framework under which the railways had beenreturned to private control in 1921. Given the constraints imposedby this framework, price competition with road hauliers wouldhave further depressed railway company profits. Railway policythus concentrated on pressing for a revision of the legislativeframework governing road–rail competition.