Urban and Rural Estimates of Poverty: Recent Advances in Spatial Microsimulation in Australia

This paper reports on the calculation of poverty rates for small areas in Australia using a spatial microsimulation model. The spatial microsimulation methodology used involves reweighting data from confidentialised unit record files (CURFs) from surveys conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) to small area census data, also from the ABS. The method is described in this paper, and then maps of poverty using poverty rates derived from this small area estimation method are shown for the eastern coast of Australia and its capital cities. Further analysis of poverty rates in capital cities is then conducted. We find that areas of higher poverty risk can be clearly identified within Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra and Brisbane. We also find that areas of high poverty are frequently ‘buffered’ by areas of moderate poverty. This is not always the case since, in some areas, we find a high poverty area neighbouring a low poverty area but, generally, there appears to be a moderate poverty ‘buffer’ in most capital cities.     

Concentrated Urban Poverty: The Case of Izmir Inner Area,Turkey

In Turkey, poverty has been a main subject of debates since 1960s. It used to be a serious problem for both rural areas and the big cities that gained migration. In Turkey and world-wide since the 1980s, however, there have been more research interests in the concentrated urban poverty, especially along with the increase in levels of impoverishment around the world. With the help of a case study in Izmir (Turkey), this paper aims to examine the process of concentrated urban poverty from different points of view in the literature. This is a case study developed at the peripheries of the traditional city centre—or inner areas—of the city of Izmir, Turkey. The paper, first, discusses the parameters of concentrated poverty according to the literature. Then it introduces the study findings of the author, which point out the macro-scale, micro-scale and ecological dynamics that are important in the development of concentrated urban poverty. The macro-scale dynamics suggest that poverty in inner areas of the city are related to the unbalanced development trends within the country, such as the overgrowth of metropolitan cities, economic restructuring processes, migration trends and the development of informal economy. The ecological dynamics address to the housing and job location preferences and invasion-succession processes in the city, which emphasize that socio-economic characteristics of inner areas of the city are different from those of other city parts. Micro-scale dynamics are related to poors' ability of developing solidarity relations among themselves, which is also related to the spatial characteristics of inner areas of the city, according to this study's findings.     

重庆市城市贫困空间特征和影响因素研究——兼论东西部城市的异同

中国城市社会经济转型与重构背景下,城市贫困空间特征是城市地理学研究的重要议题之一。本文以西部城市重庆为例,探讨贫困空间的分布、演变和影响因素,并兼论与东部城市的异同。研究显示,在重庆市层面,贫困空间分布差异扩大,都市区得到较大程度改善,渝东北偏远县城则逐渐恶化。在都市区层面,贫困空间分布非均衡性较强,与老城区、工业及其配套居住区耦合。这种特征受到"体制"和"市场"因素的系统作用,体制因素是历史空间继承、早期住房政策与分配制度、城市规划对保障住房的布局引导;市场因素体现在区域经济发展差异、基础设施投资建设、房地产开发和内城选择性更新等。根据西部城市的贫困特征,反贫困政策应该重点促进都市区局部地区和偏远辖县区的发展。     

Competing discourses of territorial development: tensions between cities and regions as a result of the new regionalism

Competition between metropolitan areas and old regions is one of the most visible results of the ‘new regionalism’ policy in the EU. The aim of this paper is to explain the newly emerged tensions between the regions and the cities within the EU in the context of the ‘new regionalism’. The newly introduced ‘Integrated Territorial Investments’ (ITI), a potentially powerful instrument of the cohesion policy of the EU was presented as ‘a flexible mechanism for formulating integrated responses to diverse territorial needs’. However, this flexibility produced a competitive relationship between cities and regions in their chase for money. Based on interviews with sub-state officials, the study focuses on two countries: Czechia and Slovakia. They are both major recipients of EU structural funds and the ITI tool is being implemented in both of them, however with different outcomes. Three variables have been identified as major factors causing the tensions: insufficient administrative capacity, political challenges and lack of shared understanding of priorities of regional development among sub-state actors.     

Reexamining transport poverty,job access,and gender issues in Central and Eastern Europe

Tirana, the Balkan capital examined in this study, displays patterns of gendered job search behavior and access, which are unique within contemporary Europe and even within post-socialist Central and Eastern Europe. Here, it is a rather spatially constricted job search range rather than transport poverty that prevents women living in first-ring suburbs from attaining satisfactory employment. Female commutes are extraordinarily short and most often on foot. While the city now has nearly one million inhabitants and a high car ownership rate, and is located in Europe, the employment and mobility choices and behaviors of its female residents resemble those in developing rather than developed countries, and in small rather than large cities. The reasons underpinning this situation have more to do with socio-cultural gender barriers and less with transport poverty or labor market weaknesses. This finding might apply to other Balkan capitals or cities outside Europe, which have recently experienced large waves of internal migration and where both existing residents and newcomers have not yet adjusted to ‘big city’ life.     

Demographic Change,Differential Ageing,and Public Policy in Rural and Regional Australia: A Three‐State Case Study

This paper takes a differential demographic change in six rural settlement categories within rural and regional Australia as the starting point for the measurement of differential ageing using a Relative Ageing Index which compares ageing in sub‐populations with the national norm. The spatial units employed are 412 rural communities, approximated by social catchments each consisting of a country town and its surrounding dispersed population. The study covers the period from 1981 to 2006 and includes the rural areas of New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia, excluding major cities, peri‐urban areas, and the remote rangelands. It examines demographic change and differential ageing in a selection of the rural settlement categories recommended for further analysis in the report of the ‘Demographic Change and Liveability Panel’, one of three advisory panels established in 2010 by the then Commonwealth Government seeking to develop a sustainable population strategy for Australia. Ageing profiles are produced for the whole study area, for the individual rural settlement categories, and for the urban and rural components within each category separately. Results show that differential ageing is least advanced in the ‘regional cities’, most advanced in the ‘sea change’, but of most concern in the agriculture‐based rural settlement categories where it exacerbates the effects of overall population decline. In all categories, ageing in the dispersed rural population element exceeded that of the urban component. Results emphasise the vital role of the ‘regional cities’ category in future public policy development supported by ameliorative and collaborative measures for their surrounding agriculture‐based communities.     

The experience of time in long-term travel

Travellers’ understanding and experience of the flow, pace of time and distinctions between past, present and future are culturally specific with many from advanced urbanised societies immersed in a life-style characterised as time-pressured. Leisure travel can provide opportunities for those from such ‘harried’ societies to escape these pressures of home. This paper explores the experience of ‘time’ of long-term, self-drive travellers in Australia. The findings demonstrate the change in perception of time flow and pace as the travellers took control of time to slow down. Their sense of time was also informed by the spatial and temporal narrative of the Australian landscape through which they were travelling. The further they moved inland and away from Western cities, the closer they came to experience the exotic, temporal otherness that has been constructed in relation to the Outback and Australian indigenous culture. The study confirmed that just as spaces, places and landscape are animated and co-produced through the practice of mobility so too is sense of time. There were physical and psychological benefits for the travellers in controlling their own sense of time by travelling slowly and living in the moment. The Australian landscape, especially in remote areas, provides a suitable backdrop, with its isolation, quietness, ancientness, ‘timelessness’ and indigenous living culture, to contemplate one's life and place in the universe. While these findings can assist destination managers in their promotion of regional Australia and self-drive, long-term travel, caution is required to avoid privileging an exotic temporal narrative at the expense of contemporary, political, indigenous and environmental concerns.     

Twenty years of Tourism Geographies: a bibliometric overview

Abstract

Tourism Geographies is a prominently ranked journal that emerged from activities of the Tourism Commission of the International Geographical Union. It is indexed in the ‘Tourism, Leisure and Hospitality Management’ and ‘Geography, Planning and Development’ fields in the Scopus database and published its 20th volume in 2018. A bibliometric assessment of the articles and authors who have contributed to Tourism Geographies over its first two decades highlights major trends and dominant issues covered by the journal’s content. Key indicators include the most published and most cited authors and articles, the institutions and countries that those authors are affiliated with, other academic journals that are closely linked to the journal through citations, and the most used keywords in the journal. The Scopus database provides access to these basic bibliometric data, while the VOSviewer software enables graphical analyses and displays of co-citations, co-occurrences of keywords, and bibliographic couplings (shared references) across papers and authors. Overall, Tourism Geographies is closely linked to other leading journals indexed by Scopus in the ‘Tourism’ and ‘Geography’ fields and publishes papers from around the world. Research topics that have been most prominent in the journal include tourism development, tourist destinations, tourist attractions, heritage tourism, tourism perceptions, sustainable tourism, and travel behavior. Among the most viewed individual papers have been those addressing issues related to sustainability, poverty issues (related to tourism in poor areas, volunteering, sustainable tourism, and the environment), and community planning (sustainable tourism planning, tourist routes and movement, and new locations for tourism development).     

Are new patterns of low‐income distribution emerging in Canadian metropolitan areas?

Recent studies on urban poverty in Canadian cities suggest a growing spatial concentration of poor populations within metropolitan regions. This article assesses trends in the intra‐urban distribution of the poor population from 1986 to 2006 in eight of Canada's largest cities. We consider five well‐known dimensions of segregation, as identified by Massey and Denton (1988) , in order to examine changes in the spatial distribution of poor populations within metropolitan areas: evenness, exposure, concentration, clustering, and centralization. These indices were calculated for low‐income populations at the census tract level using data from five Canadian censuses. Although each metropolitan area has distinctive characteristics, we were able to identify some general trends. The results suggest that, in 2006 compared to 1986, low‐income populations lived in more spatially concentrated areas, which were, at the same time, socioeconomically more homogeneous and more dispersed throughout the metropolitan area. In addition, we observed that over the last twenty years areas of poverty have been located, for the most part, in neighbourhoods adjacent to downtown cores. Nevertheless, we found that poverty has mostly increased in suburban areas located outside inner‐city neighbourhoods. Growing socioeconomic homogeneity and dispersion of low income areas in metropolitan areas reveal new spatial patterns of urban poverty distribution. These findings should be cause for concern as social isolation in the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods could affect the life chances and opportunities for the residents of those areas.     

江苏省城市化质量的区域差异时空分析

根据城市化的内涵及推进城市化的目的,从人口城市化、经济城市化、居民生活城市化、景观环境城市化和基础设施城市化等五个方面,构建区域城市化质量的综合评价指标体系,运用熵值法,对2001-2009年江苏县市城市化质量进行综合测度,并以此为变量,运用差异系数,对江苏县市城市化质量差异的演变过程与空间格局进行定量分析。结果发现:2001-2009年江苏区域城市化质量差异总体扩大的基础上呈现先扩大后缩小趋势,且主要表现为经济发展质量差异、基础设施质量差异和居民生活质量差异,人口发展质量差异和景观环境质量差异则相对较小;在空间上,县市城市化质量提升有向环太湖地区不断极化的态势。其中,地级市区以向下收敛为主;苏中和苏北县域以向上收敛为主,而沿海地区县域以向下发散为主;苏南地区的沿江县域以向下收敛为主,环太湖县域则以向上发散为主。     

Access relative to need for community conservation funding in Australia

ABSTRACT

In a climate of scarce resources for heritage preservation, there is a need to develop principles and methodology for assessing and responding to inequity within the conservation sector. This paper focuses on spatial, or geographic, barriers as one factor determining the accessibility of conservation services. While the case study focuses on the conservation and management of collections of cultural material in Australia, the methodology is globally relevant for advancing the equitable distribution of heritage and conservation resources according to need. Using a statistical analysis of the spatial distribution of 1323 local heritage conservation projects that have been funded by the National Library of Australia’s Community Heritage Grants Program from 1994 to 2017, this study provides a measure of the spatial equality of conservation in Australia. Spatial distribution analysis indicates that the majority of projects funded are located in major cities, with fewer projects funded in regional, remote and very remote areas. An ‘access relative to need’ approach is proposed to counter the current centralisation of the conservation industry. Of particular relevance for international readers is the potential for this methodology to frame studies of the impacts on heritage resulting from climate change and extreme weather events.     

The Causes of Regional Variations in U.S. Poverty: A Cross-County Analysis

The persistence of poverty in the modern American economy, with rates of poverty in some areas approaching those of less advanced economies, remains a central concern among policy makers. Therefore, in this study we use U.S. county-level data to explore potential explanations for the observed regional variation in the rates of poverty. The use of counties allows examination of both nonmetropolitan area and metropolitan area poverty. Factors considered include those that relate to both area economic performance and area demographic composition. Specific county economic factors examined include economic growth, industry restructuring, and labor market skills mismatches.     

City networks: breaking gridlocks or forging (new) lock‐ins?

There is today a global recognition that we live in an ‘urban age’ of near‐planetary urbanization where cities are at the forefront of all sorts of agendas. Yet little attention is offered to the active role of cities as political drivers of the urban age. There might today be more than two hundred ‘city networks’ globally, with thousands of para‐diplomatic connections actively defining relations between cities, international organization and corporate actors. This actively networked texture of the urban age shapes all areas of policy and, not least, international relations, and holds much promise as to possible urban solutions to global challenges. Based on an overview of a representative subset of this mass of city‐to‐city cooperation (n=170), this article illustrates the landscape of city networking, its issue areas and institutional shapes, and its critical features. As we argue, city networks today are faced by a crucial challenge: while trying to overcome state‐centric ‘gridlocks’ cities are, at the same time, building both political–economic as well as very material ‘lock‐ins’. We need to pay serious attention to this impact of city diplomacy in international affairs, developing a greater appreciation of the path dependencies and responsibilities this diplomatic activity purports.     

Dividing Societies: The Socio‐Political Spatial Implications of Restructuring in Australia

This paper reviews trends over the last two to three decades in the socio‐economic divisions in Australia, focusing on their spatial dimensions. It provides empirical evidence that our society is dividing on multiple dimensions – including shifts in industry and occupational structure, income distribution, the incidence of poverty. And it demonstrates that the differentiations across space in socio‐economic phenomena also have complex multiple dimensions, which are explained inadequately by a ‘city/bush’ dichotomy popularly espoused by politicians and reported in the media. Processes of globalisation, economic restructuring and employment shifts, and changing patterns of population movement are combining to create stark differentials between places both within the major cities as well as in regional Australia. As demonstrated by the recent One Nation phenomenon, voter backlash is strong, and it too has specific spatial characteristics.     

Can't I be seen? Can't I be heard? Black women queering politics in Newark

What does it mean for a black female to negotiate urban space? How is her body read, her politics enacted, and her agency understood and interpreted? How do black women use their bodies and identities to challenge structural intersectionality in US cities? To answer these questions, I explore how black women embraced a set of oppositional spatial practices to resist the intersectional effects of misogyny, homo/transphobia, racism, and poverty in Newark, New Jersey. I reconstruct the creation of the Newark Pride Alliance, a local lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and queer coalition that mobilized in 2003 and 2004, after the death of Sakia Gunn. Exploring migrations between ‘black women,’ ‘black queer’ and ‘black feminist,’ I examine how black women respatialized social capital and enacted resistance. Through semi-structured interviews and frame analysis, I explore how black women forged new relationships between queer youth and black vernacular institutions, and created political spaces in which honest engagement of issues of gender violence, poverty, and power could take place.     

‘Concrete bodies’: young Latina women transgressing the boundaries of race and class in white inner-city Stockholm

This article examines young Latina women's interactions in the urban landscape of Stockholm, with a particular focus on white, middle-class areas, and how social difference and racial positioning are produced in and through the processes of urban segregation. Although Stockholm consists of different multiethnic and middle-class white suburbs, a discourse of sharp division between ‘the suburb’ and the inner-city is prevalent in the daily press. Here ‘the suburb’ is either portrayed as dangerous or exotic. This article is based on qualitative research with 29 young Latina women living and attending schools in both the suburban and inner-city areas. This approach facilitates an understanding of how gendered, racialized and classed aspects of segregation are embodied in multiple directions and how mechanisms of spatial exclusion prevail in predominantly white areas – often seen as ‘neutral’ or non-racialized areas. In conclusion, in order to capture the realities of young people's lives within materialized discourses of race and space, I argue that it is crucial to include white settings in the analysis, and experiences of exclusion.     

From the ‘new localism’ to the ‘new regionalism’? The implications of regional development agencies for city–regional relations

Throughout the last three decades efforts to regenerate British cities have been based around the construction of new institutional alliances and policy networks supported by a series of urban-based initiatives. Successive Conservative governments premised their intervention on the assumption that cities (and particular parts therein) were the most appropriate geographical level around which to organise policy intervention. In pursuing this city-based agenda, the policies were themselves instrumental in constituting the city as an object of policy: a problem in need of a solution. The aim of this paper, however, is not to explore how certain spaces or scales become constructed through, for example, government policy, political practices or state restructuring. Rather the paper augments work conducted on the socially constructed nature of ‘cities’ and ‘regions’. It explores for regeneration policy and politics the implications of the tendential shift away from a model of ‘new localism’ towards an alternative model of ‘new regionalism’. The origins of the central element of New Labour's emergent regional project — the Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) — are established before the paper moves on to examine the likely political relationships between the local state, drawing upon the example of Manchester, and the regional state, drawing upon North West England, under the new institutional arrangements.     

Transport Infrastructure in the Mountains: Why and How to Protect Landscape with Human Activity as Part of its Heritage

In mountain areas without permanent settlements, human activity is entirely dependent on spatial interaction. For centuries, local and regional traffic has followed livestock trails and footpaths. Mainly during the 20th century, new public and private roads changed this situation significantly in large parts of Norway. While mountain summer farming decreased, hydropower development and leisure use became dominant. Protected areas have been established to preserve possibilities for outdoor recreation and ‘wilderness’. However, seasonal farming activity is still an important upholder of cultural heritage. In the investigated area in western Norway, parallels between accessibility and human activity on mountain summer farmsteads have been identified with the abandonment of dairy production between ca 1905 and 1973, recent use by landowners and hikers’ use of publicly accessible tourist cabins. Increased differences in accessibility and protection status have resulted in diversification of human activity in different locations. Custom and tradition represent different principles according to which cultural landscape can be maintained—with emphasis on dynamics or invariance, respectively. Recent landscape protection focuses primarily on tradition. The necessity of easy access to maintain the living cultural heritage in addition to ‘wilderness’ areas, however, requires taking both concepts into account, most probably treated as geographically separate.     

Modelling Potential Socio-economic Determinants of Building Fires in South East Queensland

This paper investigates the relationships between areas of building fire incidence, levels of socio-economic disadvantage and the underlying socio-economic characteristics in the South East Queensland (SEQ) region, Australia. Disaggregated fire incident data was acquired from the Queensland Fire and Rescue Service (QFRS) and then aggregated to the Statistical Local Area (SLA) level. The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) defined index of socio-economic disadvantage (called ‘SEIFA’) has been used as the basis to identify relationships between socio-economic disadvantage and building fires. A regression model was then developed to predict the incidence of building fires using a range of socio-economic variables. Five significant predictors were identified that include: i) percentage of unemployed, ii) proportion of Indigenous population, iii) families living in separate dwellings, iv) one parent, and v) parent families with children less than fifteen years of age. Results also show that the distribution of building fires varies markedly across the SEQ region, with some of the Brisbane inner suburbs, areas of high socio-economic disadvantage, and parts of inland SEQ associated with relatively high fire rates.     

City branding in polycentric urban regions: identification,profiling and transformation in the Randstad and Rhine-Ruhr

In polycentric urban regions several distinct cities, none of which is dominant, cooperate and compete with each other to attract inhabitants and firms. In such settings city branding strategies do not solely affect one city, but the entire region. We examined how city branding in the face of ecological modernization, that is, delivering higher added economic value, while lowering environmental impacts, is playing out in the Dutch Randstad and the German Rhine-Ruhr. Our findings show that regional identity formation occurs at the sub-polycentric urban region level, coinciding more with (historical) economic profiles than with planning imaginaries. The Dutch cities profile themselves more along the lines of ecological modernization than their German counterparts. Differences between subregions within each polycentric urban region are also noticeable, where more industrialized regions, such as the Ruhr or southern Randstad focus on ‘green’, ‘liveable’ and ‘knowledge-oriented’, while cities with stronger knowledge-intensive sectors portray themselves as ‘smart’ or ‘sustainable’. Cities generally substantiate their profiles through projects, but a significant gap persists between reality and aspirations for improved environmental conditions. This is especially true for the Dutch cities, where many claims, but little visible action can be observed.