Geographical Principles of Regional Planning

A plea for greater geographer participation in the field of regional and urban planning, which is concerned with selection of building sites for industry, urban and rural settlements, resorts, and tourist centers, the provision of means of transportation, water supply, and other utilities, and other local planning problems. Regional planning is said to offer an ideal field of application for geographic thinking and methods.     

Regional Planning Problems in the Soviet Far East

A variety of approaches are being recommended in regional plans for future settlements patterns in the Soviet Far East. In Magadan Oblast, the present scattered pattern of small populated places is to be superseded by greater concentration of urban population in a set of subregional service centers. In Khabarovsk Kray, different approaches are being recommended for the future development of the Khabarovsk and Komsomol'sk areas. Because limitation of the future growth of Khabarovsk is desirable, new industrial establishments are to be located in the future in nearby small towns and urban settlements of the Khabarovsk industrial district. In the Komsomol'sk area, satellite towns are to be significantly developed, giving rise to a grouped form of urban settlement, including the tin-mining center of Solnechnyy and the paper and chemical center of Amursk. In Amur Oblast, consideration is being given to the development of an iron and steel plant in the Svobodnyy area, giving rise to a city of up to 200,000 population.     

SPATIAL PATTERNS OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE SOVIET UNION

Analysis of spatial patterns of attained educational levels is helpful in understanding the cultural geography of an area, perhaps especially in the Soviet Union, with its many ethnic groups and stated aim of providing equality of education regardless of ethnicity or sex. The proportion of the population that had completed a higher education was mapped at oblast level from 1970 census data. High rates are found in certain urban areas, Estonia and Latvia, Georgia, and certain sparsely populated areas of the Far North, Siberia, and the Far East. There are regional patterns of disparity between male and female rates of completed higher education and between rural and urban rates, despite Soviet attempts to reduce these inequalities. The distribution of Soviet higher educational institutions conforms generally to the distribution of population, although access to higher education opportunities appears to be geographically limited in some regions. (Maps by Joann L. Krupa, George Mason University.)     

Changing patterns of landownership in nineteenth-century Palestine: The European influence

Long-term changes in landownership patterns and their implications for settlement have been neglected by geographers, both in theoretical and empirical studies. Studies in this field relating to the Middle East are of a very general nature, and are not based on detailed examination of regional trends, their components, and geographic variables. In Israel, most of the published literature on this issue has dealt with the process of land purchase by Jews and has focused mainly on the period of the British Mandate (1918–1948). Misleading statements abound and the roots of the processes which evolved in nineteenth-century Palestine are poorly understood.The middle of the nineteenth century in Palestine marked the end of a quarter of a millenium of neglect and decline. Around 1800 Palestine was a backward province of the Ottoman empire, largely rural and sparsely populated. Both rural and urban economies were traditional and poor. From about 1850, a process of change began which led to a resurgence and development of the country.An important determinant in this process was an increase of European influence within the Ottoman empire in general and Palestine in particular. This paper (part of a broader study on landownership), will discuss the background, characteristics and motivations of Europeans who purchased land in Palestine during the period, their financial sources, their locational preferences and opportunities. The diverse influences of these land transactions on urban and rural development are considered. These processes ar illustrated by two case studies.     

Measuring Efficiency in Local Government: An Analysis of New South Wales Municipalities' Domestic Waste Management Function

Data envelopment analysis is used to measure the technical and scale efficiency of the domestic waste management function in 103 New South Wales local governments. After allowance is made for nondiscretionary environmental factors that may affect the provision of these local public services, such as congestion and the inability to operate machinery in densely populated urban areas, comparison of efficiency across geographic/demographic criteria is made. The results suggest that, on average, waste management inputs could be reduced to just over 65% of the current level based upon observable best-practice, while productivity losses due to scale effects account for slightly over 15% of total inputs. The results also indicate that inefficiency in urban developed councils is largely the result of congestion and other collection difficulties encountered in densely populated areas, while inefficiency in regional and rural councils stems from an inability to attain an optimal scale of operations.     

Outsmarting geography: implementing territorial innovation strategies in sparsely populated regions

The smart specialization literature has hardly addressed the role of geography in promoting novel approaches to local and regional innovation processes beyond classic clustering approaches. Based on empirical observations from five sparsely populated regions, the present article proposes original insights that contribute to the theoretical debate on the place-based nature and spatial dimension of entrepreneurial discovery, the key functional mechanism behind smart specialization. First, it advocates the added-value of integrating strategic spatial planning approaches at different stages of smart specialization implementation, from design to operationalization. Second, it suggests that more effective ways of creating domains through shared knowledge bases of existing sectors should aim at promoting collaboration between second-tier economic agents. Finally, the specificity of the territorial preconditions found in sparsely populated regions brings to the fore new forms of proximity relations based on institutional, cognitive and organizational proximity rather than on geographical clustering.     

Systems Of Urban Places

A method of “structural chains” is proposed for the analysis of regional urban systems. Each chain is made up of a sequence of numerical elements representing the average population of places at various levels of urban development, from small mining or forestry settlements to large polyfunctional cities of regional or national rank. The absence of a particular category in a region is marked in the chain by a zero. The structural chains of local urban systems can be grouped into tables reflecting the structure of a regional urban system and its local variations. The key characteristics of urban systems reflected by these chains are: the number of elements or levels of development; the number of zeros and their position in the chain, reflecting the degree of development of the urban hierarchy; and the height of the regional tables (number of horizontal rows), representing the number of local urban structures. The method is tested and illustrated by the urban systems of the Dnieper-Donets and Black Sea regions of the Ukraine, the Upper Volga region, and the urban system of the Tatar ASSR.     

URBAN CLUSTERS AS GROWTH FOCI*

ABSTRACT Urban clusters are geographic concentrations of urban places, some of which may include major cities. Unlike agglomerations, whose geographic boundaries are clearly delineated, urban clusters have “variable” boundaries, with each urban settlement being part of its “own” cluster of populated places, located within its commuting range. As our study indicates, the effect of clustering on urban growth is not uniform: it appears to be positive in low density clusters, and negative in densely populated ones. In particular, outside densely populated areas, towns surrounded by other localities tend to evince higher rates of population growth than their “lone” counterparts.     

地理学视角下的国内农村聚居研究综述

农村聚居是农村居民与周围自然、经济、社会、文化环境相互作用的结果,是人类聚居学的重要研究内容。随着新农村建设、农村土地流转、城乡统筹、新型农村社区建设等政策与措施的相继出台,农村聚居研究日益凸显出重要的实践意义与学术价值。本文对近十年来国内地理学关于农村聚居区位、形态、规模与等级、功能组织、演变机理、优化调控以及聚居类型与区划等研究内容的主要观点作了较详细的介绍,指出了地理学在农村聚居基础理论、研究内容、研究方法和技术等方面的薄弱环节,并展望其未来的研究趋势。     

How much does urban location matter for growth?

This paper analyses the effect of location characteristics on urban growth using regression cubic splines. Our empirical analysis shows that in Spain, differences in accessibility to major urban centres and geographic isolation help explain differences in population growth rates across municipalities between 2001 and 2014. Moreover, even though physical proximity to large cities is usually assumed to be closely related to the attractiveness of a municipality, we found that urban population growth is even more related to the joint effect of distance to major centres and agglomeration. In this respect, there seems to be a threshold from which agglomeration diseconomies come into play such that a greater proximity to major cities and/or being localized within a more densely populated area goes against local growth.     

重庆市人口与经济发展空间耦合分布研究

本文基于2001-2012 年重庆市各个区县的人口和经济数据,计算重庆市各区县的人口地理集中度和经济地理集中度并结合耦合指数,分析人口分布与经济分布耦合特征与人口与经济空间分布类型,并运用Geoda、ArcGIS 软件对重庆各个区县人口与经济的全局和局部空间自相关分析,建立人口与经济发展耦合度模型与耦合协调度模型,分析人口与经济的空间耦合度的特征。研究结果表明：①重庆市的人口与经济整体水平有较好的发展趋势,但区域发展差异明显。②人口集中度和经济集中度总体上呈现“一圈高,两翼低”的特点。③2001-2012 年间重庆市人口与经济耦合度总体呈上升趋势,且人口与经济间的耦合作用不断增强。     

Prefiguring a future city: urban growth,spatial planning and the economic local context in Catalonia

This study undertook a quantitative analysis of town master plans to define future urban growth. Spatial direction and intensity of urban expansion were analysed in relation to local contexts using land zoning and a comprehensive database of socio-economic indicators at the municipal scale in Catalonia, Spain. Our results illustrate a progressive shift towards discontinuous settlements consolidating urban centres in most accessible rural areas. Contrary to what was hypothesized (and partly observed) in recent decades, settlement expansion will modestly contribute to a balanced urban spatial structure. Future urban development in Catalonia will not follow a polycentric model, fuelling instead the growth of medium and small urban centres. This process may consolidate the incipient divide in rural areas with high accessibility and a dynamic economic base with remote inland areas experiencing land abandonment and depopulation. The use of indicators derived from town master plans in the assessment of (scattered or polycentric) future urbanization in Europe is finally discussed.     

Inherently vulnerable? Ethnic geography and the intensity of violence in the Bosnian civil war

Which geographic configurations of ethnic settlements are most susceptible to violence in ethnic conflict? Existing research on ethnic conflict focuses on regional configurations of ethnicity, thus neglecting how local vulnerable pockets of minorities may become primary targets for violence. The mechanism linking minority enclaves to more violence posits that the regional majority group will fight local minorities in order to (i) create ethnically homogeneous areas and (ii) remove potential support for the other group by the local minority. Minority enclaves that cannot easily receive outside support from their ethnic brethren are vulnerable and thus provide incentives to attack. The paper thus argues that the presence of vulnerable ethnic minorities in areas dominated by other ethnic groups heightens the perception of threat, suggesting that the implications of the ethnic security dilemma are more pronounced. The paper uses Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to develop measures of isolated and vulnerable minority enclaves. This novel measure captures local (micro) and regional (macro) patterns of ethnic settlements that remain veiled behind a focus on ethnicity in larger administrative units. In a quantitative case study of the Bosnian war (1992–1994), I show that the presence of local minorities within territories controlled by an enemy ethnic majority is associated with more violence. The results remain robust when accounting for the presence of the UN peacekeeping mission (UNPROFOR) and across several robustness checks.     

中国城市密集区航空运输联系研究

城市密集区间的航空运输联系导致城市间的内聚效应和空间互动。城市密集区间的航空运输联系具有明显方向性。京津唐、长江三角洲和珠江三角洲城市密集区间航空运输联系密切,国家级大都市与国家级大都市(区域性大都市)间联系具有普遍性,而与地方性城市中心间航空运输联系具有特殊性。长江三角洲、珠江三角洲和京津唐城市密集区等为人流与信息流联系密切的、以辐射为主的航空中心;辽宁中南部城市密集区为航空运输联系欠密切的、人流辐射与信息流集聚中心;四川盆地城市密集区为航空运输联系欠密切的、人流集聚与信息流辐射中心。     

(RE)PRODUCING A “PERIPHERAL” REGION – NORTHERN SWEDEN IN THE NEWS

Building on theories of internal orientalism, the objective of this study is to show how intra‐national differences are reproduced through influential media representations. By abstracting news representations of Norrland, a large, sparsely populated region in the northernmost part of Sweden, new modes of “internal othering” within Western modernity are put on view. Real and imagined social and economical differences between the “rural North” and the “urban South” are explained in terms of “cultural differences” and “lifestyle” choices. The concept of Norrland is used as an abstract essentialized geographical category and becomes a metonym for a backward and traditional rural space in contrast to equally essentialized urban areas with favoured modern ideals. Specific traits of parts of the region become one with the entire region and the problems of the region become the problems of the people living in the region. I argue that the news representations play a part in the reproduction of a “space of exception”, in that one region is constructed as a traditional and undeveloped space in contrast to an otherwise modern nation. A central argument of this study is that research on identity construction and representations of place is needed to come to grips with issues of uneven regional development within western nations.     

FROM KARLO-LIBKNEKHTOVSK AND NEW YORK TO PROPOYSK AND RASTYAPINO?: HOW PLACE NAMES ARE CHANGING IN THE FORMER USSR

In a paper submitted directly to Post-Soviet Geography, the author presents as thorough a list of place name changes as possible for the former USSR for the period 1985 to mid-1992. The situation is assessed with respect to the former union republics, nationality-based lower-order administrative territorial units, oblasts and krays, and major cities and urban settlements. The list appears to represent the most thorough and authoritative compilation of its kind yet published in the West, given the absence of any official body now empowered with the approval and registration of place name changes across the entire geographic space of the former USSR.     

干旱区内陆河流域城乡聚落体系空间结构及影响模式研究——以石羊河流域为例

本研究以石羊河流域为研究区,选取2000、2006、2010年三期遥感影像为数据源,采用成本加权距离和城乡聚落体系潜能指数对传统的场强模型进行改进,综合利用扩张强度指数、扩张速度指数等分析研究石羊河流域内部城乡聚落体系空间结构分异。在此基础上,基于GIS技术并结合道路等级和长度计算流域内城乡聚落体系间最短时间距离来分析城乡聚落体系空间联系与空间相互作用,据此分析石羊河流域城乡聚落体系空间结构变化及影响模式。     

Modelling diversity: cultural district policies in Doha and Singapore

ABSTRACT

Over the last twenty years, cities around the world have seen the multiplication of cultural district projects, which aim to concentrate cultural organisations in a circumscribed urban space, or to label a neighbourhood’s cultural scene. This paper examines the adoption and adaptation of a globally circulating cultural policy model as an instrument of urban governance. Moving away from the notion of policy transfer, understood as a neutral and unidirectional process through which successful culture-led development models spread to other contexts, I show how local actors mobilise external references to position themselves in a transnational cultural policymaking field, and construct their city as a model. I compare the multi-scalar politics of urban modelling in Doha and Singapore, where globally circulating culture-led development models have been introduced not only as instruments of economic growth, but also as diversity management tools. On the one hand, cultural districts serve as discursive nation building/branding instruments to project an imagined identity locally and internationally. On the other hand, urban elites can mobilise cultural districts to make strategic shifts in the diversity management discourse, through an engagement with the urban environment, and the co-optation civil society actors at multiple scales.     

Population Trends in the Russian Federation: Reflections on the Legacy of Soviet Censorship and Distortions of Demographic Statistics

A noted demographer assesses the reliability of data in the 1989 census of the Soviet Union for 14 regions of the Russian Federation affected by distortions designed by Soviet authorities to conceal the populations of "secret towns" of the military-industrial complex. More specifically, using declassified population data available but only selectively published following the disclosure of these hidden settlements (and their populations) in 1994, he re-estimates the urban populations of these regions in 1989, and compares differences in 1989-2002 population change indicated by use of the original and adjusted 1989 data sets. Distortions of up to 10 percent of the regional populations (and as high as 13 percent for their eponymous regional capitals) are examined in light of their implications for the calculation of a variety of demographic and population-based indicators in studies of Russia comparing the late Soviet and early post-Soviet periods. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: J11, O18, R23. 8 tables, 35 references.     

基于新地理信息技术的南京市游客流动性空间特征研究

利用新地理信息技术,采集500个游客GPS地理标记照片,运用GIS空间分析方法,分析游客在南京城市内部及其与长三角其它城市空间流动特性,并提炼游客空间行为一般模式。发现:①南京城市内部旅游流在主城区集聚,整体上呈现中心城区向四周扩散的趋势;且在空间形态上形成小型化、斑块化的布局特征。②南京与长三角周边城市的线形路线以点-点模式为主导,地域模式以便利的同城市中心流动为多数,其旅游流流动模式与已有典型模式基本吻合,同时长三角地区旅游流呈现等级扩散特征。