Multi-Firm City Versus Company Town: A Micro Foundation Model of Localization Economies

When do we have a company town and when do we have a multi‐firm city? In this paper I analyze the impact of public infrastructure investment decisions on types of cities in a decentralized urban system. This is done in a one‐sector spatial general equilibrium model of a closed economy. Investment in public infrastructures reduces the fixed set up cost of all firms within the city resulting in multi‐firm cities. Thus, in this approach localization economies are modelled explicitly instead of assuming that larger industrial size within the city enhances productivity. On the other hand, when the infrastructure is not provided, a company town will be formed by a developer because of the fixed cost required by each firm. The decision of whether to invest in the provision of public infrastructures depends on the type of city that will provide households with the highest utility. This paper characterizes the conditions that lead to each of the two equilibrium configurations.     

Leviathan vs. Lilliputian: A Data Envelopment Analysis of Government Efficiency

In this paper we present a new approach to measuring government efficiency, based on the theory that communities that allocate resources efficiently in the local public sector maximize property values. We use Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to identify the counties in Minnesota that are characterized by property-value maximization and hence an efficient public sector. The results indicate that the dominant source of public sector inefficiency is an inappropriate scale of operations. It appears that some county jurisdictions are too large to service the population efficiently. The size and concentration of government power are also responsible in part for observed inefficiencies.     

城市公园视觉景观质量的影响因素分析——以北京市紫竹院公园为例

本文将主客观评价法相结合,对北京市紫竹院公园视觉景观质量影响因素进行分析。课题组实地评价并拍摄照片,室内请评判者给照片打分评出美景度分值,请专家对主观性因子评价,与实地评价结果做一致性检验;对两种方式获取的数据进行方差分析、相关分析,并建立线型回归模型。结果表明:主观性因子的实地评价和室内问卷评价结果具有一致性;专业背景不同不影响评判者对景观美景度的评判结果;美景度与区内因子呈正相关,与区外因子呈负相关;区内的3个因子更能影响对景观的评判,其中,自然景观所占比例影响最为显著。     

INFERRING THE DISTRIBUTIONAL EFFECTS OF BUREAUCRATIC DECISION RULES

Although the bureaucratic decision rules that govern delivery of municipal public services are presumably distributionally benign, they may in fact exert a strong influence on the distribution of urban policy benefits. This article explicates the decision rule governing delivery of two specific types of fire protection services in a small city, measures the distributional inequity characteristic of the patterns of delivery, and infers one or more distributional standards implicit in the decision rule. Statistical analysis using the Index of Inequity indicates that some decision rules incorporate elements of both equality and market standards, while others support need as the distributional standard.     

Fox Palaces: the playful occupation of a Johannesburg city park

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the playful occupation of an inner-city park in Johannesburg, South Africa, by the Hummingbird Play Association. Playful occupation emerged as a strategy to create and demand spaces for children’s play, demonstrating through practice the possibilities for public play provision. Children’s play is read as a form of folklore, through which children’s and adult’s spatial experiences and imaginings of the city can be viewed. It considers how opportunities for play facilitated with Playwork Principles in mind can co-create safe spaces for children which could act as tools for social transformation and justice in the urban public realm.     

Parks and landmarks: planning the Eastern Capital along western lines

Urban parks became an increasingly common feature of European and American cities in the 19th century, and by around the middle of that century had begun to elicit the interest of visiting Japanese leaders. This paper discusses the introduction of the concept of the urban public park to Japan by the country's new Meiji oligarchs. It does this in the context of the radical re-shaping of the nation's capital city, Tokyo. The story is told through the prism of two sites. The first is a hill in the north of the city with longstanding associations with the Tokugawa shogunate; the second is a parade ground next to the site of the castle–palace. The hill became a park in name but in practice remained a site for public celebration, while the parade ground was transformed with considerable difficulty and over many years into a consciously fashioned recreational space. By drawing on these contrasts, this paper explores the hesitations that surrounded changing understandings of the role of capital city and its shifting symbolic landscapes, as well as the gradual process of domestication of the concept of a public park.     

DISCRETE SPATIAL CHOICE MODELS FOR AGGREGATE DESTINATIONS*

ABSTRACT. In problems of spatial choice, the choice set is typically more aggregated than the one considered by decision-makers, often because choice data are available only at the aggregate level. These aggregate choice units will exhibit heterogeneity in utility and in size. To be consistent with utility maximization, a choice model must estimate choice probabilities on the basis of the maximum utility within heterogeneous aggregates. The ordinary multinomial logit model applied to aggregate choice units fails this criterion as it is estimated on the basis of average utility. In this paper, we derive and discuss a model which utilizes the theory underlying the nested logit model to estimate the appropriate maximum utilities of aggregates. We also demonstrate that the aggregate alternative error terms are asymptotically Gumbel, thereby relaxing the assumption of extreme value distributed error terms. This is accomplished with help from the asymptotic theory of extremes.     

新时期组团城市中区域性公共服务设施配置新视角--以佛山高明区为例

传统上,公共服务设施往往按照城市用地结构的等级序列自上而下集中配置。新时期,公共服务设施的准公共物品化、多元化的城市化发展模式、范围经济的出现以及信息网络和快速交通技术的发展动摇了配置公共服务设施的传统理论基础,使区域性公共服务设施可以摆脱中心城市而分散配置于其他周边地区。论文以佛山高明区为例,具体探讨了如何自下而上将区域性公共服务设施配置于次级组团城市的方法。     

Site Selection Problem and a Quasi-Satisficing Decision Rule

This discussion and overview of the site selection problem in the context of a quasi-satisficing decision rule combines two major rationality frameworks for locational decision making: utility maximization and bounded rationality. Their empirical and logical validity is discussed. From these concepts a quasi-satisficing rationality framework is developed and operationalized through a reference point approach. A quasi-satisficing decision-support procedure that involves a feed-back exchange of information between a decision maker and a computer-based support system is offered and a numerical illustration of this procedure is presented.     

Industrial Location Modeling: Extending the Random Utility Framework*

Abstract. Given sound theoretical underpinnings, the random utility maximization‐based conditional logit model (CLM) serves as the principal method for applied research on industrial location decisions. Studies that implement this methodology, however, confront several problems, notably the disadvantages of the underlying Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives (IIA) assumption. This paper shows that by taking advantage of an equivalent relation between the CLM and Poisson regression likelihood functions one can more effectively control for the potential IIA violation in complex choice scenarios where the decision maker confronts a large number of narrowly defined spatial alternatives. As demonstrated here our approach to the IIA problem is compliant with the random utility (profit) maximization framework.     

A Decision-Making and Search Model For Intraurban Migration

Most of the research on the intraurban migration attempting to develop models of the mobility process has presented intuitively appealing statements about the residential decision process, but stopped short of a formal development of these concepts. If it is to be possible to predict the mobility pattern within the city, both the search and selection process must be more clearly specified. In this paper, a preliminary theoretical model containing decision rules similar to those found in optimal search models is developed. The model explicitly incorporates the spatial and temporal aspects of residential choice and has the potential to predict the probability that a prospective migrant will search for a new residence in a given area of the city, the time when the search process will come to a conclusion and, by implication, the expected location of the new residence. The preliminary results from the model suggest a major elaboration of the spatial and temporal aspects of residential choice under conditions of uncertainty in terms of a set of empirically measurable determinants, relating to a household's preferences, beliefs, and degree of risk aversion.     

The Theory of Welfare Considerations in Public Facility Location Problems

The paper provides a general theoretical framework for analyzing the locational choice of public facilities from the point of view of social welfare. Spatial interactions of individuals and economies to scale in the public sector are taken into account, and that, in turn, adds another dimension to the set of alternatives facing the decision maker. His choice has to be made by considering size as well as space alternatives for the provision of the public service. The paper presents a theoretical structure for ranking those alternatives.     

Mortality and sanitary conditions in the "best governed city in the world"--Birmingham, 1870-1910.

The growth of population in nineteenth-century Britain has often been attributed to the decline in mortality during that period. Here the relationship between improvements in sanitary conditions and the fall in disease mortality is considered for one particular city in the period 1870–1910. Medical Officer of Health reports are used to show the spatiotemporal patterns of both a selection of fatal diseases and sanitary conditions in Birmingham in the 1880s. This evidence suggests that administrative developments in hospital provision, for instance, need to be combined with public health improvements in any explanation of mortality decline. Further, that poverty, as reflected by back to back housing, is more closely associated with high mortality than variables measuring sanitary conditions.     

Private production,collective consumption,and regional population structure: the interactions between public and private good provision as determinants of community composition

"Theories of trade and migration explain the distribution of individuals among regions based on private good productivities. The theory of local public goods (LPG's) uses collective good consumption economies to explain the size and composition of communities. This essay combines the two theories, to explore regional population heterogeneity and stability. Assuming that individuals must consume and produce in the same jurisdiction, the paper examines the nature of efficient allocations, the tensions between the private and public incentives, the nature of the equilibrium (if any) which migration among jurisdictions will generate, and how such equilibrium will depend on tax rules for sharing the costs of the LPG."     

Geographies of Swimming Pool Provision: Lessons from Glasgow 1804–2014

Swimming is a popular form of recreation and exercise in the UK and US. Swimming can take place outdoors but, particularly in the UK, largely takes place in designated indoor pools. Existing research tends to focus on ‘public’ or ‘municipal’ pools leaving broader spatial geographies of swimming pool provision under explored. In response to concern about swimming pool closures, this paper draws from extensive archival research into all swimming pools in the City of Glasgow, Scotland, since the first opened in 1804. Formal and informal programmes of pool building and closure were revealed. Rather than decreasing, public provision has remained constant for the last 100?years but become progressively more spread out in relation to the city’s changing size. Broadening exploration beyond the ‘public’ category exposed a vast drop in school pool numbers around the year 2000 due to a Private Finance Initiative project that consolidated the secondary school estate and outsourced school building management. The lessons: researching all types of swimming pool through time greatly enriches understandings of the changing meaning and extent of public service provision.     

Equity in Regional Service Provision

Most transportation agencies stipulate that an important planning goal is to provide equitable and just public transport services. However, who is to be served and the type of service that should be provided has been ambiguous. This paper develops a methodology for examining equity in the provision of public transportation services. An approach for identifying areas in need of public transport is developed based upon the use of socio-demographic and economic information. Public transport need is then related to levels of access to service. This approach makes it possible to establish the degree to which public transport services may be considered equitable in relation to need and suitable access. A detailed analysis of the southeast Queensland region of Australia illustrates how this approach may be used to inform public transport decision making.     

Marginality and the New Geography of Domestic Violence Policy in Post-Communist Poland

The article explores the spatial distribution and institutional geography of domestic violence service provision in post-communist Poland. A new institutional geography providing services to victims of domestic violence is emerging in Poland as a result of NGO activism and new pro-woman policies implemented by the state. NGOs, often in partnership with local governments, are the most vital means of service provision in large and medium size cities, while in rural areas, public agencies predominate in the institutional geography of service provision. The assumption that NGOs will emerge to address the needs of victims of domestic violence is not realistic in rural areas. While urban Poland is developing an institutional geography to address domestic violence, state and NGO activists must focus on shrinking the rural margins of Poland's institutional geography.     

Hospital restructuring in smaller urban Ontario settings: unwritten rules and uncertain relations

Important changes are underway in the management and provision of welfare service activities in advanced capitalist societies as governments scale back their responsibilities and commitments to social security and health care. In order to understand the processes by which the reform imperatives of the central state are implemented at the local level, it is necessary to account for particular organizational and place-based contingencies which influence decision making and strategic response. This paper presents a framework for understanding the context of executive decision making in the human services sector and uses the framework to illustrate issues of locally designed hospital restructuring in smaller urban centres in the province of Ontario, Canada. Specific experiences of the Chief Executive Officers of two non-metropolitan hospital settings are examined to explore the unwritten rules of hospital conduct and the relations of uncertainty that characterize efforts to restructure hospital services through formal arrangements with other independently governed hospitals and health care delivery organizations.     

珠三角中心镇城市化对区域城市空间结构的影响——基于CA的模拟和分析

在珠三角的城市化过程中,中心镇的城市化对区域城市空间结构的形成和发展具有重要的影响,定量地研究中心镇的城市化对揭示珠三角地区城市化过程与城市空间结构的变化具有重要意义。本研究以东莞市为例,运用城市元胞自动机模型,模拟市域内1988-2004年的城市扩张过程,分析中心镇城市化对整个城市空间结构的影响。主要结论:1988-1993年,中心镇的城市化对区域城市空间结构影响较小,城市主要沿道路扩张,城市在空间布局上相对松散;1993-1997年,中心镇对区域城市空间结构影响增强,城市以中心镇为中心的扩张非常明显,城市空间沿道路的扩张,基本形成了渐进扩散式的"点-轴"空间发展模式,形成沿道路和中心镇扩展的格局;1997年以后,中心镇的辐射作用进一步增强,形成了"点-轴-集聚区"的城市空间扩展模式,城市空间扩展区在空间上更集中于中心镇。     

Women's and Children's Quarters in Golden Gate Park,San Francisco

This paper explores the mythic domesticity encoded in the Children's Quarter in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. The play area, opened in 1888, represented a new genre of gender-specific public space developed in urban parks in the late nineteenth century. In welcoming women to the public domain of the urban park, gendered spaces such as the Children's Quarter signified a complex response to changing class and gender identities in the nineteenth-century city. Imposing a domestic structure on women's public presence, the Children's Quarter modeled a middle-class domestic ideal, affirming women's essential association with the private sphere even as it welcomed them to the public sphere of the urban park.