Spatial Diffusion of the HIV/AIDS Epidemic: Modeling Implications and Case Study of AIDS Incidence in Ohio

This paper extends a compartmental epidemiological model for HIV transmission and AIDS incidence to include hierarchical and expansion spatial diffusion. An implication of the resultant model is that hierarchical diffusion causes the large infection growth rates of densely populated areas at the top of the central places hierarchy to “chain” down and dominate small local growth rates during the exponential-growth phase of the epidemic. Also, hierarchical diffusion causes a high transient growth rate in the first few years of a local epidemic. The spatial compartmental model fits observed AIDS incidence spatial diffusion patterns in Ohio reasonably well.     

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.     

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.     

The Magnetic Field Model Applied to Swedish Settlements

To study the reason for changes in the population of urban settlements and sparsely populated districts we need an approach on a regional geographic level that will combine various theoretical elements and which, taken together, will provide an interdisciplinary platform. The identity of a place is created by specific local factors as well as by social and economic processes occurring both in the place itself and in the urban system. We can use indications showing how local and regional urban systems function in order to ascertain why one urban settlement grows while another stagnates, why a sparsely populated district in one region flourishes while other districts languish. Using the decision-making point of view adopted by households and businesses will help us to achieve our aim.
The starting point of the model employed—called the magnetic field model—is the fact that an attraction field of positive factors forms in and around places with a growing population. The aim of this paper is to show that a regional geographic analysis can be made from a number of indicators of significance for the development of populations in urban settlements and sparsely populated districts. Naturally these indicators can—and should—be queried, added to and assessed when other, similar investigations are carried out.     

Services in Russia: past,present, and future

In spite of ambitious modernization plans of the government, structural change in Russia is not proceeding in the direction of highly developed economies. Part of the lag in the tertiarization process can be explained by the fact that, as during the Soviet period, the role of services in the economy is still ignored, particularly regarding innovation. This paper aims to contribute to the analysis of the evolution of services in Russia since the mid-1990s and its future prospects by compiling data from the World Bank, the International Labor Organization, Rosstat, and the World Input–Output Database. Two complementary and novel perspectives are adopted: a production system perspective and a spatial perspective. Regarding services in the Russian production system, comparison of interindustry linkages reveals that, in addition to traditional relevant activities like wholesale/retail trade and transport and communications, business services are acquiring great importance as production process inputs. Concerning the spatial perspective, we observe a greater presence of non-market services in less densely populated federal districts, while strategic service activities are highly concentrated in the most dynamic ones. Analysis of major Russian cities confirmed the trend of business services concentrating in densely populated and highly innovative cities. In brief, services, and in particular business services, can be a means to boost innovation and growth in Russia, but more attention from political leaders is necessary for these activities. The modernization process should abandon its current “high-technology industry myopia” and take into consideration the innovative, and especially, the knowledge-diffuser role, that services can exert.     

Global Networks of the Motion Picture Industry in Los Angeles/Hollywood using the Example of their Connections to the German Market

The motion picture industry is one pillar of the so-called “cultural industries” which are highly concentrated in large urban agglomerations. Personal connections to the various informal networks found in these locations play an important role in facilitating information flows and reproduces these clusters' competitive advantage. However, the clusters and their markets do not exist in a vacuum: creative content, capital and creative talent are also traded and connected in global networks, bridging the physical gaps between these creative clusters. Against this background, this paper addresses the issue of how network relations beyond cluster boundaries and across large spatial, social and cultural distances are coordinated in a branch of the cultural industry such as motion picture production.     

State Stigmatisation in Urban Turkey: Managing the “Insurgent” Squatter Dwellers in Dikmen Valley

This paper contributes to the accounts of territorial stigmatisation by examining the state role in it in the case of Turkey, a country that suffers from growing state power. The existing debates are mainly restricted to its function as an economic strategy paving the way for capital accumulation through devaluing working-class people and places. Drawing on textual analysis of political speeches, local newsletters and mainstream national newspapers and fieldwork material that include interviews and observations in Dikmen Valley where some squatter communities mobilised against the state-imposed urban transformation project, I demonstrate that state conceptualisation of “problem people” targets the “insurgent” rather than the “unprofitable” groups. Stigma in urban settings functions in inciting the desire to meet the patterns deemed appropriate by the state, rather than the market. Moving from that, I argue that stigma is used as a state-led political strategy, which is integral to the growing authoritarianism in Turkey.     

(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.     

7. SPACES,PLACES, AND THE HISTORIANS: A COMMENT FROM A GERMAN PERSPECTIVE

This article discusses from a specifically German point of view the “spatial turn” in history and the approaches of this forum. Many recent interventions have suggested that “space” (as opposed to “time”) was for many years a marginalized category in the German historiographical debate because of the ideological contamination of the category “space” by the Nazis. In the context of the vivid, lively “provincial” or “regional” history practiced in Germany, however, “space” has always played an important role. The debates around the spatial turn nevertheless provide the opportunity for deliberate reconceptualization. This comment proposes a relational understanding of “space” as the core of the new approach and identifies some central elements and terms for it: the differentiation of “spaces,”“places,” and “locations”; movement in space; the division of space in the form of boundaries; finally, the ordering and classification of space in the form of written or visual representations.     

Class,Citizenship and Regeneration: Glasgow and the Commonwealth Games 2014

Abstract: Through a focus on “consumer‐citizenship” this paper foregrounds the class practices inherent in urban regeneration. Using Glasgow's 2014 Commonwealth Games (CWGs) as an illustrative example of regeneration, it seeks to highlight the market‐led processes that underpin state interventions. The paper demonstrates how these processes are implemented to transform “problem people, and problem places” ( Damer 1989 , From Moorepark to “Wine Alley”) into sites of “active” consumption and “responsible” citizenship. Yet, access to this “consumer citizenship” is stratified. In doing so, we synthesise conceptual insights from the Marxist‐influenced gentrification literature and the Foucauldian‐inspired housing renewal literature. We forward this to initiate further academic debate and empirical enquiry on the specific issue of mega sporting events.     

The Main Tasks and Trends of Geomorphological Research in the USSR

The suburban area of Moscow consists of a green belt and an outer suburban zone, containing both satellites of Moscow and “independent” urban agglomerations without direct links to the capital. The problem of limiting the population growth of Moscow should be solved by promoting the expansion of existing satellite places and by limited construction of new satellite cities. Care should be taken not to urbanize the green belt, set aside for recreation, or to reduce the forest area in the outer suburban zone.     

From Clusters to Platform Policies in Regional Development

This short briefing paper addresses the next stage in the evolution of regional development policy. It is clear that the cluster idea has held sway in this field for some 20 years. By now, practitioners and academics are widely sceptical of policy capabilities to create let alone build clusters. Recessionary times make this more difficult. Moreover, where some recent success can be seen, it is associated with command economies such as China where normal market and democratic barriers to large public investments in such measures are absent. Nevertheless, clusters exist in many places and there is evidence, displayed in this paper, that in some regions they have mutated into multi-cluster platforms. Now, as regions seek to rebalance, platform policies are evolving and being implemented. This paper shows how this is in part a response to “Grand Challenges” and the emergence of “challenge-driven” innovation.     

Das andere Zuhause

Cities are increasingly addressing high-skilled migrants. Our contribution examines the factors that shape how this group relates to places and why cities provide different conditions for this. We draw on empirical data from an explorative case study with highly qualified migrants in the university city of Münster. First, we look at the place ties at the new place of residence and thereby focus on their local social networks and their sense of belonging. Second, we turn to the place-specific characteristics, in particular the role of “connections” and “urban opportunity structures”. Based on our findings we discuss how urban policy-making may influence the place attachment of this desired group.     

Governmentalities of Urban Crises in Inner‐city Athens,Greece

Through the notion of “conjuncture” this paper explores the interplay of urban crises that have been unfolding in the city of Athens during the past 7 years (2008–2014). By focusing on specific “critical moments” that have significantly influenced the narratives, discourses and subsequent policies concerning “Athens in crisis”, it examines a number of intertwined approaches and tactics that shaped the governmentality of such crisis. These approaches and tactics, that work in tandem, include emergency‐driven policies and politics; politics of fear that occasionally transform into geographies of fear; processes of defining the “public” and “public enemies”; and redefinitions of (il)legalities. Yet, they have repercussions on people, places and politics. In this context, certain issues are deemed critical or urgent while others do not or are even obscured.     

Policy Instrument Choices for Growth Management and Land Use Regulation

What factors account for local government land use practices and their choices among specific growth management policy instruments? We apply the political market framework to examine how land use policy choices in Florida are shaped by institutional features of county governments and the demands of organizations and interests in a community. Local policy decisions reflect a balance of the conflicting interests and responses to economic and political pressures. The results demonstrate that county government structure and election rules play critical roles in the adoption of urban service boundaries, incentive zoning, and transfer of development rights programs. We report evidence consistent with the argument that these “second‐generation” growth management policies are motivated by exclusionary goals.     

The Influence of Local Urban Containment Policies and Statewide Growth Management on the Size of United States Urban Areas*

Abstract. In an attempt to slow the consumption of urban land for a given population, and the negative outcomes thought by some to be generated by such sprawl, regulations in the form of (i) the local imposition of urban containment policies that restrict or prohibit the amount and/or the type of urban settlement beyond a certain line and (ii) the statewide enactment of mandatory growth management requirements for all local governments have been enacted in the United States. This paper describes a regression‐based analysis that finds that different forms of these policies are achieving their desired goal of shrinking the square mile size of an urban area. A comparison of the influence of the various forms of urban containment and growth management policies with other “natural evolution,”“flight from blight,” and “fiscalization of land use” factors that also influence the square mile size of an urban area is made, and policy implications are offered.     

Urban and Rural Definitions in Regional Context: A Case Study on Turkey

Transformations in the urban and rural areas under the effects of global economic, social and political circumstances have rendered their boundaries more blurring. It has become increasingly difficult to make a clear distinction between urban and rural. This paper intends to bring definitions of urban–rural into discussion in the context of Turkey. It reveals the results of a research project (conducted by Hürriyet G. Ö?dül with Serkan Öngel and Habip Uluçay from Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, Istanbul, Turkey, in 2007 and financed by the Scientific and Technical Research Council of Turkey and Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University Research Fund), aiming at revealing the degrees of the urbanity and rurality throughout the country, with an emphasis on the diversification of regions in the urban–rural context. The study is conducted at the NUTS 4 level. Districts are classified as “dominantly rural, dominantly urban and transitional” through the factor analysis based on six structures: agricultural production, non-agricultural production, employment, demography, education and flows of money, goods and people. The urban–rural profile of the country is found as rural and transitional. It is possible to observe some areas displaying deep rural characters in well-developed western regions and some “prosperity spots” dispersed throughout the less-developed eastern regions. Then, regional classifications ranging from “concentrated urban regions” to “rural regions” are made at the NUTS 1 level. Finally, the results are evaluated in perspectives of spatial planning of Turkey and entering process to the EU.     

Structural-Mathematical Analysis of Systems of Urban Places

The method of “structural chains” used for the analysis of regional urban systems is subjected to structural mathematical analysis in the form of a rectangular matrix with the dimensions m X n in which the number of columns n represents the number of levels of development of urban places, and the number of rows m reflects the complexity of the urban system. The dimensions of the matrix and other magnitudes that describe the design of the matrix can be viewed as a whole object that may be called the “structural characteristic of the system.” Such an approach requires the construction of a calculus of structural characteristics that may open the way for new techniques in the structural study of economic-geographic systems.     

Cartographically reconstructing surveys of community land grants in New Mexico to support historical research and political discourse

Cartographic visualization of past changes in ownership and management of real estate provides a basis for historical research, decision-making, and political discourse. Surveys associated with land title deeds represent unique and legally valid geographic records of historical boundaries, including those of some Spanish-Mexican land grants in the American Southwest that are currently administrative subdivisions of state. Accurate representation of land grant boundaries that were surveyed during the nineteenth century is problematic due to imprecise instrumentation, error of record, and uncertainty in landmark location. This study assesses the utility of coordinate points from US Bureau of Land Management (BLM) “brass-cap” monuments (cadastral points) for cartographic reconstruction of three New Mexico land grant surveys that exhibit distinct geographic characteristics. Findings reveal discrepancies with respect to land ownership maps produced by the BLM and provide insight to decisions made during surveying. These reconstructed boundaries are also compared to boundary maps produced by the BLM, based on comparisons with the original surveys and relative to known boundary markers. This study highlights the practical importance and potential scholarly applications of reconstructing geographic boundaries of politically active community land grants in a contemporary context.