World Class Aspirations,Urban Informality,and Poverty Politics: A North–South Comparison

Under the influence of the discourses and practices of global neoliberal urbanism, municipal administrations worldwide aspire to make their cities world class spaces, where informality is an anachronism and poverty can be made history. In this essay, drawing on fieldwork conducted in Jakarta, Indonesia, San Francisco (California), and Seattle (Washington), we address the question of how a geographic relational poverty approach can help us understand, or at least expand ways of thinking about these processes by attending to urban informality and the politics of poverty. Informality, a pervasive feature of the global South and North, functions as a survival strategy whereby the monetarily poor can compensate for their lack of income through commoning. Market-driven, state underwritten urban development initiatives for housing those with wealth is limiting the conditions of possibility for the monetarily poor, and informality. This is compounded by emergent political discourses rendering informality as inappropriate, and the monetarily poor as undeserving of a right to the city. Yet long-standing more-than-capitalist and communal informal practices pursued by the urban poor remain effective and necessary survival strategies, supporting residents whose presence is necessary to the city and whose practices challenge capitalist norms.     

1912～1937年北京居民的工资收入与生活状况

1912～1937年间,北京居民的工资不仅差异甚大,而且支付形式及其名目繁多。这种不同的工资收入和支付形式,既体现了不同的工资关系,也体现了北京居民的日常生活。这一时期北京居民的工资收入状况,在一定程度上反映了民国时期城市居民的基本生活水平和生活状态。     

Contract-Workers in Swedish Agriculture,c. 1890s–1930s: a comparative study of standard of living and social status 1

In the political and medial discourse of the 1930s the contract-work system (stat/ar/systemet) was depicted as a relic of pre-modern society and contract-workers (statare) as the highly exploited lower class with no legal rights, low incomes, miserable housing conditions and a chaotic family life. This picture has dominated Swedish social history ever since, and the main argument of this article is that it has to be modified. With regard to the material standard of living, for example, employment terms, working conditions, wage levels and housing conditions, contract-workers were no worse off than other worker groups in the countryside. On the contrary, the contract-work system had its own rationality and advantages. It made it possible for young couples without land or a croft to marry and establish their own household since housing was included in the payment, and the yearly employment and large proportion of in-kind payments provided income security. However, the political discourse of the 20th century was based on the growing importance of the town and industry. The more regulated employment conditions, higher wages and better housing for industrial and urban workers became the yardstick by which the contract-workers' situation was judged. Agriculture was an economic sector in decline and the contract-work system appeared to be outdated. The abolition of the contract-work system in 1945 was definitive confirmation of the victory of modernity.     

The Precarity of Young People’s Housing Experiences in a Rural Context

Young people’s housing, economic and labour market circumstances have become increasingly insecure due to the combined effects of the 2007/2008 economic crisis, neoliberal welfare reforms, rising costs of higher education and the shortage of affordable housing. Discussions of young peoples’ experiences in these domains have largely neglected their spatial variability but evidence suggests that young people living in rural parts of the UK have distinctive experiences of housing, which are closely connected to labour markets and educational opportunities. By drawing on qualitative data from young people and housing professionals, this article explores some of these rural distinctions and frames them within theoretical debates about the ‘precariat’. It argues for a more theoretically informed and geographically nuanced understanding of contemporary housing issues as rural youth potentially face greater precarity than their urban peers.     

Going Bush: the Implications of Urban‐Rural Migration

Traditionally, migration away from urban centres by those seeking lifestyle changes has been towards beach environments. More recently though, there have been small movements of people to rural environments seeking similar lifestyle changes. These movements to rural locales have been popularly referred to as treechange. Previous research on exurban migration has primarily focused on quantifying the migration process and attributes of the migrators. In contrast, this paper presents some preliminary findings on the impact of urban‐rural migration on a small, semi‐rural receiving area north of Melbourne. More specifically, it explores the impact that exurban migration has on local housing markets such as increases in house prices, decreases in affordability and declines in rental stock. The research also illustrates the divisions that appear in local communities between traditional residents and ‘newcomers’ over amenity issues and economic development.     

Has the euro sustainably increased home price co‐movement?

A low level of co‐movement between different euro country housing markets creates difficulties for the ECB in setting monetary policy. Such co‐movement across eurozone countries has been the subject of a number of studies, using different methodologies and finding mixed results. In this study, we use endogenous break methods to explicitly test for whether the introduction of the euro has changed home value co‐movement. We also employ informal correlation analysis. Endogenous break results indicate no sustainable increase in co‐movement attributable to the euro, whereas correlation analysis is suggestive of a decrease in synchronization since the currency's introduction.     

Performing curiosity: re-viewing women’s domestic embroidery in seventeenth-century England

For many in seventeenth-century England, curiosity became an intellectual and physical means of exploring natural and artificial wonders and categorising tangible and intangible things. For well-off Englishwomen, “curious work” had a more specific meaning. It described a specific type of pictorial, decorative embroidery, usually learnt in school and practised in the home, possessing moral agency and functioning as an indicator of status and wealth. Although recognised for their exuberant use of extravagant materials, these embroideries have proved challenging to appreciate and understand. This paper re-situates these “curious works”, placing them within the changing concept and practice of curiosity in early modern England by using an object-based evidence approach combined with an historical archaeology methodology. Viewing these artefacts through the “lens of curiosity” provides a new perspective on these embroideries as the outcome of the performance of the feminine curiosity and thus the equivalent to the masculine project of curiosity.     

过滤理论的起源、概念及研究进展

过滤是住房的生命周期与家庭的生命周期之间相互作用的产物,包括两大支流:以建立经济理论和模型为代表的关注住房的过滤研究、有关居民迁居的强调家庭的过滤研究。过滤理论的地理学视角可以追溯到霍伊特(Hoyt)的扇形模型,提供了关于居民迁居和城市社会空间结构之关系的解释。过滤理论意义主要有:为低收入群体提供合适住房、解释城市微观和宏观空间变化、分析和解释与住房市场有关的社会问题。过滤理论是中国城市转型研究的新视角。     

NEWS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS

Abstract

This study suggests an improvement of a popular measure of living standards, namely the biological standard of living. One influence on it is a population's consumption pattern. Since there are different dietary patterns all over the world, researchers estimate the influences of national diets on final average male height. These habits are predominantly related to income, but also to genetics, cultural history, and decisions regarding whether to trade or consume high-quality foodstuffs. Systematic differences are found when analyzing protein-consumption habits among 51 countries between the 1960s and the 1980s. The author calculates metric correction values which can facilitate international comparisons of male average height. While the proposed correction values make a little difference on average, they can be valuable in a comparison of countries with markedly different dietary patterns.     

城市公租房社区生活空间质量研究——以西安市为例

以城市社会生活空间质量观理念为研究框架,运用核密度、缓冲区分析等方法从社区物质环境以及居民对社区感知两个维度对城市公租房社区的生活空间质量进行评价。研究发现：西安市公租房社区空间布局较为偏远,集聚特征明显;除教育资源外,医院、商业以及游憩等资源均处于低可获性状态;社区居民对公租房社区房屋面积、房屋质量、物业管理、社区绿化等方面满意度较低,社区归属感及长期居住意愿不强。西安市公租房社区在社区资源可获性方面存在一定的空间剥夺现象,社区整体生活空间质量水平不高。     

Locational Disadvantage and Household Locational Decisions: Changing Contexts and Responses in the Cessnock District of New South Wales,Australia. 1964–1999

Following the rapid demise of local coalmining in the 1950s and early 1960s, the former coal towns of the Cessnock area have survived in their newfound dormitory role, with cheap serviced housing acting as a major constraint on out–migration and an incentive for in–migration for low–income householders, mainly engaged in external commuting or outside the workforce. Behavioural responses to widening local job deficits in the early 1960s were reported in this journal (Holmes, 1965). From household surveys and other sources, Holmes examined the interplay between individual, household and locality variables and presented a spectrum of projected future outcomes for localities, according to accessibility, size and service provision, either attached to the Newcastle–Maitland labour market as low–income outer suburbs or experiencing varying rates of decline while providing low–cost welfare housing. While these broad trends have continued over the last 35 years, significant variants, not predictable in 1965 have emerged, notably: the increased residential attractiveness of some small localities; the strengthening of welfare migration, notably from Sydney; the increase in non–workforce households; and, some evidence of emerging socio–economic polarisation in larger towns. In these respects, Cessnock localities can be viewed as a microcosm of wider trends in Australian society, trends which are most fully revealed in disadvantaged metropolitan peripheral localities.     

Deceptive data? The role of the investigators in the New Survey of London Life and Labour 1928–32

The data collected by the New Survey of London Life and Labour between 1928 and 1932 is one of the most significant resources of detailed household information for the interwar period, with data extracted for almost 30,000 households, providing detailed information including birthplaces, hours of work, and wages. This article assesses the process of the original data collection, highlighting issues that mean users of the extracted data must proceed with a measure of caution. In particular, it demonstrates that one investigator employed by the survey, who provided information for around a fifth of households, appears to have regularly submitted generic and estimated information that problematizes the dataset.     

私有出租房屋的社会主义改造——以苏州市为个案的考察

私有出租房屋的社会主义改造是整个社会主义改造工作的重要组成部分。苏州市的私租房改造于1956年初开始试点,1958年"大跃进"高潮中基本完成。20世纪60年代前中期城乡社会主义教育运动发动后,房改逐步推向农村集镇,且政治色彩日趋浓厚。"文革"爆发后,在发动"二次房改"的同时,还冲占和低价收购了大量下放户的私有房屋。苏州市私租房改造的基本方面应予充分肯定,但也遗留了诸如自住与改造划留不清、私自降低起改点等问题。到20世纪90年代初,房改遗留问题基本得到解决。     

我国国内旅游需求及影响因素研究

旅游需求影响因素的研究是旅游产业边界界定的基础。基于旅游需求不仅受国民经济发展水平影响,也与\"食、住、行、游、购、娱\"等产业要素发展水平相关的产业特征,本文对我国国内旅游需求的影响因素及其影响方向与程度进行了研究。利用多变量序列分量方差分析模型,通过对1984年至2005年相关变量时间序列数据的计量分析,本文发现当前我国国内旅游需求变化主要受经济增长速度影响;餐饮、零售产业对国内旅游推动较大;交通运输业的发展对国内旅游几乎没有影响;当前城乡居民生活水平的提高对国内旅游需求增长贡献有限。并以此为依据提出与国外发达国家相比,居民消费结构中旅游消费需求增长速度还低于生活水平改善速度,我国还没有真正进入国内旅游高速增长阶段。