Zones of Influence of Middle-Size Cities,Their Boundaries and Passenger Flows

A modified gravity model is used to describe the flows of commuters between a central city and concentric zones around it. A multiplier-type model of a central-place system (after Christaller) is then used to calculate the number of residents for service centers at each level of the hierarchy within the system. The rank-size rule (Zipf's formula) is also considered as a criterion of a true system of urban places. Results are presented for the urban network of the Ukraine.     

POPULATION DENSITY IN A CENTRAL‐PLACE SYSTEM

The existing empirical literature about polycentric population density has focused on the urban scale, and the alternative models proposed in that context have been justified using heuristic arguments. This paper describes how polycentric density distributions can, in general, be endowed with a theoretical framework which differs from the existing literature with respect to the treatment of centers: instead of assuming that they represent places of work, it assumes they are places that provide goods and services to households. This imposes a hierarchical structure on the model, which allows replacing the set of distances to all centers (typically used in the existing literature as the same explanans irrespectively of location) with a smaller set of distances that corresponds to the number of levels in the hierarchy and varies with location. The central‐place framework used also provides a direct link between a polycentric model and the Clark formula, in the sense that the latter can emerge through a smoothing procedure of the former. Finally, in the context of central places, the scope of related empirical investigations can be extended naturally from the urban to the regional scale. This is the scale of a simple test presented here, which has been specifically included to support the corresponding theoretical arguments about the structure of a polycentric density gradient. The paper concludes with some expected problems and advantages of applying these ideas to the urban scale.     

THE PROBLEM OF DEVELOPING RURAL SERVICES IN NOVGOROD OBLAST

Novgorod Oblast, in northwestern Russia, has been distinguished by a high rate of rural outmigration and depletion of agricultural labor resources. One key factor in slowing the flight from the land is an improvement in the quality and range of rural services. The impact of adequate services is shown by available data on the distribution of rural population by distance from service centers. The rate of decline of rural population is generally found to be lower in places near service centers than in more remote places. Since most of the rural places are too small to support service establishments, it is recommended that services be expanded in about 200 central places that show promise of future growth.     

THE DISTRIBUTION OF SERVICE ESTABLISHMENTS*

ABSTRACT All previous theory and research have led to the expectation that the density of service establishments will be proportional to the 2/3 power of the density of the population served by them. Study of the distribution of over 400 nongovernmental establishments refutes this expectation for such cases. A previous derivation from time minimization theory is reformulated to encompass these new findings.     

Culturally clustered or in the cloud? How amenities drive firm location decision in Berlin

Creative firms are neither capital‐ nor land‐intensive in production. They predominantly rely on creative and specialized labor and, assuming a strong competition for workers, are therefore increasingly dependent on the location of their (potential) employees. If these creative and highly qualified employees are attracted by consumption amenities such as bars, clubs, and restaurants, then it follows that these same amenities may determine the location of creative service firms. I investigate this hypothesis by examining whether Berlin Internet start‐up firms locate in urban amenity‐rich places. Identification builds on the fall of the Berlin Wall. A 1 percent increase in amenity density raises the probability of a start‐up location by almost 2 percent. A comparison with other service industries suggests that amenities are significant to the location choice of creative sectors, whereas no effect can be observed for nonreative firms.     

TECHNIQUES FOR INVESTIGATING THE ECONOMIC BASE OF CITIES

Economic-base analysis is applied to 15 small towns of Vologda Oblast in northern European Russia in an attempt to analyze the provision of services in these urban places. The employment structure of the town of Kadnikov, based on a “firm-by-firm” approach, is used as the standard to prorate total employment into basic and nonbasic components. The Kadnikov standard is then applied to the other towns and any excess in employment beyond the nonbasic Kadnikov standard is allocated to the basic sector. The higher proportion of basic employment in some of the study towns is interpreted as reflecting inadequate development of service activities. The analysis suggests that the small towns of Vologda Oblast are relatively well served by education, public health and retail trade-at any rate they are no worse off than the standard town, Kadnikov-but lag in the provision of housing and repair services. Economic-base concepts developed by J. W. Alexander and G. Alexandersson in the 1950s are used as a point of departure.     

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE LOCATION OF SERVICES AND RURAL SETTLEMENT

Soviet planners are advised to consider the linkage between rural settlement patterns and the provision of services, an issue that is assuming particular significance in connection with the present development program in the Nonchernozem Zone of the RSFSR. The number of service establishments per 1,000 population is not considered a useful indicator because it tends to be high in areas with widely dispersed settlement in small inhabited places, and yet does not reflect a high level of services because of the small size of the establishments. It is desirable to cluster sets of services in central places; the presence of a single kind of service (store, school, etc.) in a small place is found tantamount to having no service whatever. Adequate provision of services is found to reduce, or even reverse, rural out-migration.     

武汉市24小时自助图书馆设立的空间效应研究

以武汉市中心城区为研究范围,综合运用核密度估计法、Ripley's L函数、标准差椭圆、Voronoi多边形和空间句法,系统分析武汉市24小时自助图书馆设立的空间效应,包括整体空间效应、服务范围及服务人口效应、可达性及穿行性效应。结果表明,24小时自助图书馆的设立:1使图书馆由单一集聚核心向多集聚核心转变,使图书馆空间集聚程度加强,整体呈现出"大分散,小集聚"的空间分布特征,空间分布方向向"E-W"方向顺时针旋转;2使图书馆的服务范围缩小,服务人口压力减小,但其长尾效应有待进一步发挥;3使图书馆的可达性略有提高,但使其穿行性显著增强,正在从根本上将读者获取图书资源的方式由"读者围着资源移动"转变为"让资源围着读者移动"。     

The Chevert: A History

The Chevert was built for Napoleon III's navy between 1850 and 1863. It served as a transport to supply French colonies in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its service was primarily in peacetime, never entering into battle. It entered the private merchant service in the early 1870s and in 1875 served William Macleay's scientific expedition to New Guinea, which became known as the Chevert Expedition. It subsequently re-entered the merchant service before being wrecked in a cyclone in 1880. Not yet lost to history, it served as an office and impromptu fortress in Vanuatu: firstly for the English and then for the French. Its final resting place was Port Sandwich, Malekula, Vanuatu. For a relatively small transport ship it attracted many more headlines than its weight might predict.     

GEOGRAPHICAL STUDY OF THE FIXED ASSETS OF RURAL PLACES

The use of fixed assets data as a geographical research tool is illustrated with reference to a rural rayon [minor civil division] of Kaluga Oblast, southwest of Moscow. The value of fixed assets by places is correlated with population size, the position of places within the system of settlement of particular state farms or collective farms, and distance from towns. The share of productive assets (farm buildings and equipment) is found to reach a maximum in places with populations of 100 to 200. In larger places, the share of productive assets declines because of the higher value of housing and the presence of most service facilities. The share of productive assets also tends to be low in suburban places where a substantial portion of the population commutes to nearby towns.     

MAPPING OF THE POPULATION POTENTIAL

The development of the population potential model and its use both in the Soviet Union and abroad are reviewed. A formula proposed by O. D. Duncan, incorporating the so-called inner potential (equivalent to the actual population) in the formula for the population potential of a region or place is found to yield exaggerated high values for population centers. Interpolation of potentials on the basis of such peak values leads to considerable distortion of reality, as does the use of transport distance instead of straightline distance between interacting places. The author develops new formulas for the construction of population potential maps in an effort to refine the technique and extend its applicability to large-scale mapping.     

Elaboration of a settlement system: the New England village in the federal period

Contemporary New England villages arose as nineteenth-century central places. The emergence of these commercial places reflected not the creation of something new out of whole cloth but an elaboration of an existing settlement system, a legacy of the colonial period and a manifestation of long-standing cultural habit. Town centers, more or less equally spaced and comprised of little more than a meetinghouse and a tavern, served as foci for town activities, as auxiliary central places. Most of the considerable localized economic exchange that characterized the colonial period occurred at dispersed places. The emergence of true central places about colonial town centers in the federal period marked a shift in scale or a general and widespread development of extra-local exchange, division of labor, and provision of centrality—the ability of a place to provide goods and services beyond the needs of its residents. Central places became accretions of full-time nonfarmers, of storekeepers, artisans, and professional people. Moreover, these places were interlinked to form a system of central places and, although a sorting process took place, the system was both a material manifestation of contemporary economic experience and an elaboration of the colonial settlement system.     

城市娱乐休闲设施的空间结构特征——以上海市为例

随着文化娱乐活动的日益频繁,娱乐休闲设施的合理布局越发重要。文章首先明确了研究对象及其类别,在此基础上阐述了影响娱乐休闲设施分布与发展的主要影响因素。然后根据上海目前娱乐设施的分布,划分了分布类型,并从娱乐设施的规模和内容着手,分析了空间结构,归纳了娱乐休闲设施的区位特征。最后阐述了娱乐休闲设施的发展变化趋势。     

Maritime Site Protection and the Fetch Method: an example from Rogaland,Norway

Predictions of future requirements for the protection of maritime archaeological sites are made using the fetch method which has been developed to evaluate the quality of landing‐places and navigable channels. The very useful method may explain why archaeological sites along the coast are rare in some areas, but numerous in others. Many of them are vulnerable to destruction by the effects of climate change, especially rising sea‐levels, based on the IPCC scenarios. The objective fetch method can be used worldwide to predict where new finds of sites close to sea‐level can be expected, and also to predict a site's vulnerability.     

Exploring patterns of movement suspension in pedestrian mobility

One of the main tasks in analyzing pedestrian movement is to detect places where pedestrians stop, as those places usually are associated with specific human activities, and they can allow us to understand pedestrian movement behavior. Very few approaches have been proposed to detect the locations of stops in positioning data sets, and they often are based on selecting the location of candidate stops as well as potential spatial and temporal thresholds according to different application requirements. However, these approaches are not suitable for analyzing the slow movement of pedestrians where the inaccuracy of a nondifferential global positioning system commonly used for movement tracking is so significant that it can hinder the selection of adequate thresholds. In this article, we propose an exploratory statistical approach to detect patterns of movement suspension using a local indicator of spatial association (LISA) in a vector space representation. Two different positioning data sets are used to evaluate our approach in terms of exploring movement suspension patterns that can be related to different landscapes: players of an urban outdoor mobile game and visitors of a natural park. The results of both experiments show that patterns of movement suspension were located at places such as checkpoints in the game and different attractions and facilities in the park. Based on these results, we conclude that using LISA is a reliable approach for exploring movement suspension patterns that represent the places where the movement of pedestrians is temporally suspended by physical restrictions (e.g., checkpoints of a mobile game and the route choosing points of a park).     

中国古代的邮驿系统

邮驿,即古代的邮政,是为封建政府传递文书、接待使客、运转物资的通信和交通组织,偶尔也允许私书附递。由于它“通远迩于一脉,继往来以无穷”而被称为“国之血脉”。     

广州市中心城区休闲服务设施区位类型特征的研究

以广州市中心城区为研究地域,以城市常住人口密度作为地域划分标准,引入基尼系数、带间差异系数、带别特化系数对广州市中心城区的休闲服务设施的区位类型进行划分,区分出城区均匀分布、弱城心均匀分布、城区核心集聚和城区局部集聚四类休闲服务设施的区位类型,进而对广州市中心城区的休闲服务设施的分布和微区位特征有一个初步的解读。     

对信息时代做好图书馆读者服务工作的思考

读者服务工作是图书馆工作的重心。社会的发展使读者信息需求日益个性化,使图书馆馆藏文献资源多元化、服务手段和方式多样化、服务对象广泛化。只有明确认识信息时代对图书馆工作的影响,切实把握信息时代读者需求的特点和趋势,才能做好新形势下的图书馆读者服务工作。     

Backup for ministers

This paper deals with the backup required by government ministers. It deals with Australia but the argument has wider implications. It sets out what backup the public service can and cannot provide, and argues that the limitations are due to its limited perspective. Ministerial requirements which are beyond the public service, and which may be met by politically appointed staffers working in ministers' private offices are examined. A major underlying reason why the public service cannot meet all ministerial requirements relates to the importance of governments ‘getting the politics right’. A philosophical argument is constructed to show that political scientists have a unique role to play as advisers to government ministers.