Mathematical Method for Determining Levels of Development of Urban Places within a System

A matrix technique is used to determine levels of development of urban places within a system. This classification of places is based on two criteria: (1) the degree of development of the city's production complex; (2) its role in the geographical division of labor, based on the extent of its external relations (local, regional, national, foreign). The city's production complex is analyzed in terms of energy-and-production cycles, which are groups of technologically interrelated industries (as defined by N. N. Kolosovskiy). Points are assigned to individual production cycles within a city on the basis of the level of development of the particular cycle and the extent of its external relations. The points assigned to each cycle are then added up for a total number of points for the city. The urban places are then arranged in increasing order of points. Threshold values are determined to separate the set of places into levels of development, ranging from rudimentary producers of raw materials to fully integrated polyfunctional cities with wide-flung external relations. A condensed explanation of the technique appeared parenthetically in Soviet Geography, September 1969, pp. 375–377     

Inappropriate object: Warsaw and the Stalin‐era Palace of Culture after the Smolensk disaster (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

This article is about the shifting relationship between the city of Warsaw and the Palace of Culture and Science – a gigantic Stalinist skyscraper which dominates the city centre – in the aftermath of the 10 April 2010 plane crash that killed the Polish president and 95 others (mostly very senior military and political figures) in the woods outside Smolensk in western Russia. The crash's victims had been on their way to a ceremony commemorating the 70th anniversary of a massacre in the Katyń forest, near Smolensk, during which thousands of Polish army officers were shot on the orders of Stalin. Despite its status as Warsaw's most obvious material relic of Russia's historical domination over Poland, the Palace of Culture has in the last two decades been gradually reappropriated into the city's own landscape and everyday life. In fact, since the fall of communism, the Palace has eclipsed the city's traditional emblems and monuments to become regarded as the most identifiable marker, or ‘symbol’, of the contemporary city. Further, the Palace has consolidated the tangible and powerful impact it exerts on the city's architecture and urban layout, on its political, bureaucratic, ‘cultural’, commercial and educational life, and on the bodies and minds of its citizens. The very word ‘palace’ is normally understood in Warsaw to refer to the Palace of Culture. For a time after Smolensk, however, the word acquired a new association with the Presidential Palace, where crowds gathered to lay flowers, light candles and stand vigil. The markedly muted presence in Warsaw of the Palace of Culture during the mourning period after Smolensk demonstrated that the happy interaction between post‐socialist Warsaw and the rehabilitated Palace does not extend into every domain. The topography of mourning in Warsaw in the days after 10 April seemed to highlight the abject dimension of the Palace's uncanny presence in the city. This article explores why, how and for how long the Palace withdrew and was withdrawn from the life of the Warsaw after Smolensk.     

PRINCIPAL TRENDS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF URBAN PLACES IN THE KARA KUM

The development of mineral resources in the Kara Kum desert and irrigation projects along the Kara Kum Canal have fostered the growth of urban population in Turkmenia at a more rapid rate than rural population. In general, established cities in the republic tend to grow more slowly than some of the new workers' settlements established on the basis of gas extraction and other mineral developments. The urban places of Turkmenia are classified by size classes, functional types and growth rates.     

城市犯罪中的非公共空间盲区及其综合治理

城市犯罪中的空间盲区是形成犯罪载体的重要因素。本文在阐明城市犯罪空间盲区的产生机制及其综合治理的任务的基础上,重点分析了非公共空间盲区的防控脆弱性及其外在、内在的防控盲点,提出了治理此类盲区的工作思路,讨论了治理非公共空间盲区的外部环境和内部环境以及提高非公共空间警戒能力的工作途径。成功的综合治理可以对有效地预防犯罪、中止犯罪、制伏罪犯、消减犯罪危害性等起到积极作用,可以为城市犯罪的空间防控作出积极贡献。     

The Emerging 'Urban Agenda' and the European Spatial Development Perspective: Towards an EU Urban Policy?

In recent years there has been a growing awareness of escalating problems in European urban areas caused partly by economic and technological changes in the European and global economies. The most visible representation of these changes has been a growth in urban unemployment and social exclusion. The European Commission has taken a growing interest in these issues and attempted to develop an European Union (EU)-wide approach to urban change. The focus of this paper is on the Commission's attempt to develop an 'urban agenda' and to promote policies which are more 'urban sensitive'. With reference to the 'urban agenda' this paper examines the contribution of, and problems associated with, two Urban Communications recently published by the Commission and the European Spatial Development Perspective. It then assesses the prospects for the development of an EU Urban Policy, arguing that an 'explicit' urban policy is unlikely to emerge in the short or medium term.     

GRAPH MODELING OF THE EVOLUTION OF STRUCTURES OF TERRITORIAL-PRODUCTION COMPLEXES IN NEW PIONEERING AREAS

A graph model technique is used to analyze the pattern of urban places in the Bratsk–Ust'-Ilimsk complex on the middle Angara River in Siberia. The places, serving as vertices, are connected into tree-like structures on the basis of a data matrix that uses the founding dates of the places and the distances between them. The resulting pattern of location reveals a linear-nodal structure that is typical of areas in early stages of economic development, such as the Middle Angara district, with its large hydroelectric stations and energy-intensive industries like aluminum and woodpulp. The graph technique is suitable for analyzing patterns of location at various stages of development and to predict the future evolution of the structure of urban places.     

Sharing What Can Be Sold: Women Haus Maket Vendors in Port Moresby's Settlements

Dominant narratives of the economy, as well as policy discourses in Papua New Guinea (PNG), tend to separate the ‘formal’ from the ‘informal’ economy. Concurrently, there is a development policy emphasis on women's economic empowerment. In urban areas this has meant a policy focus on larger market places as sites where women need support for economic engagement. Within these policy discourses, one activity in urban areas usually relegated to the ‘informal’ economy is small home‐based market stalls, referred to in this paper as haus maket. Located at homes or on nearby roads, haus maket are prolific and available to the public, and as such provide a similar function to public market places as spaces to make money. This paper considers these public yet intimate spaces as sites where vendors, usually women, embody and lead contestations between money and moral value spheres. At a time when the policy emphasis is on the formal economy and larger market places in PNG, why do such small market places persist? The first aim of this paper is to establish the role of haus maket as a site where spheres of value intersect. Rather than being ‘informal’ and peripheral, I seek to foreground its centrality to the economy but also as a site where economic and social moral values conflate. The second aim of the paper is to examine the role of sharing as a form of transaction in its own right distinct from exchange as a transaction between two actors. Haus maket stalls are sites of sharing and of moral action and value where forms of value in the settlement are shaped and negotiated.     

Women's Empowerment Through Home–based Work: Evidence from India

This article examines the extent to which home–based production in the garment sector of Ahmedabad, India, serves to empower its female participants, defining empowerment in terms of control over enterprise income and decision–making within the household. It places this question within the literatures on resource theory and bargaining models of the household, both of which posit that improved access to resources increases women's power in the household. This study highlights why access to resources may not lead so directly to improvements in women's position in the household in the Indian context. It then discusses why home–based work may be less empowering than sources of work outside of the home. The arguments about the empowerment potential of women's access to resources through home–based work are tested by examining, first, the determinants of control over the income generated by women in home–based garment production and, second, to what extent access to and control over income from this source translates into involvement in decisions which are atypically women's and yet important to their lives. The results provide a better understanding of the potential of home–based work to offer women in urban India a source of economic activity that also can translate into increased intra–household power.     

The Role of Universities in Urban Regeneration: Reframing the Analytical Approach

Universities have resources for urban dynamics that are difficult to provide by other means. For this reason, these organizations are crucial actors in urban regeneration. This article sets out a conceptual framework for the analysis of the role played by higher education institutions in urban renewal initiatives. It is based on an integrated analysis of the uses of the university both as promoters of business innovation and in terms of their civic and social outcomes. Urban regeneration of cities in decline is used as a “strategic research site” to understand universities’ potential. The discussion is organized around four types of contributions: physical infrastructure, human resources, economic development and civic engagement. The debate enlightens the options for integrating universities' capabilities as an asset for urban regeneration and sets out implications for the institutionalization of practices and decision-making in this field.     

县域主体功能区划分研究——以广东省云安县为例

采用GIS,以云安县为例,以100m×100m格网作为评价单元,根据格网内的环境特征,选用对区域开发建设影响较大的自然生态、生态服务、灾害风险等作为生态敏感性评价条件,约束区域的发展;在分析经济社会发展空间格局的基础上,采用资源承载力、社会支撑力、经济发展力、集聚辐射力、区位支撑力和外部推动力综合评价了经济社会综合发展潜力,作为区域发展的推动力,综合考虑生态敏感性和社会经济综合发展力,划分了主体功能区,并分析了各区的发展方向主要功能和管制措施。     

国外对空间剥夺及其城市社区资源剥夺水平研究的现状与趋势

本文从城市社会地理学的社会-生活空间质量观的视角、结合国外相关研究文献,首次系统地分析了国外对空间剥夺以及城市社区资源剥夺研究的现状、内容,及其所涉及的相关学科以及在此基础上所形成的研究理念、流派、原理与方法。总结了这一研究命题对城市管理、城市规划、社区规划与商娱场所空间布局的指导意义,以期为国内的相关研究提供借鉴。     

The Problems of Small Cities and the Policy of Stimulating Small-City Growth

The policy of activating small-city growth through industrialization has focused largely on further development of such cities since it was first formulated in the 1960s. The author suggests that not all small cities possess the requisites for further growth and that it is a mistake to view them entirely as a transitional form of settlement. According to this view, small cities have a role to play as rural service centers. The problem is viewed not so much the industrialization and further growth of small cities, but an improvement of living levels designed to reduce the present gap between the standards of living in large and small urban centers. Further research on small-city problems is urged, proceeding from past emphasis on industrialization prospects to broader analysis of socio-demographic needs and the steps required to preserve small cities as an integral element of unified systems of settlement.     

The railway panopticon: State formation,carceral power,and everyday policing in the late-nineteenth-century train station

Historical scholarship on the formation of the state in the United States has focused on the national and state governments and has searched for state power in courtrooms, barracks, and legislative chambers. This article reveals the growth of municipal state power in an unlikely place: the large urban train station, a crucial transportation chokepoint. Using nineteenth-century St. Louis as my primary example, I focus on how both police and non-state actors took advantage of an emergent place of constricted mobility. Rather than imprison people to punish criminality, subalterns caught in the railway panopticon were disciplined according to then-prevailing gender and racial norms. I argue that the intersection of networks there created a place where local police and their allies could surveil, check, and potentially stop more people than in any other place in the urban landscape. This article refocuses the history of state building on a more prosaic location than the halls of government and traces the history of police as enforcers of the racial norms and patriarchal order. Central railway stations became, unintentionally, key sites of state formation and carceral power. This research reveals the spatial heterogeneity of the state's strength, provides a genealogy for contemporary racially inequitable policing, and creates a framework to investigate other places where state and non-state actors can exercise particular power over everyday people.     

Environmental Degradation of Russian Coastal Regions: Exploring the Gulf of Finland

An American geographer and Russian ecologist discuss current and prospective environmental hazards precipitated by large-scale infrastructure projects on Russia's southern coast of the Gulf of Finland. The region, investigated by both authors during the course of regular field research from 1999 to 2009, is one of the best environmentally preserved coastlines of the Baltic Sea with abundant potential greenfield sites, largely due to its closed-border-zone status during the Soviet period. A favorable location for trade also places the region under intense development pressure. The authors devote particular attention to two major developments, a multifunctional port complex (which inter alia serves as a major pipeline terminus and oil export port) and expansion of an existing nuclear power plant. Based on extensive personal observations and government documents, they analyze the emerging environmental threat posed by these initiatives as well as the challenging political environment that discourages public participation and local involvement in spatial planning.     

THE USE OF ANALYTICAL METHODS OF MATHEMATICAL STATISTICS FOR IDENTIFYING RURAL PLACES WITH GROWTH PROSPECTS: (with particular reference to Kaliningrad Oblast)

One of the key objectives in the rural development program for the Nonchernozem Zone of the RSFSR is the consolidation of rural settlement in larger places. An example of the dispersed settlement pattern is Kaliningrad Oblast, which has a total of 1,527 rural places ranging from fewer than 5 to more than 2,000 inhabitants, with a total rural population of 195,529 (1970 census). The author shows that growth prospects are dependent on a combination of five factors—geographical setting and level of development; population; fixed assets in agriculture; nonfarm fixed assets; availability of services—and, using correlation analysis, identifies 283 places with prospects of future growth, ranging from 32 in the 51–100 size class to one of more than 2,000 population. The preservation of some small rural places is termed inevitable because many serve as outlying settlements for livestock subdivisions of collective and state farms, and dairy and beef cattle represents a characteristic type of farming in Kaliningrad Oblast.     

PECULIARITIES IN THE FORMATION OF POPULATED PLACES ON THE SEABOARD OF THE USSR

A number of investigators have noted a movement of Soviet population toward the seacoasts, contrasting with the nation's traditional inland development. The pull of the coast has been linked to the increasing foreign trade of the USSR and to greater involvement in ocean affairs in general. The author analyzes the recent growth of maritime urban places in terms of the nation's major maritime regions: Azov-Black Sea, Baltic, Caspian, Pacific and Arctic, compares the rates of urban population growth and discusses some of the factors that account for differences in regional development.     

城市社区的社区资源公正配置研究

随着我国和谐社区建设的开展,如何在社区建设中体现公平公正理念成为我国社区研究和实践的核心问题。本文梳理了近年来国内外对社区资源概念、研究内容、分析方法等相关研究,在对第三条道路思潮的社会公正理念进行分析的基础上建立了空间公正理念下城市社区体系与生活场所体系的社区资源配置原理,并对社区资源公正配置的衡量指标作了初步探讨。     

火车客运站综合流通空间规划探索——以广州市铁路新客站地区规划为例

本文简要回顾了火车客运站地区规划研究的发展。提出火车客运站具有增长极的性质,各种经济流通空间集聚在火车客运站周边,形成了综合流通空间。分析了综合流通空间的内涵与特点。指出综合流通空间由核心功能区、衍生功能区、外围功能区三个层次构成,分析了各个层次的功能构成、服务设施与布局模型。对综合流通空间与其他城市功能空间的关系进行了探讨。以广州铁路新客站地区规划为例,从集聚作用、功能结构与布局、与其他城市功能区的联系三方面对综合流通空间进行了实证分析。     

University-led innovation in and for peripheral urban areas: new approaches in Naples,Italy and Newark,NJ, US

This paper focuses on the spatial development problem of university-led innovation in peripheral urban areas. Highlighting issues of proximity, uneven geographic development, and multi-scalar urban governance as weaknesses of the regional innovation systems literature, we provide a novel synthesis of regional economics, innovation policy, and critical urban studies to assess the development roles of universities in concrete contexts. A comparative investigation of Naples and Newark, NJ captures the functional operation of regional innovation and urban development as a contested product of discourses, technologies (material and governance), and territorial arrangements. Our analysis demonstrates the significance of multi-scalar relationships in structuring innovation policy and practice in peripheral urban areas. The architecture of innovation is not simply rolled out into pre-determined spatial containers in places lacking established ‘institutional thickness’ or urban centrality. The spatial development of university-led innovation is a social product: material and governance infrastructures are essential components of the urban fabric and are essential to its co-constitution. Universities are shown to contribute differing resources dependent on their institutional strategic goals and the capacities and spatial imaginaries afforded to them by their situation in broader territorial governance regimes. We conclude by drawing comparative lessons and identifying directions for future research.     

国家空间分异与国家空间视角的中国城市研究思路初探

中国城市研究的主流理论视角一直忽视国家的内部空间分异,国家空间理论的发展为从理论上重新审视国家的空间分异提供了的可能。在此基础上,介绍了国家空间视角的内涵及其在海外地理学研究中的发展与应用,分析了中国城市内部的国家空间组织的独特性及国家空间重构实践的丰富性,指出这种理论视角在中国城市研究中具有显著的应用可能性和必要性,并基于中国城市的政治经济背景提出了中国化的国家空间概念与分析框架。在此基础上,探讨了基于国家空间视角的重要城市研究议题及其可能面临的挑战与局限性。