THE ROLE OF KUZNETSK COALS IN THE FUEL SUPPLY OF ELECTRIC POWER PLANTS IN THE EUROPEAN USSR

Arguments for the expanded use of Kuznetsk coal in electric power generation within the European USSR are presented within the context of the goals of the Energy Program of the USSR and current efforts at overall economic restructuring: fuel substitution as a means of conserving oil and gas resources, replacement of difficult-to-mine and increasingly finite Donets coals by the more abundant, surface-mined Kuznetsk variety, and elimination of an irrational pattern of energy flows generated by the present fuel balance in electric power stations. A three-stage model is described which incorporates a wide variety of alternative assumptions about the fuel mix at power plants for projections of the future role of Kuznetsk coals in the region (translation by Andrew R. Bond).     

DEVELOPMENT POLICIES,URBAN UNEMPLOYMENT AND DEFORESTATION: THE ROLE OF INFRASTRUCTURE AND TAX POLICY IN A TWO-SECTOR MODEL*

ABSTRACT. We model an economy of a developing country that produces an exportable manufactured good in an urban sector and a nontradable rural good. Manufacturing faces a fixed wage, which encourages urban unemployment. Changes in cultivated area in the rural sector involve deforestation or reforestation at frontiers. Government taxes to pay for urban infrastructure that assists the manufacturing sector. Increases in urban infrastructure may relieve or exacerbate frontier deforestation but expands manufacturing employment and reduces urban unemployment. Rural transportation improvements exacerbate frontier deforestation but expand employment in the urban manufacturing sector. A larger population, ceteris paribus, widens the rural-urban wage gap and exacerbates deforestation, but may cause manufacturing employment to expand or contract.     

THE ROLE OF ERROR STRUCTURE IN SIMULATIONS ON REGIONAL INPUT-OUTPUT ANALYSIS*

Previous simulation experiments on regional input-output analysis have concluded that regional purchase coefficients are more important than technical coefficients in contributing to multiplier accuracy. This paper shows that the multiplicative error structure used in those experiments may have biased the results. A new error structure, combining a multiplicative and an additive component is introduced, and simulations are conducted on randomly generated models. The analysis shows that the results are sensitive to the relative magnitudes of the two error components, as well as to the closure of the model.     

LOCAL TAX BURDENS AND THE SUPPLY OF BUSINESS SITES IN SUBURBAN MUNICIPALITIES*

ABSTRACT. The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of local household tax burdens and other community attributes on the supply of business sites made available by local municipalities. A model of community site supply is tested in which municipalities trade off increased fiscal benefits from business location and reductions in environmental quality that accompany industrial and commercial development. This tradeoff is embodied in municipal zoning decisions. Empirical analysis of industrial and commercial zoning in two rapidly growing suburban counties of the Philadelphia metropolitan area provides considerable support for the tenets of community site supply theory.     

STATE INTERVENTION IN LANDSCAPE PRODUCTION: THE WHEATLAND RIOT AND THE CALIFORNIA COMMISSION OF IMMIGRATION AND HOUSING*

The role of the state in landscape production has been little theorized in geography. In this paper, I examine the role played by state institutions in determining landscape morphology by focusing on the activities of the California Commission of Immigration and Housing as it attempted to mitigate the conditions that led to the violent Wheatland “riot” of 1913. This rebellion by radicalized migratory workers was central to the creation of the abundant agricultural landscape of California in the years before the United States entered World War I. By telling the story of Wheatland and the state responses it induced, I hope to move discussions of landscape geography beyond both traditional concerns with landscape as a reflection of “culture” and contemporary concerns with metaphors of landscape as text.     

EXCLUDING THE POOR FROM LOW INCOME HOUSING PROGRAMS: THE ROLES OF STATE AGENCIES AND USAID IN JAMAICA*

This paper investigates why low-income housing agencies in Jamaica do not accomplish their self-imposed progressive mandates to assist large numbers of poor people. To expose what produces gaps between policy and practice, the analysis focuses on how housing programs are organized, both in Jamaica's two largest state agencies and in USAID. The crucial organizational features include the housing agencies' sources of funding, reliance on the private sector, and associated motives and interests. Among the three agencies, a set of inter-related forces block low income access to housing assistance: (1) most of the policy influences of international development agencies such as USAID, (2) the pervasiveness and increased penetration of market logic into low-income housing programs, (3) state agency bureaucratization and careerism, and (4) an elitist neglect of the housing needs of the poor. Prejudices against the poor based on the belief that they do not repay housing loans are not justified by empirical evidence, much less by the fact that the programs were explicitly created to improve their housing conditions.     

URBAN SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT: AN ANALYSIS OF HOUSING PROVISION IN NORTH AUSTRALIA*

This paper examines the role of urban social movements in shaping the built environment. It is based on empirical work undertaken in two relatively small towns, Darwin and Alice Springs, located in the Northern Territory of Australia. This approach has furnished the opportunity to undertake a true comparative study of the role of social movements in what ostensibly appear to be relatively simple urban locations situated in similar local, national and global circumstances, across the same time-period. In particular, the investigation sets out to examine the contrasting success/failure of social movements to coalesce around the problem of housing provision. The early sections of the paper review various conceptual issues related to the empirical investigation and try to arrive at a usable definition of ‘urban social movement’.