Measuring Regional Cohesion Effects of Large-scale Transport Infrastructure Investments: An Accessibility Approach

Transport infrastructure is considered one of the main policy instruments to achieve the cohesion goal, although the inclusion of cohesion effects in assessment methodologies is scarce and uneven. Although most cohesion studies are constrained to the analysis of regional disparities in economic indicators, this approach can be broadened to include other regional performance indicators. One of these indicators could be accessibility measures, from the point of view that accessibility, representing a competitive advantage of locations, constitutes a “desirable good” closely related to the welfare of each region. This paper suggests using changes in the spatial distribution of accessibility as a proxy to assess regional cohesion effects of transport infrastructure investments. However, as the conclusions taken depend heavily on the formulation of the accessibility measure, we recommend computing a set of accessibility indicators and analysing their results in a complementary way. The proposed methodology is tested by assessing regional cohesion effects of the large-scale road and rail transport infrastructure investments carried out in Spain in the period 1992–2004. The results obtained show that cohesion has improved for the road mode, while regional disparities have increased for the rail mode. This paper identifies the main factors driving this final cohesion effect and explores the strengths and weaknesses of the different accessibility indicators that were considered. The approach suggested in this paper has the potential to be applied in transport planning processes, and may eventually complement existing strategic assessment methodologies.     

European Spatial Planning Between Competitiveness and Territorial Cohesion: Shadows of Neo-liberalism

This paper analyses the use of the concept of territorial cohesion in policy documents produced by the European Union. It is an idea celebrated in community documents, such as cohesion reports, the Territorial Agenda of the European Union and the Green Paper on Territorial Cohesion; after more than a decade of political debate, the concept is about to gain a legitimate institutional role, after being included in the Lisbon Treaty, and is among the competences that the EU shares with other member states. At first, territorial cohesion seems to oppose the logics of neo-liberalism by reinscribing welfare problems and policies in spatial terms. However, using the analytical framework of cultural critics, and intending cohesion to be a discourse carried on by a community of European scholars and policymakers, the research will discuss the conceptual relationship between competitiveness and territorial cohesion in European policies and narratives.     

Transport costs: measures, determinants, and regional policy implications for France

We develop a methodology to accurately compute transport costs.Based on the real transport network, our measure encompassesthe characteristics of infrastructure, vehicle and energy used,as well as labor, insurance, tax and general charges borne bytransport carriers. Computed for the 341 French employment areas,road transport shipments and the period 1978–1998, thisnew measure is compared to alternative ones such as great circledistance, real distance, or real time. We conclude that theseproxies do a very good job in capturing transport costs in cross-sectionanalysis. However, important discrepancies limit the possibilityof using them in time series analysis. Moreover, our measureallows us to identify the policies that most impact transportcosts. We show that transport technology and market structureare responsible for most of the transport cost decrease. Infrastructureimprovements only condition the spatial distribution of thegains. Finally, some implications for researchers and regionalpolicy makers are derived.     

Missing the point: globalization, deterritorialization and the space of the world

This article provides a critique of a dominant strand of the literature on globalization – that which suggests it can be understood as deterritorialization. It argues that suggestions that we have moved away from territorial understandings of politics fail to conceptually elaborate the notion of territory itself. Drawing parallels between mathematics and politics in the seventeenth century, the paper claims that the notion of territory is dependent on a particular way of grasping space as calculable. This way of understanding space makes bounded territories possible, but also underlies new global configurations. In other words globalization is a reconfiguration of existing understandings rather than the radical break some suggest. The article concludes by making some comments on this reconfiguration, and suggesting that further historical and conceptual work on territory is necessary before it can be thought to be superseded.     

Dissenting Heads and Hearts: Joseph Priestley,Anna Barbauld,and Conflicting Attitudes towards Devotion within Rational Dissent

Anna Barbauld's and Joseph Priestley's disagreement on the subject of devotion was famously characterised by James Martineau as “passion for the sublime and the beautiful” confronting “passion for the truth.” Such a characterisation, however, is potentially misleading because it suggests that Barbauld lacked “passion for the truth.” At least partly, the disagreement between Barbauld and Priestley stems from a fundamentally different assessment of the limits of human knowledge (an assessment that in both cases is closely connected to a commitment to the search for truth and the associated principle of “free inquiry”). Inadvertently, Martineau not only distorts Barbauld's position within Rational Dissenting thought but also obscures a crucial split among Rational Dissenters in their approach to the search for truth.     

A Voice for Black Interests: Congressional Black Caucus Cohesion and Bill Cosponsorship

This study enhances our understanding of the vexing dilemma (i.e., the crosspressures emanating from individual goals and collective aspirations) confronting black legislators. Extant research based on roll call votes or on interest group scores that are also based on roll call votes is limited in what it can tell us about African-American representation in Congress. By examining African-American representatives' cosponsorship of legislation, this study uses a more accurate measure of members' legislative behavior and thus overcomes the "censored sample problem" associated with roll call data. Bill cosponsorship is a good indicator of a representative's intensity of commitment to constituent interests. We examine public bills cosponsored by African-American representatives from 1971 through 1993. The analysis finds that the cohesiveness of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) transcends policy arenas, notwithstanding higher rates of cosponsorship on social issues, and that the number of bills cosponsored by the CBC is noticeably higher after 1982. In addition, analysis suggests that CBC members, just like all members of Congress, respond to the structure that governs the House and the political forces that shape their electoral fortunes.     

A General Misspecification Test for Spatial Regression Models: Dependence, Heterogeneity, and Nonlinearity

There is an increasing awareness of the potentials of nonlinear modeling in regional science. This can be explained partly by the recognition of the limitations of conventional equilibrium models in complex situations, and also by the easy availability and accessibility of sophisticated computational techniques. Among the class of nonlinear models, dynamic variants based on, for example, chaos theory stand out as an interesting approach. However, the operational significance of such approaches is still rather limited and a rigorous statistical-econometric treatment of nonlinear dynamic modeling experiments is lacking. Against this background this paper is concerned with a methodological and empirical analysis of a general misspecification test for spatial regression models that is expected to have power against nonlinearity, spatial dependence, and heteroskedasticity. The paper seeks to break new research ground by linking the classical diagnostic tools developed in spatial econometrics to a misspecification test derived directly from chaos theory—the BDS test, developed by Brock, Dechert, and Scheinkman (1987). A spatial variant of the BDS test is introduced and applied in the context of two examples of spatial process models, one of which is concerned with the spatial distribution of regional investments in The Netherlands, the other with spatial crime patterns in Columbus, Ohio.     

Private Business Investments in Heritage Sites in Tanzania: Recent Developments and Challenges for Heritage Management

Private business investments in heritage sites in Tanzania have recently captured scholarly interest of some archaeologists. Curiosity in the matter has largely emanated from a fundamental need to widen the sites’ utilization through heritage tourism. This paper reviews a recent incident in which a local community explicitly opposed the minister of Natural Resources and Tourism handing over ceremony of Kunduchi ruins site to a private investor. The paper also highlights recent developments, problems in private business investments, and their potential implications to the conservation and management of heritage sites in Tanzania.     

Geography, Spatial Data Analysis, and Geostatistics: An Overview

Geostatistics is a distinctive methodology within the field of spatial statistics. In the past, it has been linked to particular problems (e.g., spatial interpolation by kriging) and types of spatial data (attributes defined on continuous space). It has been used more by physical than human geographers because of the nature of their types of data. The approach taken by geostatisticians has several features that distinguish it from the methods typically used by human geographers for analyzing spatial variation associated with regional data, and we discuss these. Geostatisticians attach much importance to estimating and modeling the variogram to explore and analyze spatial variation because of the insight it provides. This article identifies the benefits of geostatistics, reviews its uses, and examines some of the recent developments that make it valuable for the analysis of data on areal supports across a wide range of problems.     

Trees or Chains, Links or Branches: Conceptual Alternatives for Consideration of Stone Tool Production and Other Sequential Activities

Archaeologists construct sequence models to describe the operation of past activities such as production of stone tools. As developed in Japan, France, and North American, such models summarize processes, present intermediate steps, and link formally diverse materials. Some sequence models are teleological in that they present actions as predetermined patterns. Others can be considered evolutionary in that they describe results produced by selected interaction between conditions and variables. With separate strengths and different goals, both approaches to sequence modeling have archaeological utility.     

Geography’s Emerging Cross‐Disciplinary Links: Process,Causes, Outcomes and Challenges

In Australian universities the discipline of Geography has been the pace‐setter in forging cross‐disciplinary links to create multidisciplinary departments and schools, well ahead of other disciplines in humanities, social sciences and sciences, and also to a greater extent than in comparable overseas university systems. Details on all cross‐disciplinary links and on immediate outcomes have been obtained by surveys of all heads of departments/schools with undergraduate Geography programs. These programs have traced their own distinctive trajectories, with ramifying links to cognate fields of enquiry, achieved through mergers, transfers, internal initiatives and, more recently, faculty‐wide restructuring to create supradisciplinary schools. Geography’s ‘exceptionalism’ has proved short‐lived. Disciplinary flux is now extending more widely within Australian universities, driven by a variety of internal and external forces, including: intellectual questioning and new ways of constituting knowledge; technological change and the information revolution; the growth of instrumentalism and credentialism, and managerialism and entre‐preneurial imperatives; reinforced by a powerful budgetary squeeze. Geographers are proving highly adaptive in pursuit of cross‐disciplinary connections, offering analytical tools and selected disciplinary insights useful to non‐geographers. However, this may be at cost to undergraduate programs focussing on Geography’s intellectual core. Whereas formerly Geography had high reproductive capacity but low instrumental value it may now be in a phase of enhanced utility but perilously low reproductive capacity.     

当代留学生与海外华人社会:关于英国诺丁汉华人社会的实证研究

论文以调查问卷作为此次调研的主要手段,以两个既相互联系又有所区别的群体——华人留学生和当地华人居民为研究对象,探讨华人留学生的特点与需求以及华人居民与留学生的共同需求和不同认知。认为留学生不仅是当地华人社会的一个重要组成部分,也是推动华人社会结构调整、组织重构、社会融入等活动的新的动力源泉。留学生与当地社会包括华人社会间存在着交流互动的关系,而不同群体之间存在交往结构及其开放程度的差异,如非大陆留学生比大陆留学生更善于同当地华人居民及非华人团体交往。