Planning the Neighbourhood Economy: Land-Use Plans and the Economic Potential of Urban Residential Neighbourhoods in the Netherlands

This article investigates the relationship between zoning by-laws, as put forward in governmental land-use plans and the viability of urban residential neighbourhood economies. The Dutch planning tradition has long been characterized by strict separation of functions and top-down planning. We argue that profound changes in social and economic structures make land-use planning practices less suitable for the current policy formula of “mixed urban milieus”. Although the residential neighbourhood might not be the location of large firms, it definitely attracts small ones, and facilitates starting businesses whose presence (and potential growth) can be beneficial to the city as a whole. We present a typology of spatial patterns of neighbourhood economies based on land-use plans and describe whether these are related to the distinctive economic development of the neighbourhood over the period 1999–2007.     

Continuous‐Time Modeling with Spatial Dependence

(Spatial) panel data are routinely modeled in discrete time (DT). However, compelling arguments exist for continuous‐time (CT) modeling of (spatial) panel data. Particularly, most social processes evolve in CT, so that statistical analysis in DT is an oversimplification, gives an incomplete representation of reality, and may lead to misinterpretation of estimation results. The most compelling reason for a CT approach is that, in contrast to DT modeling, it allows adequate modeling of dynamic adjustment processes. This article introduces spatial dependence in a CT modeling framework. We propose a nonlinear structural equation model (SEM) with latent variables for estimation of the exact discrete model (EDM), which links CT model parameters to DT observations. The use of a SEM with latent variables enables a specification that accounts for measurement errors in the variables, leading to a reduction of attenuation bias (i.e., disattenuation). The SEM‐CT model with spatial dependence developed here is the first dynamic SEM with spatial dependence. A simple regional labor market model for Germany, comprising changes in unemployment and population as endogenous state variables, and changes in regional average wages and in the structure of the manufacturing sector as exogenous input variables, illustrates this spatial econometric SEM‐CT framework. El modelamiento de datos panel espaciales se realiza habitualmente utilizando una conceptualización del tiempo discreto (TD). Sin embargo, existen argumentos de peso para conceptualizar el tiempo de manera continua (TC). En concreto, la mayoría de procesos sociales se desarrolla en TC, por lo que el análisis estadístico en DT trae como consecuencia una simplificación excesiva de los procesos, da una representación incompleta de la realidad, y puede conducir a una interpretación errónea de los resultados de la estimación. La razón más convincente para el uso de un enfoque CT es que a diferencia de modelos DT, una conceptualización CT permite el modelado adecuado de los procesos de ajuste dinámico (dynamic adjustment). Este artículo incorpora la dependencia espacial en un marco de modelamiento con CT. Los autores proponen un modelo de ecuaciones estructurales no lineal (nonlinear structural equation model ‐SEM) con variables latentes para la estimación del modelo discreto exacto (exact discrete model‐EDM), que vincula los parámetros del modelo CT a las observaciones de DT. El uso de un SEM con variables latentes permite una especificación que da cuenta de los errores de medición en las variables, dando lugar a una reducción del sesgo de atenuación (es decir, “desatenuacion”). El modelo SEM‐CT con dependencia espacial desarrollado en el presente estudio es el primer SEM dinámico con dependencia espacial. Para ilustrar el marco conceptual SEM‐CT los autores presentan un modelo simple del mercado laboral regional de Alemania. El modelo está compuesto por los cambios en el desempleo y la población como variables endógenas de estado, y los cambios en los salarios regionales promedio y en la estructura del sector manufacturero como variables de entrada exógenas. （空间）面板数据通常基于离散时间（DT）进行建模。然而更令人信服的观点是基于连续时间（CT）进行（空间）面板数据建模。特别是多数社会过程均在连续时间中演化,基于离散时间的统计分析可能过度简化,使得对现实状况的表达不完备,并可能导致对估计结果的错误解释。相比于离散时间（DT）建模,连续时间（CT）建模最具说服力的原因在于在建模过程中允许足够多的动态调整。本文介绍了CT模型框架中的空间依赖性。把CT模型参数链接到DT观察值中,我们提出了用于估计精确离散模型（EDM）的包含潜变量的非线性结构方程模型（SEM）。包含潜在变量的SEM提供了变量测量误差的计算方案,使得衰减偏差（如反衰减性）减小。本文了提出的空间相关SEM‐CT模型是第一个动态空间相关的SEM模型,并以德国一个简单的区域劳动力市场模型为例,以失业和人口构成变化为内生状态变量,以区域平均工资和制造业结构部门变化为外生输入变量,阐述了该空间计量SEM‐ CT模型的框架。     

The challenge of proximity: the (un)attractiveness of near-home tourism destinations

ABSTRACT

Imaginaries of touristic otherness have traditionally been closely related to geographical distance and travel far away from the everyday. But in today's context of sustainable tourism, a moral and behavioral shift may be expected, toward traveling near home. Distance may actually become a disadvantage and proximity a new commodity. This implies a need to disentangle subjective understandings of both distance and proximity in relation to perceived attractiveness of and touristic behavior in places near home. Thus, it is aimed to shed light on how ‘proximity tourism’ is constructed, endorsed and appreciated (or not).

An online survey (N = 913) was administered to residents of the Dutch province of Friesland, exploring their attitudes toward their home province as tourism destination and representations of proximity and distance in relation to preferred vacation destinations. We grouped respondents into four categories, reflecting destination preferences: (1) proximate, (2) distant, (3) intermediate and (4) mixed. These groups were differentiated and characterized using quantitative and qualitative analyses. The ‘proximate’ and ‘distant’ preference groups, respectively, were most and least engaged in proximity tourism. However, the perceptions of proximity and distance expressed by the ‘intermediate’ and ‘mixed’ preference groups were associated in a nonlinear way with appreciation of the home region as a tourism destination. Additionally, respondents used proximity and distance in various ways as push, pull, keep and repel factors motivating their destination preferences.

Interpretations of both proximity and distance were thus important in determining engagement in proximity tourism and, in turn, the potential for proximity tourism development in the region. This implies that such development will require a balanced consideration of the relative, temporally sensitive ways that people negotiate distance and proximity in their perceptions of being at home and away. Our results advance the discussion about imaginaries of travel, distance and proximity, and their impact on regional tourism.     

Wage Effects of Unemployment Duration and Frequency

This paper analyzes the wage effects of unemployment duration and frequency for different regional labor market situations in The Netherlands using a simultaneous equations approach. The main finding is that unemployment duration has a significant negative effect and the frequency of unemployment a significant positive effect on wages in the core regions with relatively low unemployment rates. In the periphery with relatively high unemployment rates no significant effects of unemployment duration and frequency are found. It is argued that in the core regions unemployment duration is primarily viewed as a personal indicator of low productivity whereas in the periphery it is attributed to the situation in the regional labor market.     

Worker Endowments and the Effects of Institutions on Earnings Realization: A Cross-National Comparison

In this study we investigate how differential institutions, and their observance within regional labor markets, impact potential earnings realization. We investigate institutional linkages to labor market outcomes by means of cross-nation comparisons between the United States and the Netherlands. In this regard, better job-matching (information) programs, higher relative unemployment benefits and minimum wages, and a greater prevalence of both trade unionism and collective bargaining likely work to the favor of Dutch workers, and in turnaugment their reservation wages during job search. The predictable outcome of higher earnings realization among Dutch workers is tested econometrically by frontier estimation.     

From Peru to Ichaboe: The dynamics of a shifting guano frontier, 1840–5

The guano frontier originated as a geographic space for a socio-cultural resource central to the identity, lifestyle and worldview of the indigenous Peruvians. Colonisation in combination with advances in understandings of plant nutrition and fertiliser science, however, shifted guano’s meaning from its original roots and turned it into a globally tradable commodity. The geographical frontier, under the influence of post-independence politics and nationalisation, firstly became an economic frontier and, secondly, a political boundary. With discoveries on Ichaboe and other neighbouring islands on the southwest coast of Africa, this frontier shifted and a race for monopoly control ensued. The dynamics of the struggle for monopoly control over the guano frontier on the Namib coast challenges some of our fundamental historiographic tenets of frontiers, their very natures, triggers and movements. This article suggests the extension of a socio-ecological model in which resource demand and depletion, coupled with changes in the extension of knowledge and legal boundaries, all played roles.     

Diaconiae,xenodochia, hospitalia and monasteries: ‘social security’ and the meaning of monasticism in early medieval Rome

The first section of this article examines the various types of charitable institutions operative in Rome between the seventh and the ninth centuries, in the light of what available textual and comparative evidence reveals about their respective functions. It is then suggested that these centres of assistance were staffed by resident monastic communities, an arrangement which accounts well for their many apparent similarities; which may help to explain the disappearance of the most commonly attested types (xenodochia and diaconiae) over the course of the ninth century; and which opens a window onto an alternative conception of monastic practice hitherto under‐represented in the scholarly tradition.