Potemkin Revolution: Utopian Jungle Cities of 21st Century Socialism

This paper explores the entanglement of ideology and materiality in the production of the spaces of 21^st century socialism. “Millennium Cities” are currently being constructed for indigenous communities throughout the Ecuadorian Amazon, with revenues derived from petroleum extracted within their territories. As iconic spatial symbols of the “Citizens’ Revolution”, the Millennium Cities would appear to embody “the original accumulation of 21^st century socialism”—a utopian state ideology promising the collective appropriation of natural resources without the dispossession of the peasantry. Drawing on extensive field research, we argue that they are better understood as a simulation of urban modernity that is symptomatic of the predominance of ground rent in South American capitalism, and which conceals the violent repression of an autonomous indigenous project of petroleum‐based modernization. The original accumulation of 21^st century socialism can therefore be interpreted as a “fantasy of origins”, which functions to reproduce the primitive accumulation of capital.     

Impact of European Union development subsidies on Hungarian regions

Since the collapse of the communist system, regional inequalities have increased in Central European Countries. This paper describes an assessment of the impacts of regional development programmes on the development of Hungarian regions at a highly disaggregated level between 2002 and 2008. We construct a multi-dimensional composite indicator to estimate the overall development of rural regions and capture social, economic and environmental dimensions. The impacts of rural development programmes were investigated through counterfactual analysis in combination with Propensity Score Matching and Difference-in-Differences approaches. There has been considerable variation with increasing concentration in the level of subsidies distributed during the analysed period. From a policy perspective, the results are disappointing. Irrespective of the subsidy measures or methodology employed, the impact of the former is very close to zero or non-significant. Our findings cast serious doubt on the effectiveness of development policy and the long-run convergence of European regions.     

Inclusive growth from an urban perspective: a challenge for the metropolis of the twenty-first century

This paper addresses the study of inclusive growth from an urban perspective. It proposes to focus the relationship between urban economic growth and income distribution in cities in which manufacturing production and external demand play a central role. Opposed to the literature that considers economic growth leads to an increase in inequality in income distribution, we present some operative economic tools from Marshallian Industrial Districts theory and from urban economic theory with which to develop an economic strategy for inclusive urban growth, making possible to achieve simultaneously economic growth and improvements in income distribution. An interesting example of a metropolis with a dynamic of economic and employment growth compatible with a reduction in income inequality is provided by Barcelona. This metropolis disposes a Survey of living conditions and habits of the population since 1986 that allows an analysis in terms of inclusive urban growth.     

Costs and benefits of environmental change: tourism industry's responses in Arctic Finland

ABSTRACT

Recent research has focused on the impacts of environmental change to tourism. In particular, the perceived costs of climate change have been increasingly studied. However, the relationship between costs and benefits resulting from the changing environmental conditions for the industry has been less examined. This paper identifies the locally observed changes in the natural and socio-economic environments and aims to analyse the financial costs and benefits to tourism businesses in two tourism-dependent communities in northern Finland. The specific focus is on adaptation and adaptive management in a tourist destination scale. Adaption is understood as an investment creating not only implementation costs, but potentially also benefits for tourism operations. Research materials were collected among tourism and tourism-related businesses through 41 semi-structured thematic interviews. Results indicate that the evaluated benefits of environmental change seem to exceed those of costs. This conforms to the on-going discourse of climate change–tourism relations associated with the Arctic region where both awareness and vulnerability to change are considered relatively high but the level of responses, i.e. adaptation, low. These results can help to further identify the most vulnerable sectors in tourism and assist entrepreneurs preparing for environmental and climate change. However, the paper concludes that while global environmental change, with specific adaptive management strategies, may create local short-term direct benefits for the industry, a long-term sustainability of tourism in the Arctic calls for mitigation responses to climate change.     

Seismic performance of historical vaulted adobe constructions: a numerical case study from Yazd,Iran

Past earthquakes have demonstrated that historical vaulted adobe buildings are highly vulnerable to seismic actions. Hence, it is crucial for such building typologies to be evaluated in terms of seismic capacity. To this end, this article deals with the seismic performance of historical vaulted adobe houses from the city of Yazd, Iran as one of the seismically active areas of the world and possessing a very rich adobe heritage. Thus, and based on a detailed geometrical survey, a representative sample of adobe houses from Yazd was studied using a simplified in-plane analysis based on three geometric indexes. Concerning the out-of-plane behavior, a deeper assessment was conducted by performing a numerical study, where the main influential parameters on the seismic behavior of vaulted adobe buildings were considered. The numerical analyses were carried out by adopting the limit analysis theory implemented in the Block2D software. The results obtained indicate the safe in-plane behavior of most of the houses and the safe out-of-plane response of the sample under gravitational loads. However, the sample out-of-plane safety under earthquake-induced loads seems to be a matter of concern.     

Kinetic effect of carbonic anhydrase enzyme on the carbonation reaction of lime mortar

The effect of carbonic anhydrase enzyme on the precipitation kinetics and phase transformations of calcium carbonate, and on the strength development of lime mortars has been investigated with saturated lime solutions, lime pastes and lime mortars under atmospheric conditions. The results clearly show that carbonic anhydrase catalyzes the reaction between carbon dioxide and aqueous lime, and increases the rate of calcium carbonate crystallization, the yield of the carbonation reaction and mortar strength at early ages. This is most likely a kinetic effect associated with the increased rate of carbonate ions supply to the solution by the enzyme. In addition, this enzyme favors the formation of stable calcite and significantly modifies its morphology by developing new crystal faces. These results suggest a novel approach for accelerating the hardening of lime mortars using carbonic anhydrase enzyme, which may offer a potentially novel approach with significant benefits on the applications of lime mortars in architectural heritage conservation as well as in construction.     

Rotational behavior of degraded traditional mortise-tenon joints: experimental tests and hysteretic model

This article presents the results of an experimental study on the rotational behavior of degraded Chinese traditional mortise-tenon joints with different degradation types and different degradation degrees. Six joint specimens degraded through artificially simulated method, were tested by reversed cyclic loading, from which the moment-rotation curves were obtained. The results indicated that the rotational behavior of these joints is semi-rigid, the hysteretic curve shapes of degraded joints are same to that of joint without degradation. The maximum moment, yield moment, and initial rotational stiffness of degraded joints decreases as the degraded degree increases, whose empirical degradation relationships were obtained based on the test data. A hysteretic model for degraded traditional mortise tenon joints was proposed. Experimental results were used to validate the proposed hysteretic model. Good agreement between predictions and tests was observed.     

An Enhanced Finite Element Macro-Model for the Realistic Simulation of Localized Cracks in Masonry Structures: A Large-Scale Application

ABSTRACT

Finite element macro-modeling approaches are widely used for the analysis of large-scale masonry structures. Despite their efficiency, they still face two important challenges: the realistic representation of damage and a reasonable independency of the numerical results to the used discretization. In this work, the classical smeared crack approach is enhanced with a crack-tracking algorithm, originating from the analysis of localized cracking in quasi-brittle materials. The proposed algorithm is for the first time applied to a large-scale wall exhibiting multiple shear and flexural cracking. Discussion covers structural aspects, as the response of the structure under different assumptions regarding the floor rigidity, but also numerical issues, commonly overlooked in the simulation of large structures, such the mesh-dependency of the numerical results.     

Building survey forms for heterogeneous urban areas in seismically hazardous zones. Application to the historical center of Valparaíso,Chile

ABSTRACT

Building survey is an essential data-collection procedure to feed large-scale seismic vulnerability assessment. The available strategies usually consider survey forms to gather information about the urban buildings. The application of the available survey forms poses important challenges for the case of the heterogeneous urban centers including different structural typologies. This work proposes four specific survey forms for traditional structural typologies constructed with masonry, reinforced concrete, mixed steel-reinforced concrete, and timber. The proposed forms request essential information on the parameters necessary for seismic vulnerability assessment, by evaluating the lateral-load resistant system, regularity, condition of conservation, and existing damages. The survey forms were applied to the study of 111 buildings of the historical center of Valparaíso, Chile. The proposed methodology was complemented with the use of Geographic Information Systems to obtain a complete database with the structural characterization of the most representative typologies for future works of large-scale seismic vulnerability assessment.