Soils and Earthen Building Materials Used for the Buddhist Temple Complex

This article presents a comprehensive study of the local soils and historic earthen building materials used in Nako temple complex in Western Himalayas. On-site and laboratory investigations followed a holistic approach to characterize materials and identify historic manufacturing formulas. The interdisciplinary and novel methodology used for analysis of the earthen building materials combine geological, chemical, mineralogical, geotechnical, and mechanical approach. The results presented in this article enable a better understanding of material culture and advance the study of damage and decay processes found in the temple buildings. In addition, a suitable conservation and preservation strategy is presented.     

Applying the technique of image classification to climate science: the case of Andalusia (Spain)

This paper proposes an empirical climate classification method based on the application of multivariate statistics. In this method, the technique of supervised and unsupervised image classification is used to classify the data and define climatic units. envi software is used to perform the image classification, specifically, the Iterative Self‐Organizing Data Analysis Technique algorithm. Supervised classification is also applied based on reference variables, fundamental parameters and a classifier. The obtained results display greater objectivity, reliability, operability, accessibility and reproducibility than previous climate classifications devised for the region of Andalusia (Spain), taking into account that these previous classifications were not based on quantitative criteria.     

J.S. Marais,a great South African historian: a personal re-assessment

This article is a personal assessment aimed to establish J.S. Marais’s legacy. It is written in the light of the insights I gained as I interacted with him as an undergraduate and honours student (starting in 1949), as a research student, and finally as a departmental colleague over a period of ten years or so. It begins with my experience of his teaching. He was a poor lecturer, especially to large classes. This improved with smaller classes. He came into his own in the honours year. He was a specialist in South African history as a case study in the colonial era, from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. Marais was excellent as a supervisor of postgraduate research from honours to doctoral level, empathetic and patient in handling his students’ needs. A further feature of his honours teaching was his development of a course in historical method and philosophy of history. Next, the article covers Marais’s preparation for an academic career, first at UCT and then at Oxford, leading in both cases to BA and honours degrees. Then his studies culminated in his doctoral thesis on the colonisation of New Zealand. This enabled him by 1927 to become a lecturer at UCT, a post he held until he moved to Wits as a senior lecturer in 1937. Marais’s high reputation rested mainly on his books. The article continues with an assessment of each of these, including their reception by his colleagues. The article ends with an appraisal of Marais’s qualities. Poor as an administrator, he was outstanding as a head of department at the intellectual level and also as a leader of the joint campaign of the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) and UCT against the imposition of apartheid on the universities.     

Visions/versions of the war: Ramón Pérez de Ayala and Juan Pujol on the Italian front

In 1915, the Spanish journalist Juan Pujol visited the Italian front. His reports appeared in ABC, and were later incorporated in his book In Galitzia and the Isonzo (1916). A few months later, the Spanish writer Ramón Pérez de Ayala visited the same territories. His reports appeared in El Imparcial (Madrid) and La Prensa (Buenos Aires), and were later published in his book Herman in Chains (1917). The poetics evident in the reports of both writers were clearly different, not only for ideological reasons (Juan Pujol supported the Central Empires; Pérez de Ayala favored the Allies), but also for discursive reasons: the reflexive and digressive culturalism of Pérez de Ayala, for example, contrasted vividly with the direct narrative of Juan Pujol. However, since both writers shared some stereotypes about war and used a common repertoire of rhetorical and stylistic strategies, there are significant similarities between their texts.     

Ancestral memories and early medieval landscapes: the case of Sierra de Ávila (Spain)

This paper focuses on early medieval funerary practices from a landscape perspective in central Iberia. Rock‐dug graves constitute the most conspicuous remains in this region, but their informative potential has not yet been realized. The preliminary outcomes of an ongoing research project are presented here. This aims to contextualize such funerary cases by examining a mid‐altitude mountain study‐area. Through the use of intensive archaeological surveying and geographic information systems, the paper characterizes two basic funerary types: isolated graves and rural disordered cemeteries, which responded to two social strategies led by local households. By recalling ancestorship, they constituted effective mnemonic resources, contributing to claiming rights and forging identities among these dispersed and predominantly small‐scale herding communities.     

High-tech development and spatial planning: comparing the Netherlands and Taiwan from an institutional perspective

High-tech development has been broadly accepted as a prominent matter of regional development policies and plans at the global level. Strategies to enhance it have evident implications for spatial planning policies, plans and visions. Consequently, careful attention should be paid to the role that spatial planning policies play in the national and regional efforts to advance high-tech development in a particular place. This study addresses the relationship between the spatial planning system and high-tech development, searching to explain the spatial implications resulting from this relationship. It approaches the topic by comparing high-tech development experiences in the Netherlands and Taiwan from an institutional perspective. Although both countries have used a range of spatial strategies for economic growth through high-tech development, the results show that their different institutional settings, power relations between different levels of government and conceptions of science park have led to the implementation of two very distinct spatial strategies, shaping different spatial patterns of high-tech development clustering in these two regions. The findings demonstrate the potential of the institutional approach to study international planning issues, and contribute to theories of high-tech development and spatial planning.     

Urban smartness and sustainability in Europe. An ex ante assessment of environmental,social and cultural domains

The aim of the paper is to define a set of smartness and sustainability indicators applicable to European cities and to assess their outcome in an ex ante perspective with regard to the implementation of Europe 2020 strategy. Following the DPSIR (Driving forces, Pressures, State, Impact, Response) model, we select a bundle of indicators for three relevant sustainability domains (environmental, social and cultural), which are proper to the smart city definition. Then we define groups of homogeneous cities for each domain by using a two-step cluster analysis. Results show the existence of heterogeneous groups of cities that are likely to become smart in the cultural domain, side by side with groups of more developed urban areas that have acquired a substantial advantage in the environmental and social dimensions.     

The Politics of Spatial Policy and Governance in Post-1990 Hungary: The Interplay Between European and National Discourses of Space

There is now a wealth of literature discussing how regional development and spatial planning practices in Central Eastern Europe have been shaped through the alignment with EU policy frameworks. However, scholars have tended to study governance dynamics in terms of adaptation and learning, paying thus little attention to how spatial policy change is inherently interlinked with the political contestation of nation-state spaces. This paper proposes to address this lack by combining insights from political economic work on state spatial restructuring and discourse theory. From this perspective, the institutionalization of spatial policies is examined as a political process in which particular understandings of space become seen legitimate and stabilized depending on how well they fit existing discourses. The paper demonstrates the added value of this approach through a case study of spatial policy change in post-1990 Hungary, and argues that the approach is more generally applicable to examine shifts in spatial policies and to address concerns with the increase in uneven development at different scales.     

Urban sprawl in Spain: differences among cities and causes

Urban sprawl has a major impact on the environment, public health and the socio-economic evolution of cities. The causes are numerous, being mainly related to the generalized use of the automobile in modern cities. Urban sprawl has been especially relevant in US cities since the 1950s, rapidly spreading to other cities in the rest of the world. This paper studies the case of Spain using recent data. Spanish cities have grown rapidly over the 90s and 2000s. The country has completed the process of urbanization and has suffered the effects of a major real estate bubble. In this context, we are interested in measuring and explaining where and why urban sprawl has appeared in Spanish cities. Digital mapping carried out around the year 2000 providing full coverage of Spain is used to calculate an Urban Sprawl Index. It is applied to all urban areas and municipalities throughout the country, providing an objective, comparable measurement of sprawl and identifying which areas are most affected by this phenomenon. A second stage of analysis is conducted in an attempt to explain the causes of the differences in sprawl among Spanish cities with a regression model based on the literature. We have found that the cases most affected by sprawl are the latest urban developments on the Mediterranean coast as well as certain areas in the vicinity of large cities: the mountains to the north of Madrid and the coastline near Barcelona and Valencia. In some cases, urban sprawl is starting to become a problem for the environment and urban sustainability, with important consequences for the future evolution of the affected cities.