Livelihoods Limitations: The Political Economy of Urban Poverty in Dhaka,Bangladesh

Research in Bangladesh reveals the limitations of actor‐oriented frameworks for understanding urban poverty that assess household livelihoods on the basis of a household's portfolio of assets or capitals. The narrow focus of these frameworks on households and their depoliticized definition of social capital overlook the political roots of urban poverty. The informal systems of governance that dominate resource distribution within low‐income settlements ensure that the social resources necessary for long‐term household improvement are confined to a small elite. Only through extending our analysis beyond the household level, to explore their position within this local political economy of employment and enterprise, can we recognize the limitations placed on household efforts to improve their livelihoods.     

Earthquake-Induced Damage Detection in a Monumental Masonry Bell-Tower Using Long-Term Dynamic Monitoring Data

ABSTRACT

This work investigates the use of an advanced long-term vibration-based structural health monitoring tool to automatically detect earthquake-induced damages in heritage structures. Damage produced in a monumental bell-tower at increasing values of the Peak Ground Acceleration (PGA) of the seismic input is predicted by incremental nonlinear dynamic analysis, using a Finite Element model calibrated on the basis of experimentally identified natural modes. Then, predicted damage effects are artificially introduced in the monitoring data to check for their detectability. The results demonstrate that a very small damage, associated to a low intensity and low return period earthquake, is clearly detected by the monitoring system.     

UNICEF ‘Child Poverty in Perspective’ Report: A View from the UK

In February 2007, UNICEF launched the latest in a series of reports comparing the conditions of young people's lives across the world's more industrialised countries. The report ranked the UK as the lowest of the countries investigated. We give a critical overview of the report, identifying its limitations as well as some of the trends it reveals. We also discuss the poor placing of the UK in relation to current broader political and public debates.     

Patterns of Participation and Representation in a Regional Water Collaboration

Regional collaboration has become a popular means to manage shared resources and address cross-jurisdictional boundary issues. The question of who participates in the process, who directly affects decisions, and who benefits from those decisions is critical for understanding the broader value created by regional collaborations. We apply a variety of text mining techniques to meeting minutes to measure how stakeholder participation evolved over nine years of an Integrated Regional Water Management collaboration. We observe that a diverse set of organizations representing differing interests participated to some extent in the process. However, a minority of organizations attended regularly, while most attended sporadically and/or only attended outreach events. Verbs used to describe interaction varied across meeting types, displaying egalitarian patterns of interaction among participants in core leadership meetings and more one-way interaction among attendees of outreach meetings. We then estimate whether participation affects the likelihood of receiving funding through the IRWM program. Participants who attended the core group meetings most regularly were most likely to receive funding for their projects, suggesting that uneven patterns of participation matter for the substantive value created by the collaboration.     

Railways and manufacturing productivity in Italy after unification

This paper contributes to the debate on the effects of transport infrastructure endowment on productivity by adding a historical perspective. This allows us to address the issue in a proving ground where the effects of the existing stock of infrastructure are negligible. At the time of unification, the Kingdom of Italy initiated a large infrastructure project to build railways. We find that railways had a positive effect on manufacturing productivity over the period 1871–1911. Railways also had strong spillover effects in neighboring provinces so that provinces that started with a higher endowment of railways benefited more than those who were newly endowed.     

Seismic Assessment of the Lima Cathedral Bell Towers via Kinematic and Nonlinear Static Pushover Analyses

ABSTRACT

The protection of cultural heritage against earthquake induced actions is one of the main challenges the earthquake engineering science and practice are facing. This article presents a seismic assessment study on one of the most ancient colonial buildings present in Peru, the Cathedral of Lima, focusing on its towers. A historical review highlighted how these structures, together with the whole Cathedral, suffered intense damage and partial collapse during previous earthquakes. In order to identify the structure main deficiencies, both linear kinematic analyses and nonlinear static analyses have been performed. Different nonlinear finite element models have been created to evaluate the influence of the adjacent walls. Different load distributions have been compared to evaluate how simplified patterns could provide results close to load distributions taken from a modal analysis of the complex. A simple retrofit strategy, consisting on the introduction of steel ties, has also been studied as a reference. Results show good correlation between kinematic and pushover analyses. The construction, when compared to the requirements of the national code for new buildings, results significantly vulnerable, pointing out the need to accept some structural damage even after seismic retrofit.     

Klippel‐Feil syndrome in an Early Hungarian Period juvenile skeleton from Austria

The excellently preserved skeleton of a juvenile from the Early Hungarian Period (10^th century AD), recently excavated in Gnadendorf (Lower Austria), displays typical symptoms of Type II congenital ‘Klippel‐Feil syndrome’ (KFS): fused cervical vertebrae 2 and 3, and fused thoracic vertebrae 2 and 3. Other features observed in this skeleton clinically reported for KFS include a basilar impression and a spina bifida occulta. The bilateral symmetrical hypoplasia of the basilar part of the occipital bone is probably also linked to this syndrome, as well as the constricted external acoustic meati, which almost certainly led to hearing impairment. A cranial lesion and its possible consequences are discussed in the context of the specific KFS alterations. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The European Union in South-East Asia: continuity and change in turbulent times

This article looks at the creation of the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) and itsimpact on European Union-South-East Asian relations. It suggests that as withother regions of the world, the EU uses framework agreements to regulatecontact with other international actors. The article argues that the EU's renewed interest in the region, signposted by the Commission's 'Towards a new Asia strategy' and the proposal 'Creating a new dynamic in EU-ASEAN relations', as well as the formation of ASEM, is driven by three principal concerns: a need to meet the challenges of the post-Cold War period by extending structured contact to new interlocutors beyond ASEAN; a need to restate the EU's credentials as a stakeholder in the region, thus legitimizing European political and economic interests alongside those of other global actors such as the United States and Japan; and a new-found interest in defining acceptable economic and human rights standards as a precondition of privileged contact with the EU.
However, while ASEM offers greater connectivity between different activitiesof the EU and may bring a more coordinated approach to the relationship, it is unlikely to lead to a qualitative shift in engagement. For a variety of reasons–notably the lack of geographical proximity, economic asymmetry, and a preoccupation with central and eastern Europe-South-East Asia will remain a marginal area of engagement for the EU. With regard to future developments,structured contact between the EU and South-East Asia will survive not leastbecause of the potential economic importance of the latter and the continuingcompetition in the region from the United States, Japan and China.     

Seeing like an investor: urban development planning,financialisation, and investors’ perceptions of London as an investment space

There is a growing orthodoxy that since the global financial crisis European policy-makers and planning systems have become more dependent on inward investment and the availability of global finance to fund welfare services and projects. This process of financialisation, it is claimed, is driven by the needs of developers and investors, who are focused on maximizing returns and limiting their social and economic liabilities. Planning agencies and traditional territory-based arrangements are viewed with increasing suspicion, as standing in the way of investment and acting as a brake on much needed house-building and regeneration. However, in this paper, drawing on detailed research with investors and developers in London, we argue that there needs to be a stronger focus in academic and policy writing on the multiple, variegated, and diverse calculations and framings that private sector actors take when making investment decisions. Too often their perspectives are caricatured and/or over-simplified. We show that and imaginations of planning and regulation are complex and that many firms have realized that market success results from becoming more deeply embedded in the local political, social, and regulatory environments in which they are investing. A greater understanding of these multiple forms of calculation, in turn, opens up opportunities for the maintenance and/or implementation of more effective forms of territorially-based soft and hard regulation. The paper concludes by outlining a broader research agenda for planning and urban studies.