Book Reviews

Eduardo Lozano.Community Design and the Culture of Cities. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991, xiii and 340 pp., Hardcover $65.00, Paperback $24.95.

Jonathan Barker, Rural Communities under Stress: Peasant Farmers and the State in Africa. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989, 228 pp., $44.50 hardbound, $13.95 paper and David J. Arnold, Famine: Social Crisis and Historical Change, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988, vii, 154 pp., $17 paper.

David M. Hummon, Commonplaces: Community Ideology and Identity in American Culture. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990, xv and 236 pp., $49.50 (hardbound); $16.95 (paper).

William H. Wilson, The City Beautiful Movement. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989, x and 365 pp., $38.50 (hardbound).

F.M.L. Thompson, ed. The Cambridge Social History of Britain 1750- 1950. 3 vols. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Vol. I, Regions and Communities, xv and 588 pp., $69.50; vol. II, People and Their Environment, xv and 373 pp., $59.50; vol. Ill, Social Agencies and Institutions, xiii and 492 pp., $59.50; the set, $150.00

Luke B. Knapke, ed. Liwwät Böke, 1807-1882, Pioneer. Minster, Ohio: The Minster Historical Society, 1987, 197 pp. and pen and ink sketches, $22.25 (hardbound).

Timothy R. Mahoney. River Towns in the Great West: The Structure of Provincial Urbanization in the American Midwest, 1820-1870. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990, xi and 319 pp., $39.50 (cloth).

James S. Duncan. The City as Text: The Politics of Landscape Interpretation in the Kandyan Kingdom. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990, xiv and229 pp., index, figures, $49.50 (hardbound).     

REGIONAL POPULATION–EMPLOYMENT DYNAMICS ACROSS DIFFERENT SECTORS OF THE ECONOMY*

ABSTRACT An important subset of the literature on agglomeration externalities hypothesizes that intrasectoral and intersectoral relations are endogenously determined in models of local and regional economic growth. Remarkably, structural adjustment models describing the spatio‐temporal dynamics of population and employment levels or growth traditionally do not include intersectoral economic dynamics. This paper argues and shows that allowing for economic linkages across sectors in these models adds considerable value, especially in forecasting. An econometric model of population–employment dynamics, in which sectoral variations in economic development are explicitly taken into account, is applied to a large urban planning policy proposal in the Netherlands. The empirical analyses suggest that population dynamics are largely exogenous, population changes drive employment in particular in the industry and retail sectors, and employment in all sectors depends strongly on intersectoral dynamics. Intersectoral dynamics appear as important drivers of regional sectoral employment changes; they are even more important than population changes, and their effect shows up clearly even within the Dutch institutional context where strict regulatory housing and planning restrictions are enforced.     

THE EFFICIENCY OF THE HIGH‐TECH ECONOMY: CONVENTIONAL DEVELOPMENT INDEXES VERSUS A PERFORMANCE INDEX*

ABSTRACT Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is employed to construct an index of relative efficiencies by maximizing two proxies of high‐tech output subject to minimizing five specific resources often associated with high‐tech infrastructure. This approach ranks the 50 U.S. states from the most robustly efficient to the most robustly inefficient. The DEA approach avoids using equal or subjective weights employed in the New State Economy Index rankings. The ranking of the 50 states yields some interesting differences between some states' dominance in high‐tech industries and their economic performance.     

LET MANY FLOWERS BLOOM

In this rich and sensible assessment of historians' practice and prospects, Allan Megill focuses on the obligation that historians have to support their accounts with evidence. He does this, first, by illustrating the difference between real and merely claimed evidence and, then, by giving an analysis of the underlying nature of evidence in historical accounts. Turning later to the question of how historians and their public should feel about diminishing unity (fragmentation) in historiography and the practices that generate it, Megill explains the sources of fragmentation and then argues that it doesn't matter whether historians are doing the same thing and/or doing it in the same way. What matters, rather, is whether they are doing interesting things and doing them well.