Beyond Kuznets: Inequality and the size and distribution of cities

As countries develop the percentage of population living in urban areas tends to increase. As this happens, inequality is expected first to increase and then to decline in what is known as the Kuznets inverted‐U. But the literature has not paid much attention to differences in the absolute size of cities potentially affecting economy‐wide inequality. Building on insights from the urban economics literature, this paper studies the relationship between the size and distribution of cities and income inequality at country level. Results show that beyond Kuznets’ hypothesis there is a U‐shaped relationship between average city size and inequality; inequality first falls and then increases with average city size. This result is robust to a long list of controls, different estimation techniques, and identification strategies.     

乡村旅游循环开发模式初探——以长沙市千龙湖生态旅游度假村为例

乡村旅游对社会主义新农村建设、构建和谐社会、统筹城乡发展等意义巨大。乡村旅游循环开发模式是基于循环经济理论的一种乡村旅游开发新模式,即以乡村旅游业为核心,带动乡村种植业、养殖业和加工业的发展,具有企业经营的综合性、资源利用的循环可再生性、发展的可持续性、强抗风险性、整体效益优化性等特征。     

汉安成故城考

依据相关考古资料和文献记载,河南省正阳县固城寺古城遗址应即两汉时期的安成故址。隋大业初,安成废省入汝阳。     

以西安为中心的关中城市群的结构优化及其方略

城市群是城市化发展的新形态,也是区域经济发展中的"发展极"。以西安为中心的关中城市群已经形成了西部经济"发展极"的初始条件,成为了西部经济发展的核心地带。以西安为中心的关中城市群的基本现状是:城市群总规模较小,中等城市数量少,小城镇发展滞后。从目前提高竞争力和带动西部经济发展的目标来看,面临着完善空间结构、功能结构和时序结构的任务。在空间结构优化方面,要强化西安中心城市的作用,培育二级中心城市,完善小城镇建设体系,以西安为中心构筑四大城镇群。在功能结构完善方面,要强化城市群区的联系,进行城市群中各个城市功能和性质的重新定位;从时序结构的完善来看,要以增强中心城市的吸引力和辐射力为目标,从近期、远期和远景三个方面安排时序结构。     

清末城市自治思想及其对近代城市发展的影响

清末,一些有识之士发现城市自治制度是西方民主政治的基础性结构后,自觉地将实现民主政治的愿望寄托在争取城市自治之上。清末地方自治的实践主要侧重于城市进行,使城市自治运动实质上成为地方自治运动的主体。政治民主化城市优先发展的思路由此初露端倪,并且成为近代城市在政治层面发展的主线,影响着近代城市的发展走向。城市自治思想使近代城市的发展具有以追求实现民主政治为目标指向的主观精神动力。     

论“河洛文明”产生的地理环境因素

“河洛文明”是“黄河文明”的核心,是华夏文明的源头,她的产生与特殊的地理环境密切相关,从自然方面来讲,影响河洛文明产生的主要有气候、河流、地形、地貌、黄土、动植物、矿藏等因素,这些自然因素对河洛文明的产生有着重要的影响,给“河洛文明”打上了深深的地理环境的烙印。自然环境并不决定河洛文明的产生,但它可以延缓和促进文明的到来。     

清代黄土高原地区城镇书院的时空分布与选址特征

清代城镇书院已比较普遍地发展起来,但城镇书院在各地的发展却经历了不同的时空演变过程。本文通过对黄土高原地区不同级别城镇书院的考察,详细地揭示了不同级别城镇书院的时空演变过程及其特征。府县级城镇仿效省会设立书院的实践主要在乾隆年间才出现,城镇书院的发展总体上由区域东南部向西北部推广,乾隆时期出现发展高峰,发展重心向黄河以西转移。城镇书院时空变化特征显著。书院选址以城内为主,空间上体现了偏重东部和东南部的观念。     

Favelas and the divided city: mapping silences and calculations in Rio de Janeiro's journalistic cartography

This article aims to challenge the widespread consensus that Rio de Janeiro is a divided city by deploying two concepts in critical cartography: cartographic silences and cartographic calculations. As a kind of unconquered territory, a terrae incognitae, favelas were silenced on many of Rio de Janerio's maps over the last century. When these places began to be mapped, and converted to terrae cognitae, power relations often become even more apparent because of the intention to make it legible for purposes of intervention. By analyzing maps published in the mainstream Brazilian press throughout the last century, this article explores how national press often portrays Rio de Janeiro as a city divided between formal neighborhoods, where the state apparatus can ensure the rule of law, and favelas, where parallel politics enforce local forms of governance. In order to disseminate this image of the city, maps can play an important role, locating different urban zones and reinforcing old stereotypes. Despite many studies that focused on both material and embodied forms of state presence within favelas, maps can be an important source of information to understand persistant representations of favelas as excluded and divided places.     

The Making of an Australian ‘Airport City’

Globally, the changing nature of airports, and particularly the juxtaposition of general commercial land uses alongside aviation functions, is captured in the concept of the ‘airport city’. In Australia, commercialisation has impacted nearly all privatised capital city and general aviation airports. Essendon Airport's contested transformation from a run‐down general aviation facility into an emergent business and retail hub in Melbourne's north‐western suburbs serves as an instructive case study of the evolution of the airport city as a new suburban typology. Drawing in part on in‐depth interviews with key stakeholders involved in the redevelopment process, this paper examines the conflicting forces that have driven commercialisation since the late 1990s, the spatial outcomes and the wider planning issues arising.     

Building a City For “The People”: The Politics of Alliance‐Building in the Sydney Green Ban Movement

How can we act to contest urban injustice? This article grapples with this question through an analysis of the green ban movement that emerged in Sydney in the 1970s. For a time, this unruly alliance of construction workers, resident activists, and progressive professionals powerfully enacted a radical right to the city, blocking a range of unjust and destructive “developments” worth billions of dollars and proposing alternative development plans in their place. Drawing on archival research, I demonstrate how the figure of “the people” was crucial to their action. The article examines the rights and the authority that was invested in “the people” by green ban activists, and traces the work of political subjectification through which “the people” was constructed. “The people” was not invoked as a simple majority or as a universal subject whose unity glossed over differences. Rather, in acting as/for “the people”, green ban activists produced a political subject able to challenge the claims of elected politicians, bureaucrats and developers to represent the interests of the city. The article concludes with reflections on the implications of this construction of “the people” for urban politics today.