CONTRIBUTION DES TECHNOLOGIES D'INFORMATION ET DE COMMUNICATION AU DÉVELOPPEMENT

L'évaluation réalisée pour l'Union Européenne de 25 applications de technologies d'information et de communication, a permis de tirer des leçons sur la contribution des TIC au développement rural. Les résultats de cette évaluation mettent en évidence l'importance du contexte économique, social et culturel dans lequel se situe l'introduction de la technologie, ainsi que celle d'autres facteurs dans la réussite ou l'échec d'une application. Ils montrent également que la centralité de la technologie est variable selon les projets. Enfin, ils identifient les différents modes de développement qui sont impulsés.
Lessons have been learned from an evaluation of 25 telematic applications, undertaken for the European Union, on the contribution of TIC to rural development. Evaluation results show the importance of the economic, social, and cultural context and the presence of other factors for the success (or failure) of an application. These results also show that the importance of the technology varies from one project to the next. Finally, these applications lead to different development types.     

假日旅游高峰对旅游生态环境的破坏及对策分析

假日旅游带来的客流高峰对旅游生态环境造成多层次、多方面的破坏,本文对此进行了较为详尽的分析,并从时间分流、客源分流、信息分流、价格分流和景区分流等角度,对解决假日旅游高峰问题提出建议和措施.     

A FAREWELL TO ‘RURAL BLISS’

The article discusses health policies towards school children in Norway from 1900 until the Second World War. It is concerned with dominant definitions of health threats against children and the variables used in defining the groups conceived as most vulnerable to poor health. A distinct change took place in the period. Whereas in the early 1900s poor and working‐class children in urban surroundings were considered to be under severe threats, in the 1920s a less specific category of ‘children’ were conceived as threatened. Eventually rural children were singled out as the important target group for health measures. The shifts had medical as well as political motivations. Another prominent feature in the period was that poverty took on a new meaning in the dominant medical discourse on children: from having been conceived as a material reality impinging upon health, it came to be considered mainly a cultural problem. Especially medical officers within the social democratic camp contested this argument although they did not rule out education and cultural transformation as a means to promote children's health. Despite the conceptual shift, however, social benefits and equal access to health services – measures that lay at the heart of the post‐war welfare state – remained in the 1930s an essential part of promoting children's health.     

THE ECOSYSTEM HEALTH METAPHOR IN SCIENCE AND POLICY

Ecosystem health' is an increasingly common metaphor in the langauge of science and policy. Given the prominence of both the ecosystem and health concepts within geography, this paper examines the meanings generated by the adoption of the metaphor for scientific research and for environmental policy on the North American Great Lakes. 'Ecosystem' can be characterized as an entity, an abstract concept, or a perspective. As perspective, ecosystem shares many features of postmodern science, emphasizing complexity and holism and calling for the inclusion of human beings in our considerations of nature. The ecosystem health metaphor is politically powerful in its ability to evoke action and concern for the environment with an appeal to the universal experiences of human ill-health. The organismic ecosystem health metaphor provides a new, relevant way of thinking about the natural world. In policy discourse, however, metaphor can be problematic in that there is potential for the author or speaker to hide behind the nonliteral language. Moreover, the acceptance of the ecosystem health metaphor which can draw upon widely held beliefs and norms implies that other ways of knowing the world are necessarily omitted. We highlight some of these issues in a case study of a policy document prepared by the Ecological Committee of the Great Lakes International Joint Commission. To continue to know how to study nature in new ways, metaphors must be encouraged, but their meanings must also be widely explored     

Indigenous health organizations,Indigenous community resurgence,and the reclamation of place in urban areas

Research around the world has been nearly unanimous about the positive impacts of Indigenous‐led health organizations on Indigenous peoples' qualitative experiences in health care, in the face of often negative experiences in non‐Indigenous‐led health care settings. Urban environments, including health care environments, are areas of increasing attention with regard to Indigenous peoples' health in Canada. In this study, which took place in the northern city of Prince George, British Columbia, 65 Indigenous community members and health services workers participated in interviews and focus groups, describing their experiences with urban Indigenous‐led health organizations—defined in this study as non‐governmental organizations that prioritize the values and practices of local Indigenous communities. Employing perspectives on place and relationships drawn from Indigenous critical theory and Indigenous community resurgence to analyze the findings of this qualitative study leads to a focus on how relationships impact and can even constitute places, enabling new understandings of the roles of Indigenous‐led health organizations in urban Indigenous community resurgence.     

The Role of Personal Factors in the Location Decision of Software Services Start-up Firms

This paper explores the factors which influence the business location decisions of start-ups, focusing in particular on the role of personal factors. Established explanations of industry location emphasize proximity to firms in the same or related industries and proximity to a wider set of business services, though recent research suggests that personal factors may play an important role in explanations of industry location—particularly in technology-enabled sectors. A survey of 97 new firms, founded between 2008 and 2012, in the Irish software services sector, shows that the business location decision is influenced by the personal motivation of entrepreneurs to attain a desired quality of life, and that this outweighs economic factors such as proximity to firms within the same or related industries, proximity to a broader set of supporting business services, infrastructure or the availability of government support schemes. Personal factors are particularly important to firms located outside the Dublin metropolitan area and to home-based businesses. This has important policy implications for national and regional governments seeking to encourage entrepreneurship in technology-enabled service sectors.     

The path-dependent evolution of the entrepreneurial ecosystem (EE) – dynamics and region-specific assets of the case of Vienna (Austria)

The paper sheds light on the path-dependent development of the Viennese entrepreneurial ecosystem (EE). By taking into account temporal dynamics from the 1990s onwards as well as region-specificities we are able to demonstrate the evolution of the EE is not a linear process, but rather the various pillars of the EE may develop in distinct directions and find themselves in discrete development stages. Our in-depth analysis supports the understanding of how various pillars of the EE – especially the regulatory and finance/funding pillar – interrelate. Furthermore, the detected cause–effect interlinkages are not balanced, but are rather shaped by power-constellations and temporal imprinting as well as other regional specificities, which influence the overall success of the EE.     

Variations in the adoption and willingness to use e-services in three differentiated urban areas

This study analyses electronic service (e-service) adoption in regards to socio-spatial dynamics. Conceptually the paper focuses on the interrelations of both private and public e-services and on the influence that demographic variables have on e-service adoption. To empirically engage in this discussion the study uses segmented residential areas representing different socio-spatial characteristics; namely ‘city center’, ‘high-income suburban’ area, and ‘lower-income suburban’ area. With data from an extensive postal survey and standard statistical methods for analyzing survey data the paper shows the extent of existing differentiation in e-service use between genders and according to age, education and income, as well as spatial differences between the studied residential areas. The study results, thus, clearly indicate that the e-service use has still statistically differentiated user profiles, particularly if it is considered in a spatial setting. The paper concludes by addressing directions for the future research.