‘Islands within Islands?’ The Maldivian resort,between segregation and integration

Abstract

The Maldives resort islands are a type of tourist enclave subject to a dual form of borderization. The islands have an external border that coincides with each island’s coastline and with the limits of the private property of the resort; this border regulates the movement of tourists and locals. The islands also have an internal border that separates the outer edge of the island from the inner edge. The outer edge, which is supposed to represent the perfect landscape of the ‘tropical island,’ houses all of the tourist facilities, while the interior contains the structures dedicated to the metabolic activities of the resort. The frontline staff members and the tourists share the ‘dreamscape’ of the outer edge, whereas the maintenance workers live in the secluded space inside the island, where they are typically hidden from the sight of tourists by high walls, and their movement is usually restricted from staff designated areas to their location of work. For maintenance workers, these spaces, necessarily limited due to the small size of the coral islands, risk becoming ‘islands within islands.’ Recently, the Maldivian government has begun to promote projects and initiatives in support of territorial integration between the resorts and communities of neighboring islands. Thus, the outer limits of the resort islands are, today, more porous. Their internal borders, in contrast, remain very difficult to cross.     

THE IMPACT OF CRIME ON APARTMENT PRICES: EVIDENCE FROM STOCKHOLM,SWEDEN

This study uses data of about 9,000 apartment sales in Stockholm, Sweden, to assess the impact of crime on property prices. The study employs hedonic pricing modelling to estimate the impact of crime controlling for other factors (property and neighbourhood characteristics). Geographic Information System (GIS) is used to combine apartment sales by coordinates with offences, land use characteristics and demographic data of the population. The novelty of this research is threefold. First, it explores a set of land use attributes created by spatial techniques in GIS in combination with detailed geographical data in hedonic pricing modelling. Second, the effect of crime in neighbouring zones at one place can be measured by incorporating spatial lagged variables of offence rates into the model. Third, the study provides evidence of the impact of crime on housing prices in a capital city of a traditional welfare state, information otherwise lacking in the international literature. Our results indicate that apartment prices in a specific area are strongly affected by crime in its neighbouring zones, regardless of crime type. When offences were broken down by types, residential burglary, theft, vandalism, assault and robbery individually had a significant negative effect on property values. However, for residential burglary such an effect is not homogenous across space, and apartment prices in central areas are often less discounted by being exposed to crime than those in the city's outskirts.     

晋中平原地区农村聚落扩展分析

在实地考察的基础上，章从规模、速度、形态和类型等方面分析了晋中平原地区农村聚落扩展的特点，并深入探讨了影响农村聚落扩展的因素，认为聚落扩展主要是人口增长和家庭规模变化、社会经济发展与收入增加、交通条件改善、农村地区工业化及其他因素共同作用的结果。最后指出了由于聚落扩展而带来的许多难以解决的问题。     

Stability of Slender Masonry Columns with Circular Cross-Section under Their Own Weight and Eccentric Vertical Load

This work concerns the stability of unreinforced masonry slender circular cross-sectional columns subjected to their own weight and eccentric vertical load. Cantilever columns are examined, considering that the material has infinitely linear elastic behavior in compression and has no tensile strength. For the analysis, an existing numerical model and solution procedure developed for the stability analysis of masonry elements with rectangular cross-section are utilized and adapted to the circular columns. For the instability of the columns, an appropriate criterion that relates the top lateral deflection to the intensity of the applied eccentric vertical load is employed. By considering a reference column, critical buckling load is obtained, behavior of the column interpreted and efficiency of the numerical model emphasized. Performing a nonlinear buckling analysis using a general purpose software on this reference column, obtained results are compared with those of the adapted procedure of the present study. Implementing parametric analyses on reference column, effects of the column slenderness, eccentricity of vertical load, elastic modulus, and self-weight on the buckling load are investigated. Presented calculation procedure provides a useful tool in order to calculate the critical loads or to check the stability of masonry circular columns.     

Villagizing the city: turning rural ethnic heritage into urban modernity in southwest China

This paper examines the rural ethnic heritage-inspired transformation of the built environment of a relatively small county town in China. The paper explores the ways village-based ethnic heritage is being repositioned by local leaders as a resource for tourism-oriented revenue generation and for ‘improving’ the ‘quality’ and behaviour of town residents. Viewing heritage as a ‘technology of government,’ the paper provides an analysis based on three interrelated themes: the discourses by which town leaders and planners have conceived the heritage development project as one of improvement, the spatial practices by which those discourses have been realised in the built environment, and the ways residents themselves have appropriated and ‘inhabited’ this new ‘villagized’ city as they go about their everyday urban lives. Based on ethnographic field work, a survey, and extended interviews over a period of four years, the paper finds the town leadership’s faith in the ability of the built environment to shape and improve the conduct of citizens to be overstated. While the town’s transformation has generated a new sense of urban modernity among residents, their ways of inhabiting and using urban space have little relevance to the ‘heritagized’ environment in which they now live.     

Health centre visits among the elderly with chronic ailments: Evidence from the Kanchanaburi Demographic Surveillance System, 2004, Thailand

This study deployed statistical and spatial (GIS) analyses to test the effects of geographic, demographic and occupational factors in predicting health centre visits among the elderly (≥60 years) with chronic ailments in Kanchanaburi Province, western Thailand. Datasets from the Kanchanaburi Demographic Surveillance System (2004 baseline survey and a 2006 project follow-up) comprised five land-use landscape and occupational strata: urban/semi-urban (industrial), rice field, plantation crop, upland and mixed economy. Travel distance to the nearest health centre was calculated following transportation routes and the GPS coordinates of individual home locations, and the number of healthcare visits under the national free universal coverage (UC) scheme reported for the previous year was used as a dependent variable in regressions. Broadly, the study found that distance was not a significant predictor of the rate of elderly health centres visits for those with co-residing spouses and/or adult children (77% of sample), and for the elderly still working (48% of the sample) who were the least likely to access healthcare. Owning motorised vehicles did not encourage visits, which also varied by land-use and occupational strata.     

Geographies of adult multigenerational family households in metropolitan Sydney

This paper investigates spatial trends of multigenerational adult families in metropolitan Sydney. Australia's immigrant gateway city, Sydney has high housing costs and infrastructure pressures, and planning policies support higher residential densities. In this context, the accommodation of persons living in multigenerational families is examined, by major region of origin, their geographies in Sydney, and by housing costs and constraints. Results highlight that cultural origins were influential in multigenerational household formations, and such formation is higher in areas of first and second ethnic community formation areas. Multigenerational living is also more common in middle ring and outer areas of cheaper housing. Implications are drawn for more nuanced housing policies in Sydney and comparable cities, given that detached and semi‐detached houses were favoured by these households, whereas two‐fifths of new housing constructed in Sydney in 2011 consists of two or less bedroom apartments.     

Phase‐field modeling of epitaxial growth of polycrystalline quartz veins in hydrothermal experiments

Mineral precipitation in an open fracture plays a crucial role in the evolution of fracture permeability in rocks, and the microstructural development and precipitation rates are closely linked to fluid composition, the kind of host rock as well as temperature and pressure. In this study, we develop a continuum thermodynamic model to understand polycrystalline growth of quartz aggregates from the rock surface. The adapted multiphase‐field model takes into consideration both the absolute growth rate as a function of the driving force of the reaction (free energy differences between solid and liquid phases), and the equilibrium crystal shape (Wulff shape). In addition, we realize the anisotropic shape of the quartz crystal by introducing relative growth rates of the facets. The missing parameters of the model, including surface energy and relative growth rates, are determined by detailed analysis of the crystal shapes and crystallographic orientation of polycrystalline quartz aggregates in veins synthesized in previous hydrothermal experiments. The growth simulations were carried out for a single crystal and for grain aggregates from a rock surface. The single crystal simulation reveals the importance of crystal facetting on the growth rate; for example, growth velocity in the c‐axis direction drops by a factor of ~9 when the faceting is complete. The textures produced by the polycrystal simulations are similar to those observed in the hydrothermal experiments, including the number of surviving grains and crystallographic preferred orientations as a function of the distance from the rock wall. Our model and the methods to define its parameters provide a basis for further investigation of fracture sealing under varying conditions.     

Young people's cartographies of school choice: the urban imaginary and moral panic

A critical geography of school choice illuminates how parental school choice reproduces unequal urban conditions. This paper contributes to this scholarship by arguing that the reproduction of urban spaces is reinforced by the ways the dominant urban imaginary shapes how youths imagine and organise their school options. I draw from the fields of critical geography, school choice, and sociology of moral panic to theorise how children's geographies are informed by the dominant urban imaginary and reconstituted reiteratively by moral anxiety. Through this lens, I analyse ethnographic data collected on school choice policy, along with interviews with 59 youth (ages 11–19) in Vancouver, Canada. My analysis demonstrates that the dominant forms of classed stigmatisation of marginalised urban schools are important to young people's rejection of those schools. My analysis also shows that moral panic and rising fears of violence underwrite the spatial patterns of youth participation in school choice.