General Patterns in the World Geography of Soils

The author, head of the Department of Soil Science and Landscape Geochemistry at Moscow University's Geography Faculty, notes that the traditional zonal concept based on heat belts of the earth no longer accounts satisfactorily for the world distribution of soils. She proposes a typology of geographic soil units based on soil characteristics rather than soil-formation factors: major geochemical fields based on soil reaction and oxidation-reduction potential; and soil sectors within fields, defined in terms of soil classes and families, the history of soil formation, and the energy level of soil processes.     

Immigration and the pursuit of amenities

Immigrants to the United States live disproportionately in metropolitan areas where nominal wages are high, but real wages are low. This sorting behavior may be due to preferences toward certain quality‐of‐life amenities. Relative to U.S.‐born inter‐state migrants, immigrants accept lower real wages to locate in cities that are coastal, larger, and offer deeper immigrant networks. They sort toward cities that are hillier and also larger and networked. Immigrants come more from coastal, cloudy, and safer countries—conditional on income and distance. They choose cities that resemble their origin in terms of winter temperature, safety, and coastal proximity.     

Location choice,life cycle and amenities

Our study proposes a housing location choice model where a household faces a trade‐off between proximity to place of employment and proximity to amenities. We consider subsamples of high amenity cities and low amenity cities and households with and without children. We show that the roles of gender, education, homeownership, household composition, and public transportation vary significantly depending on level of amenities. Households with a female head of household, those with a working spouse and with older children prefer locating closer to downtown amenities. Female workers with and without children locate closer to work, in high and low amenity cities.