Children's daily travel to school in Johannesburg-Soweto,South Africa: geography and school choice in the Birth to Twenty cohort study

This paper has two aims: to explore approaches to the measurement of children's daily travel to school in a context of limited geospatial data availability and to provide data regarding school choice and distance travelled to school in Soweto-Johannesburg, South Africa. The paper makes use of data from the Birth to Twenty cohort study (n?=?1428) to explore three different approaches to estimating school choice and travel to school. First, straight-line distance between home and school is calculated. Second, census geography is used to determine whether a child's home and school fall in the same area. Third, distance data are used to determine whether a child attends the nearest school. Each of these approaches highlights a different aspect of mobility, and all provide valuable data. Overall, primary-school-aged children in Soweto-Johannesburg are shown to be travelling substantial distances to school on a daily basis. Over a third travel more than 3 km one way to school, 60% attend schools outside of the suburb in which they live, and only 18% attend their nearest school. These data provide evidence for high levels of school choice in Johannesburg-Soweto, and that families and children are making substantial investments in pursuit of high-quality educational opportunities. Additionally, these data suggest that two patterns of school choice are evident: one pattern involving travel of substantial distances and requiring a higher level of financial investment and a second pattern involving choice between more local schools, requiring less travel and a more limited financial investment.     

Rising Second Home Numbers in Rural Ireland: Distribution,Drivers and Implications

This article highlights a marked growth in the number of second homes in Ireland since the mid-1990s, which is concentrated in the rural and coastal parts of the peripheral Border, Midwest, Southeast, Southwest and West regions, together with parallel growth in the number of long-term vacant dwellings in these regions. These phenomena are linked to economic and population growth, the “laissez faire” nature of land use planning in rural Ireland, the generous fiscal treatment of housing, as well as tax incentives to encourage house building in economically marginal areas. The social and economic impacts of these dwelling on individual localities vary, depending on their number, usage patterns and the nature of the local economy and housing market. However, their environmental consequences are largely negative as is their impact on the national economy and on the economies of those regions where vacant dwellings are concentrated. Thus, our research questions the value of housing-led rural development, as they can result in excessive output of vacant and second homes and highlights the importance of adequately resourcing planning authorities if the worst excesses of rural housing overdevelopment are to be avoided.     

Metaphors and fault lines: Case studies of HIV/AIDS in Haiti and Uganda

Farmer, Paul. AIDS and Accusation: Haiti and the Geography of Blame. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. xiv + 338 pp. including notes, bibliography, and index. $35.00 cloth. Barnett, Tony and Piers Blaikie. AIDS in Africa: Its Present and Future Impact. New York: Guilford Press, 1992. ix + 193 pp. including references and index. $18.95 paper.     

Property-Led Urban,Town and Rural Regeneration in Ireland: Positive and Perverse Outcomes in Different Spatial and Socio-Economic Contexts

In the mid-1980s, fiscal incentives were introduced to encourage the construction and refurbishment of residential developments in declining inner-city districts in Ireland. These were abolished in 2006 but, during the intervening period, their focus was extended to include: large towns, small towns and a large rural region. Concurrently, the context for their implementation changed as an economic boom replaced prolonged economic stagnation. This article examines the changing design of these incentives, their outputs and their intended and unintended impacts. It argues that, initially they were successful in drawing development into declining neighbourhoods, but the extension of their lifespan and spatial focus created negative perverse impacts and deadweight costs for the exchequer. Thus it concludes that this regeneration strategy is useful for animating development in brownfield sites, where there is demand for housing but also barriers to its development. If applied to rural areas where housing demand is weaker, they can generate excess supply and limited benefits for public investment.     

Art and the meaning of things

Bronner, Simon J. Grasping Things: Folk Material Culture and Mass Society in America. Louisville: The University of Kentucky Press, 1986. xv + 247 pp. including photographs, chapter references, and index. $24.00 cloth.

Ewers, John C. Plains Indian Sculpture: A Traditional Art from America's Heartland. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1986. 239 pp. including photographs, appendix, and bibliography. $39.95, cloth.

Shadbolt, Doris. Bill Reid. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1986.192 pp. including photographs, select bibliography, and chronological list of illustrations. $39.95 cloth.