Tales of the Unexpected: Exploring Car Boot Sales as Marginal Spaces of Contemporary Consumption

Marginal and/or resistant consumption practices have been neglected in current geographical debates on consumption and retailing. This has resulted in partial and skewed theorizations of exchange within contemporary consumption. Consumption spaces such as car boot sales represent sites in which the conventions of the marketplace are suspended or abandoned, and replaced by forms of sourcing, commodity circulation, transaction codes, pricing mechanisms and value quite different from those which typify more conventional retail malls and department stores. Drawing on the anthropological literature on traditional and peasant markets, we argue that exchange within the car boot sale is socially, culturally and geographically embedded and we emphasize the intrinsic importance of fun and sociality to such activities. Marginal spaces such as the car boot sale offer both some important clues into the potential for rethinking marketplace dynamics, notably with respect to our understandings of value, and some intriguing possibilities for consumer politics.     

Residential location,workplace location and car driving in four Norwegian cities

Based on a study in four Norwegian cities (Oslo, Stavanger/Sandnes, Bergen and Trondheim) differing in size and centre structure, this article illuminates how residential and workplace location, local-area density and transit accessibility influence different aspects of travel behaviour. We find strong effects of residential and workplace distance to the city centre on overall driving distances and commuting distances. We also find clear effects of local area densities around residences and workplaces on the choice of car as a travel mode, along with less pronounced effects of the distance from dwellings and workplaces to the city centre. In the cities with the best developed transit provision, we also see clear effects of transit accessibility at the residence on the propensity of choosing the car as travel mode. The results provide strong support of Norwegian national policies of urban densification as a planning strategy to curb the growth in urban motoring. However, although the influences of urban structure on travel show many similarities across the four cities, there are also important differences reflecting variations in centre structure (predominantly mono- or polycentric) and population size. The magnitude of the influences of various urban structural characteristics on travel behaviour are thus highly context-dependent.     

A hyperreal first-place: Portugal dos Pequenitos theme park and the narrative of origins

Abstract

This article analyses a nation-theme park in Portugal. Located in Coimbra and built in the 1940s, when Portugal was a colonial empire and was under the rule of a right wing dictatorship, the park was designed as a pedagogical device for children to learn about the nation. In the park, the whole of the nation was represented by miniature replicas of buildings representing European Portugal and its overseas territories. Seventy-five years after its construction and with little changes to its material structures, this theme park is the most visited tourist attraction in Coimbra. This paper presents the result of ethnographic work carried out with Portuguese visitors to the park so as to understand the affect the place has over Portuguese visitors. The work undertaken with the latter has allowed to identify a narrative of ‘firstness’ that constructs the park as a hyper-real first-place by Portuguese visitors.     

The Big Buddha of Hong Kong: an accidental Buddhist theme park

ABSTRACT

The Tian Tan Buddha is the core of a tourism site on Lantau Island, Hong Kong, around which a cable car ride, the Po-Lin monastery and its museum, and the village of Ngong Ping have come to comprise an eclectic set of tourism nuclei that ‘accidentally’ became the ‘Buddhist theme park’ of Hong Kong due to the spatial juxtaposition in an isolated site of these disconnected and even dissonant components built at different times by different jurisdictions. The first objective of this article is to explore the developmental process of a religious site into a theme park of sort through a lengthy process filled with contestation and manipulations. The history-dependent and erratic nature of this process validates the notion of ‘accidental’ theme park used here. It is shown that over time, the Big Buddha went from being a Buddhism-themed leisure site to being generally perceived and promoted as essentially a theme park through a process of partial Disneyization. The second objective is to examine how the ‘theme park’ is perceived by its visitors, more precisely how they see it after their visit and what first-time visitors expect from it beforehand. The first enquiry, performed through the analysis of TripAdvisor reviews, indicates that ex-post, the visitors typically describe having experienced a visit to a theme park. The second enquiry, performed by interviewing first-time visitors about to access the site, suggests that while many first-time visitors expect to visit a theme park as well, others, mainly Western tourists, are expecting a more cultural experience. The findings of the two inquiries are compared to each other and to the image of the site promoted by the local tourism authorities. The subdued political message of the Big Buddha and the degree to which it is discerned by visitors are also discussed.     

GIS技术在萨拉乌苏考古遗址公园规划设计中的应用

传统规划设计工作的技术平台多以计算机辅助设计(CAD)为主,本工作以内蒙古自治区鄂尔多斯萨拉乌苏考古遗址公园规划为例,将Arc GIS Desktop作为技术平台应用到公园的规划设计工作中。首先,通过对规划区的实地踏勘,采集相关数据和资料,进行规划区数据库建设;其次,在数据库建设的基础上,通过GIS技术构建与现实环境对应的虚拟地理信息空间,实现规划区景观的三维可视化;最后,利用三维景观模型对现实地理环境进行模拟、分析及虚拟场景飞行。不同于传统CAD的二维工作平台,本工作借助GIS对空间数据和属性数据的强大处理功能及其三维景观可视化模块,为实现内蒙古鄂尔多斯萨拉乌苏考古遗址公园的科学规划提供辅助。     

国家文化公园:理论溯源、现实问题与制度探索

"十三五"以来,我国文化遗产保护事业进入新阶段,但是文化遗产管理体系复杂、多头管理、权责不明等问题一直未得到解决.因此,国家文化公园建设过程中,应首先理顺国家文化公园与既有遗产保护体系之间的逻辑与关系,建立以重大文化遗产为主体的国家文化公园体系;以保护传承为首要目标,构建统一规范高效的国家文化公园管理体制;突出国家代表...     

Seasonal weather sensitivity,temperature thresholds,and climate change impacts for park visitation

Historical park visitation and weather data, taken at the daily time scale from 2000 to 2009 for Pinery Provincial Park in southern Ontario (Canada), were analysed as an objective measure of the weather sensitivity, temperature thresholds, and potential impacts of projected climate change for park visitation. Three seasonal weather-visitation models were constructed using multivariable linear regression (peak, shoulder, off-season). To account for both natural and institutional seasonality, the weather-visitation models included both climatic (temperature, precipitation) and social (weekends, holidays) variables, which demonstrated equably comparable effects on visitation across the three models. Critical temperature thresholds were identified for each season using one-way analysis of variance to determine the range of temperatures within which the threshold was evident; the specific degree of temperature associated with the threshold was identified within the seasonal regression models. Temperatures over 33 °C during the peak season and over 29 °C during the shoulder season indicated critical thresholds at which point conditions that were ‘too hot’ for some caused a decline in visitation. Furthermore, temperatures below 11 °C indicated another critical threshold, where conditions were ‘too cold’ for most and therefore park visitation was less sensitive to temperature variability below this threshold. A partial sensitivity analysis for the impact of a warmer, wetter climate on park visitation was conducted, illustrating the effect of a 1 °C to 5 °C warming in maximum temperatures, coupled with a 5% to 15% increase in total precipitation. In response to projected climate change, the weather-visitation models suggested that for each additional degree of warming experienced, despite the negative effects of increasing precipitation and more frequent heat extremes, annual park visitation could increase by 3.1%, annually. The projected increase in park visitation as a result of rising temperatures was mainly associated with shoulder season visitation, with only minor increases in peak season visitation.     

主题公园拥挤感知的影响因素研究:以方特欢乐世界为例

近年来随着"黄金周"假期政策的出台以及消费者旅游需求的急剧增长,拥挤成为困扰国内众多景区发展的主要瓶颈之一,而目前关于旅游景区游客拥挤感知的研究却相对薄弱。文章以方特欢乐世界主题公园为例,运用IPA评价分析模型对影响主题公园游客拥挤感知的关键性因素进行了评价和讨论。结果表明,不同的学历与游客的拥挤感知差异性显著,呈负相关,男性的拥挤感知大于女性;时间和密度因素是影响游客拥挤感知的主要因素。最后从游客对园内的拥挤期望出发,提出了改进我国主题公园的管理和提高游客满意度的建议。     

微观视角下中国大城市家庭汽车拥有情况研究——以北京市为例

目前国内从微观角度对家庭汽车所有权的研究很少。本文试图基于对北京市的一项大型问卷调查数据,从微观视角分析中国大城市家庭汽车所有权的主要影响因素。结果显示,中国城市家庭汽车所有权主要受能力因素和需求因素两方面影响。具体而言,家庭收入越高、持有驾照的成员数越多、户主受教育程度越高、户主年龄越大、离地铁站越远,家庭拥有汽车的可能性越大。家庭规模、家庭内的孩子数及是否住在内城等在国外研究中较为重要的解释变量在国内并不显著。有车家庭的户主在日常通勤中对汽车的使用强度较高,说明居民购买汽车主要为满足实际需要,"炫耀性"消费的因素不多。     

生态关系视角下国家高新区的演进机制与发展路径

基于对国外文献的综合分析,借助网络对国家重点高新区的历史演变和发展动态进行了理论审视。在对国家高新区进行抽样调查的基础上,迁移运用协同进化理论、复杂性理论和演进经济理论,采取自上而下的方法,对国家高新区的演进机制和发展路径进行了理论抽象,构建了"技术创新过程及成果产业化"、"高新区演进机制"、"技术极功能组织"以及"高新区发展路径"等概念模型;对高新区的创新、创业环境(生境结构)、孵化器体系以及产业集群的组织结构等,进行了深入的生态学解析。