Neighbourhood food environments revisited: When food deserts meet food swamps

This study uses service area–based coverage and various count regression methods to assess neighbourhood-level healthy and unhealthy food environments, and food access associated with different socio-economic groups in Edmonton, Canada. We identify three types of vulnerable neighbourhoods according to different food environments: food deserts (i.e., neighbourhoods lack sufficient access to healthy foods); food swamps (i.e., neighbourhoods have excess access to unhealthy foods); and those with overlaps of food swamps and food deserts. We also identify neighbourhoods with superior access to healthy foods (i.e., food oases). Additionally, our results from regression analyses indicate: (1) child population is negatively associated with both healthy and unhealthy food resources; (2) good access to public transportation is associated with good coverage of all healthy food outlets and convenience stores; and (3) deprived neighbourhoods with higher percentages of minority populations have better coverage of both healthy and unhealthy foods in general. The results from this study can help the City of Edmonton identify the key neighbourhoods with high potential for local business and the hotspot neighbourhoods that require particular support. Tailored strategies are proposed to effectively and efficiently improve food environments with limited resources.     

"旅游体验"视角下的特色旅游开发与管理问题探讨——以我国北方沙漠旅游为例

寻求心理体验是各种类型旅游活动具有的共同属性,能否满足体验需求是旅游经营特别是特色旅游能否健康发展的根本所在。特色旅游是旅游发展到一定阶段时的高层次体验需求。本文以沙漠旅游为例,从旅游者切身感受的视角出发,通过分析沙漠特色旅游体验的形成机理来认识旅游开发及服务管理中出现的问题,找出在现实状况下我国北方沙漠旅游发展的途径:树立一切从“旅游体验”出发的理念,贯穿于开发规划、产品设计和服务模式之中,树立品牌,扩大远程市场,使沙漠旅游具有可持续性。     

The violence of spectacle: Statist schemes to green the desert and constructing Astana and Ashgabat as urban oases

Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan have been home to the most impressive urban development projects in the entire post-Soviet world. Their capitals, Astana and Ashgabat, now boast uniquely monumental architecture and local leaders have invested heavily in ‘green belt’ projects to surround the cities with lush vegetation, as well as developing green and water-laden public spaces. In doing so, elites have drawn on Soviet-era ‘garden city’ idealism, as well as more recent environmental sustainability narratives. Yet these schemes are anything but sustainable. Unfolding on the arid Central Asian steppe, they depend on heavy irrigation, with water diverted from rivers that already fail to meet regional demands. Employing a comparative approach, I ask why and with what effect state planners have sought to craft Astana and Ashgabat as spectacularly green ‘urban oases,’ when their local climates should defy the logic of sustainability. In so doing, I consider urban greening in the two countries as part of a wider phenomenon of statist schemes to green the desert, which have a long and diverse history. Extending the literature on desert greening, I argue that the structural violence they manifest and perpetuate is best understood by attending to how they operate as a form of spectacle.     

On the correlation between the formation of the “Maowusu Desert” and land use in Liuhu sub-prefecture in the Tang dynasty

The historical changes of the “Maowusu Desert” can be divided into three phases: the late Tang dynasty phase, the Song-Yuan-Ming dynasty phase, and the late Ming dynasty to the present phase. Different parts of the desert were formed in different times, with the northwestern part being the earliest to form. As all evidence shows, the Maowusu Desert in its early stage is believed to have taken shape largely around the ancient site of the You state during the years of Tianbao in the Tang dynasty, which is nowadays the eastern half of the Etuoke banner and Prior-Etuoke banner. The formation of the initial Maowusu Desert is not attributed to the so-called over-cultivation from farming but to the long-time exceedingly quartered husbandry starting from the 4th year of the Zhenguan to the years of Tianbao in the Tang dynasty, which resulted in the destruction of the ecology of the natural grassland. __________ Translated from: Shaanxi Shifan Daxue Xuebao 陕西师范大学学报 (Shaanxi Normal University Journal), No.3, 2004     

Monks on the move? An assessment of mobility at the medieval Nubian monastery of Ghazali,Sudan (ca. 680–1,275 CE)

The location of Ghazali monastery away from the Nile valley within the relatively isolated environs of the Bayuda desert presents a landscape suggestive of mobility toward the monastery by those who chose to reside there as monks. To assess this potentiality, a sample of 37 individuals from the monastic cemetery (Cemetery 2) were analysed for ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr and δ¹⁸O to assess residency during dental enamel formation. The data generated bring into question the nature of mobility to Ghazali monastery, particularly in regard to the potential movement of people from the Nile valley, adjacent desertic landscapes, and further afield.     

再论唐六胡州城址的定位问题——兼谈历史地理学研究方法

六胡州是唐初为安置突厥降户而设置的鲁、丽、含、塞、依、契六个羁縻州府,由于其在历史研究上的重要意义,一直受到学术界关注,并取得诸多进展。但六胡州城址地望长期以来完全处于悬而不决的状态。近年来部分综合交叉研究在定位六胡州城址上取得了创建性成果,同时也引发了一些学术争议。本文拟通过历史文献考证与野外实地考察相结合的研究方法,运用城市地理学原理和3S技术手段,对相关争论进行梳理,并对其中一些城址进行了再次定位。研究认为,六胡州中鲁州确应在今宁夏盐池兴武营城址处;而匡州城址、故宥州城址和兰池都督府均处于查干巴拉嘎素古城所在,且沿用的是六胡州中的丽州或契州。     

Obscure oases: natural,cultural and historical geography of western Queensland's Tertiary sandstone springs

The distribution of surface water dictates human and animal activity in arid zones. Although typically small, hidden, and inaccessible, springs and wells fed by local aquifers were the only sources of reliable water across vast areas of inland Australia until the last century. Compared to larger, more accessible water sources such as riverine waterholes and Great Artesian Basin discharge springs, their history is sketchy and poorly documented, although rich in intrigue and mythology. Since the expansion of artificial waters and motorised transport, many of these small oases have been forgotten, and their location and permanence are now less well‐known than for thousands of years. We examine the distribution, hydrogeology, cultural history, and biological values of Tertiary sandstone springs in western Queensland based on a review of historical literature, interviews with long‐term residents, and extensive field surveys. One hundred and sixty springs were documented, and nearly 40% of these have declined in flow or become inactive since pastoral settlement for reasons that are not well understood. While their decline in some areas seems related to shallow bores sunk into their local aquifers, it is possible that some smaller springs owed their existence to regular human maintenance. Others are probably naturally dynamic over decadal time scales. This study documents an almost‐forgotten aspect of Queensland's natural and cultural history.     

The Landes de Gascogne (southwest France): periglacial desert and cultural frontier during the Palaeolithic

During the last glacial period, a large part of the Aquitaine basin (southwest France) was a periglacial desert comprising coversands with low-relief dune fields surrounded by loess accumulations. OSL and radiocarbon dates show that the phase of maximum sand deposition coincides with Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 2. Peats and gleyic palaeosoils intercalated within the sands at some sites indicate that vegetation cover was able to develop locally during short events, possibly D–O interstadials, due to raised groundwater levels in interdunal depressions. Few Palaeolithic sites have been discovered in the coversand area in contrast to the peripheral loess region. Systematic survey along a future highway corridor demonstrates that this paucity of sites is not the result of insufficient survey nor deep site burial, but rather reflects an archaeological reality. This strongly suggests that the sand area was not attractive for hunter–gatherer populations due to its reduced levels of water resources, and available vegetation and animal biomass. The distribution of cultural markers such as art items and projectile points also shows that the coversand area probably acted as a barrier separating two different cultural sub-areas, one in the Pyrenees and Cantabria, the other in the Périgord. As a consequence, the commonly accepted view that southwest France, as a whole, served as a refugia during the cold and arid phases of the Pleistocene should be replaced by a more complex one that reflects the fact that a large part of the territory was almost unoccupied and that human populations were concentrated along alluvial valleys.     

Geographies of capital formation and rescaling: A historical‐geographical approach to the food desert problem

Although the “food desert” concept has captured the public imagination and spurred public policy efforts in many North American cities, the term has been critiqued by academics for being definitionally and methodologically vague, and for providing an incomplete picture of the complexity of food access. Rather than dismiss the study of urban, inner‐city food deserts, however, scholars can study disparities in retail food access through a historical, critical political economy lens to understand underserved retail landscapes as a product of capital formation and rescaling over time. The purpose of this article is to conduct such an analysis, using the case study of a low‐income community in Kingston, Ontario. Using historical research and qualitative interviews, the major finding of this analysis is that the physical accessibility of retail food appears to have declined over time in relation to the capitalization of the retail food sector. An imperfect relationship can be outlined over three phases of Canadian urban economic history to suggest that the food desert problem emerged largely in the transition from a decentralized, small‐scale, and neighbourhood‐embedded retail food industry to the scaled‐up, disembedded industry that now dominates the landscape. This industry‐level rescaling is contributing to a new urban politics of class and consumption through subtle, everyday activities such as food shopping.     

Production of subterranean resources in the Atacama Desert: 19th and early 20th century mining/water extraction in The Taltal district,northern Chile

The Chilean water model imposed by the Chilean dictatorship in 1981 is broadly known as a radical example of neoliberal water management. Several studies have focused their analyses on this model, and its relation to mining, from a political ecology perspective; however, this has minimized the broader historical context. In this paper, we followed a geohistorical standpoint to gain an extensive understanding of the processes of mining development and the related water extraction in the Atacama Desert. By analyzing different official documents, historical sources and scientific discourses of the 19th and early 20th centuries, we aimed to denaturalize the idea of the Atacama Desert as hyper-arid space, rich in mineral resources. By doing so, from a political ecology perspective, and with a critical approach to territory, we interrogated the mining development in the Taltal district (1840–1920). This exercise led us to understand the Atacama Desert as a socially-produced mining territory, or miningscape, where foreign actors have produced hegemonic discourses and uneven materialities. Here, water, minerals, global markets, scientific knowledge, political and legal discourses, and colonialism have inevitably become interwoven in a territorial long-standing production process. Thus, we propose that the production of miningscapes and waterscapes are entangled process in the Andes mining territories. In turn, this process has enabled the reproduction of the Chilean state, capital accumulation, and the consolidation of a modern project at the expense of local populations and rationalities, which have been invisibilized.