Beautiful Geography: The Pictorial Maps of Ruth Taylor White

This paper explores the career of Ruth Taylor White, an American cartographic illustrator who published a significant number of pictorial maps from the 1920s into the 1940s. Taylor White’s ‘cartographs’ (as she called them) were characterized by her signature bobble-headed cartoon characters who romped through colourful, attractive landscapes. These visually rich and highly narrative maps simultaneously strove for accuracy and engaged in profound stereotyping with regard to culture, race, gender and class. They reveal not only the aesthetic and conceptual preferences of their maker but also the cultural biases of their middle-class, white American audience.     

四川区域中心馆藏文物保存环境监测平台常见故障分析与改进措施

四川省馆藏文物保存环境监测区域中心(简称四川区域中心)平台,经过两年多的运行实践,实现了12家博物馆监测站的集成联网。本研究分析了区域中心监测平台运行中常见故障现象的表现形式、故障原因及故障率。结果表明:监测平台的主要故障现象为传输异常和数据异常;除温湿度外的其他监测终端故障率较高;软件平台建设也不够完善,导致数据利用率低,尚不能实现风险评估、预测预警和预防调控等管理功能。针对分析发现的问题,提出一些相应的技术措施和管理措施,为有效降低故障的发生率,提升国内区域中心平台建设提供一定的指导和参考。     

Inca builders at Machu Picchu National Archaeological Park

Knowledge about the Inca measurement system is based on information from the colonial chronicles and modern studies of the 16th-century Quechua dictionaries. Based on those texts, we can presume that the Incas used an anthropometric system of measurement adopted from the proportions of the human body. Using cosine quantogram analysis and statistical verification, it is possible to verify the existence of the measurement system used by the Inca architects. For this purpose, a measurement series of architectural and water infrastructure elements were collected from 3D point cloud of the Chachabamba and Machu Picchu settlements in Machupicchu National Archaeological Park.     

Information transparency,monitoring, and incentives under decentralization: Evidence from China's fiscal reform of “province managing county”

Monitoring is deemed crucial for the incentivization of a decentralized organization, but its function relies on information transparency between the central authority and the delegated individuals. We test this hypothesis by considering changes in the fiscal behavior of Chinese county governments following an exogenous fiscal reform in 2004/2005 that removed information obstacles between provinces and counties. Employing data on 590 Chinese counties from 2000 to 2009, we find that counties in the reform provinces adopt a more proactive fiscal policy after the reform, suggesting that they become more incentivized in the political competition for economic growth. Such effects are stronger in counties with fewer competing peers and counties with either high or low ranks in the records of economic growth among peers. The increase in counties' productive spending leads to higher economic growth in later years.     

The Making of a Regulatory Crisis: Restructuring New York City's Water Supply

Much practically orientated environmental research is marked by a polarity between functionalist abstraction and ahistorical normative discourse. This paper seeks to bridge the divide between theoretical and empirical research through a case study of New York City's water supply. Current processes of socio-economic restructuring are leading to negative environmental consequences obscured by a failure to extend analysis beyond limited temporal, spatial or sectoral scales. Insights from regulationist theory show that a combination of fiscal, political and other developments are bringing about a wide-ranging reformulation of existing patterns of environmental regulation and service provision in the city. The power of the state is being radically diminished in relation to the power of capital and a plethora of different interest groups. A relatively simple centralized model of environmental regulation is being transformed into a complex decentralized pattern involving the emergence of new approaches to urban governance. Further research is needed on the contradictions between capitalist accumulation and environmental regulation at different spatial scales in order to link New York's changing role within the global economy to the declining political legitimacy and fiscal capability of the state to play an extensive role in environmental management.     

Making waves: the valuation of innovations in San Sebastian’s surf economy

This study takes a valuation perspective to study how and where products and innovations are gaining ‘economic significance’ in the contemporary economy. Building on a recent research stream in economic geography and urban and regional studies, it highlights that the economic value of many products is not formed within production systems alone, but relies on co-constructed connections between production and consumption systems, playing out across multiple geographies. It distinguishes between three types of economic valuation pathways – namely technical, experiential and identity-based – which although analytically distinct may actually build and reinforce one another. This approach is empirically illustrated with the case of the surf-related economy in the city of San Sebastian (Basque Country, Spain), which is used to make a broader point about the growing relevance of a valuation approach to understand competitive advantage and economic renewal in localized production systems.     

An analysis of the Spanish ceramic tile industry research contracts and patents

In this work, we apply a systemic approach to the analysis of a particular geographic territory, the industrial district. We are particularly interested in analysing the interaction between the productive-technological environment and the scientific environment by an examination of research contracts and patents. Our analysis shows that R&D activity in the Spanish ceramic tile District Innovation System was mainly conducted by suppliers. Final producers’ innovation efforts were related to non-technological aspects and differentiation.     

Place-based innovation policy for industrial diversification in regions

New industrial innovation policies like smart specialization aim at boosting economic growth by diversification towards more complex and higher value economic activities. This paper proposes a conceptual and analytical framework to support the design and implementation of such policies considering place-specific preconditions, particularly the differentiation of the regional system of innovation and entrepreneurship and the degree of current industrial diversification. The paper expands on the links between these preconditions and the barriers and opportunities for industrial diversification. Consequently, it proposes an archetypical place-based policy framework covering overall policy objectives as well as measures at the level of actors, networks, and the institutional and organizational support structures.     

Heritage Monitoring Scouts: Engaging the Public to Monitor Sites at Risk Across Florida

ABSTRACT

Along Florida’s nearly 13,000 km of shoreline, nearly 4000 archaeological sites and over 600 recorded historic cemeteries are at risk from climate change impacts including coastal erosion and a 2-metre rise in sea level. In 2016, the Florida Public Archaeology Network (FPAN) created the Heritage Monitoring Scouts (HMS Florida) programme to engage the public in monitoring sites at risk. The programme grew quickly during the first year of operation to include 233 volunteers who submitted 312 monitoring forms. The programme exists beyond the singular act of a volunteer reporting site conditions; across Florida, varied combinations of local partnerships present unique opportunities for programmes, for example, the pilot program at the Guana Tolomato Matanzas National Estuarine Research Reserve. Preliminary outcomes from the first year of HMS Florida and the pilot indicate the programme is effective in public engagement and a powerful management tool for tracking change to sites over time.     

Bringing the study of warfare into theories of nationalism

This article argues that warfare has been marginalised in theories of nationalism but that in conjunction with nationalism is vital for understanding the rise of nation‐states, the formation of nations and the nature of the international system. It offers a critique of statist approaches, suggests mechanisms through which warfare may sacralise nations and explores different patterns of nation‐state formation as they affect the interstate system. In particular, it emphasises tensions between state and nation‐formation as activated by the fortunes of war and the destabilising effects of waves of imperial dissolution, which are accompanied by patterns of re‐imperialization. It suggests that it is simplistic both to claim that war has led to a transition from empires to nation‐states and that contemporary practices of war‐making have led to a postnational era.