A Comparative Analysis of Curbside Recycling Behavior in Urban and Suburban Communities*

This study explores the variations in household participation rates in recycling projects implemented in urban and suburban communities. A causal model is developed to compare the demographic attributes of residents, their awareness of the recycling programs, their environmental attitudes, and their overall willingness to recycle. The model is assessed by Linear Structural Equations Methodology (LISREL). The results suggest that household recycling behavior is not consistent across communities due primarily to variations in demographic characteristics of residents and their evaluation of program policies.     

Place identity and major project deliberation: the contribution of local governments in Australia

ABSTRACT

There is growing recognition of the importance of local governance, for both self-determination and the quality of decision-making. While many authors acknowledge the potential of local governments in providing opportunities for democratic engagement, there is the need for more research into the conditions under which this takes place. The objective of this research is to investigate why, or under what circumstances, local governments enhance participation in and deliberation about major projects in Australia. It does so by analysing two case studies where local governments were highly engaged in advocacy with their communities against large development projects; the East West Link tunnel in Melbourne and the Coal Seam Gas projects of Northern NSW. It finds local governments engaged in these projects due to institutional culture, practices and values, formed after demographic changes in the 1960s and 70s, and associated changes in the place-attachment qualities of residents and the nature and content of their social capital. Through historical instances of community mobilisation, these values became embedded in local governments, enabling them to respond pro-actively to subsequent threats.     

A FURTHER INVESTIGATION OF URBANIZATION AND INDUSTRIALIZATION IN PRE-REVOLUTIONARY RUSSIA∗

The effect of distance upon agricultural production should be as apparent among primitive subsistence agriculturalists as in market-oriented societies. This analysis of yield variations among the Basotho of southern Africa attempts to determine the frictional effect of distance. The results show that distance does not explain variations in yield even when other physical factors are held constant. Perhaps such variables as household characteristics, not included in the analysis, would provide a better explanation.     

Jobs and the Single Parent: An Analysis of Accessibility to Employment in Toronto

Abstract

In this article, we undertake an analysis of accessibility to jobs from the perspective of single-parent household members. Individuals in this demographic segment are of interest due to the fact they often face the double burden of household and employment responsibilities. A case study of the city of Toronto in Canada, an urban area that has seen an increase in absolute and relative numbers of single-parent households in recent years, is presented. Analysis is based on the application of relative accessibility deprivation indicators (RADI), which are calculated using model-based estimates of distance traveled for various population segments, as well as employment data for the city and its surroundings. The results of the analysis indicate that there are substantial differences in the levels of accessibility to jobs between members of single-parent households, in particular females, and members of other types of households.     

The importance of Swedish–Norwegian border residents’ perspectives for bottom-up cross-border planning strategies

ABSTRACT

There is political interest in Sweden’s proximity to Norway, which is reflected in the regional policy focusing on developing business needs. As such, proximity at the regional level is simply expected to generate economic growth. The authors propose a holistic approach to spatial planning in a Swedish–Norwegian border region in place of the simplistic economic perspective. The aim of the article is to highlight the importance of adopting a bottom-up cross-border planning perspective that is based on the perceptions of the border region residents by showing that the proximity of Norway is important to communities in Värmland Province, on the border with Norway, in a different way from how regional authorities and policymakers perceive it. The authors used a qualitative method in their study. They found that residents were more interested in the individual, social, and cultural opportunities of the border, while authorities stressed traditional growth strategies. In conclusion, the authors recommend that policymakers should implement a bottom-up cross-border planning strategy (CBPS) in Värmland that includes the residents’ perspective, as a reinforcement of place-based policy approaches.     

大型垃圾处理设施周边居民污染感知影响因素及空间特征

近年来,随着中国大城市的快速发展,城市内部的大型垃圾处理设施与居住空间相交叠,影响居民生活品质.论文以北京市最大的垃圾处理中心——阿苏卫为研究对象,基于2019年8-10月获取的问卷数据,构建表征居民污染感知与污染源的空间距离、居民属性和居民主观认知3类因素关系的多层线性模型,以探索大城市邻避设施周边居民污染感知的影响...     

中国大城市保障房居民情绪幸福感影响因素 ——以广州市为例

采用在广州市13个保障房社区收集的一手数据,运用多元线性回归模型和中介效应分析技术,分析了保障房社区居民情绪幸福感影响因素。结果表明：社区建成环境（住房条件、社区建设）和社区社会环境（社区社会网络和社区凝聚力）与情绪幸福感水平显著相关,但没有证据表明社区内的保障房比重与情绪幸福感相关。此外,居民的人口与社会经济特征与其情绪幸福感显著相关。身体健康水平与情绪幸福感水平显著相关,且对于婚姻状况和住房条件与情绪幸福感的关系而言起到中介效应。因此,保障房的规划和建设要兼顾社会环境建设和物质环境建设,以提升保障房社区居民的幸福感和生活体验。     

When insurance and goodwill are not enough: Bushfire Attack Level (BAL) ratings,risk calculations and disaster resilience in Australia

ABSTRACT

Home and contents insurance is integral to household and community resilience against disasters. Yet many households are underinsured. While causes for underinsurance have been widely researched, changes to Australian building regulations in the last decade has established a new source of insurance miscalculations. Bushfire Attack Level (BAL) ratings can inflate rebuilding costs by 20% or more, yet BAL ratings remain obfuscated to homeowners and are notoriously confusing to navigate. After the October 2013 bushfires in New South Wales, the Blue Mountains Local Recovery Steering Group found that ‘information on the BAL process, the guidelines, the expected costs, the consulting experts and a property’s bushfire-prone status is literally all over the place’. This paper aims to provide clarity on the subject, tracing the precise socio-technical means through which disaster risk is perceived and assessed. The paper conceptualises insurance and risk ratings as calculative devices that provide both a technical solution to reduce financial losses and a philosophical tool for risk rationalisation. It then builds on interviews conducted with residents in the Blue Mountains affected by the 2013 bushfires, to ascertain how such calculative devices practically affect communities at risk. The paper concludes by outlining potential solutions to a confusing and costly problem in Australia, highlighting critical public awareness issues surround BAL ratings, which have profound insurance and wellbeing implications for people rebuilding and recovering from bushfire.     

新疆天山遗产地居民对生态移民的感知及满意度研究

在遗产地生态移民能否实现生态保护、改善民生、旅游可持续发展的多赢是遗产研究者、决策者和居民共同关注的问题。通过问卷调查和深入访谈法对新疆天山的4个移民社区进行调研,从居民感知和满意度的角度评估移民效果。结果表明：（1）居民对经济、心理正面影响反对率高,社会影响感知存在分歧,环境正面影响赞成率高。生态环境保护成效明显,但居民收入、生活质量改善不大,社区归属感弱。（2） 居民满意度偏低。（3） 不同人口学特征、旅游依存度的居民感知及满意度存在显著差异。从事旅游业的居民收入和满意度最高,旅游富民作用和不足兼有。（4） 与定居民族比,游牧民族在移民后生产生活方式变化更大。最后,提出改善居民经济条件,加强其知识、技能培训,社区赋权,完善生态补偿机制建议。     

The differential geography of housing affordability in Sydney: a disaggregated approach

ABSTRACT

Despite extensive studies being devoted to housing affordability in Australia, few have investigated housing affordability at a disaggregated level. This is in spite of the fact that there are existing socio-economic and demographic disparities across different regions of a city. This study aims to fill this gap by examining housing affordability in Sydney, a city that is characterised by diverse demographic and socio-economic mix, from a sub-city perspective. Two dimensions of affordability are assessed from 1991 to 2016: entry-level and ongoing housing affordability. The study finds that entry-level housing remains extremely unaffordable in all regions of Greater Sydney, although the level of unaffordability varies across regions. Specifically, the deterioration in housing affordability is more obvious in low-income regions such as Western Sydney. In addition, the ongoing housing affordability of those who have entered the market improves considerably within 5–10 years, although there are significant variations between different regions. Importantly, residents in low-income regions such as Western Sydney take a longer period to improve their ongoing affordability. The findings of differential geography of housing affordability have some profound policy implications. Policymakers should consider the disparities across different regions by formulating a more targeted and regionally balanced housing policy.     

Food becoming compost: encountering and negotiating disgust in household sustainability

ABSTRACT

Human encounters with waste can trigger reflections on taken-for-granted assumptions about consumption. Taking this observation as its starting point, this paper explores whether and how the introduction of the kitchen caddy and food waste composting at the municipal scale generates new environmental subjectivities in Australian homes. Using visceral research methods, the paper shows that, other than participation in municipal composting, close encounters with food becoming compost do not trigger more experimental or sustainable relationships with food. Rather, they trigger new configurations of cleanliness, tidiness and storage as participants seek to stabilise their home against the disruptive sight, smell and touch of food becoming compost. In unsettling the boundaries between humans and nonhumans, and cleanliness and chaos, food becoming compost produces visceral disgust among residents who are primed through modern home cultures to maintain cleanliness, control and the prevention of nonhuman intrusions at home. The success of municipal composting thus hinges on households’ commitment to ‘sustainability work’ in placing, storing, cleaning and sealing food to reconfigure the modern home for waste recovery. Reconceptualising municipal composting as a co-production of sensory engagement and household practices, we centre a visceral politics of household sustainability at the heart of municipal composting and resource management.     

Anglo Intrusion on the Old Sangre de Cristo Land Grant

Positioned on the northern edge of the Hispano homeland, the southern portion of the old Sangre de Cristo Land Grant (present-day Costilla County, Colorado) provides an interesting empirical study of cultural change. After economically displacing Spanish-American residents from villages throughout the homeland's core, incoming Anglos have adopted the region's rich Spanish culture as their own. On the homeland's periphery, however, the cultural traditions of Hispanos and Anglos have been, for the most part, at odds. Most resident Hispanos desire to maintain ties to their traditional past, while the younger generations embrace Anglo cultural norms. Considering the vital role it plays in the maintenance of culture, religion provides a window to the study area's modified cultural environment. In 1900 the population in this region was predominantly Catholic Hispano; by 1990 Protestant-dominated Anglos comprised a sizeable proportion of the population. Comparisons are made between traditional Hispano and Anglo-influenced religious landscapes. Changes in church affiliation, the distribution of active Penitente moradas, and the characteristics of community cemeteries demonstrate ongoing cultural change. Geographically isolated communities, where Anglo intrusion is limited, retain their strong Hispano cultural integrity.     

Mapping the Urban Debtscape: The Geography of Household Debt in Canadian Cities

Abstract

Vulnerability resulting from debt is part and parcel of the risk society and a salient characteristic of current neoliberal times under financialized global capitalism. Rising indebtedness increases the susceptibility of homeowners to housing and labor market restructuring, and if the degree of leverage is very high, can threaten the solvency, living standards, and social stability of local communities. However, very little is understood regarding how levels of household indebtedness are spatially distributed within or across cities, and how private debt maps onto the geography of race, class, housing, urban form, and other social variables, especially outside of the United States. It remains unknown whether and how higher and unsustainable levels of indebtedness might be associated with urban growth, decline, suburbanization, gentrification, immigration, racialization, and/or greying. This article examines the spatial distribution of household debt in Canadian cities at multiple scales of analysis. It analyzes how levels of household debt relate to a number of key socio-demographic and housing variables from the census, including those related to changes occurring over the 2000s. It simultaneously models the geography of debt at the metropolitan and neighborhood scales using multi-level hierarchical linear modeling methods, and in doing so, it identifies some key drivers and correlates of household debt and the scales at which they operate. The article concludes by discussing the implications of the empirical findings for understanding the role of the emerging urban debtscape in the restructuring of the social geography of the city.     

“The Community Helped Me:” Community Cohesion and Environmental Concerns in Personal Assessments of Post-Disaster Recovery

Abstract

This study investigates long-term appraisals of community recovery after a major environmental disaster. Specifically, we conducted a survey of 351 individuals living in coastal counties in Alabama and Florida on the five-year anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Using mixed methods that combined content analysis and ordinary least squares regression, we find that residents who believe they live in a community where neighbors help each other are more likely to see their communities as recovering. Conversely, reporting major effects from environmental problems, like lost fishing income, reduces perceptions of community recovery. Five years after the oil spill a majority of respondents saw little economic recovery and almost half perceived low environmental recovery. This reflects the importance of the environment to the long-term health and success of areas dependent on natural resources. It also suggests the need for directing funding toward community-level programs and preserving shared natural resources post-disaster.     

China's Urban Transition

Abstract

Urbanization in China is proceeding rapidly in step with population growth and a structural shift in employment from farming to industrial, commercial, and service jobs. Two additional causal factors drive the recent rapid urbanization. First, policies related to migration and household registration have been relaxed to allow more farmers to move to cities as transient workers. Second, economic reforms have resulted in new rules and regulations that promote foreign investment and trade activities in coastal areas. The results are seen in the emergence of four extended metropolitan regions in coastal areas (Shanghai-Nanjing, Beijing-Tianjin-Tangshan, Canton-Hong Kong, and Dalian-Shenyang). These metro regions have markedly different demographic, employment, migration, and foreign investment patterns from other parts of China. Such patterns presage the likely future form of China's urbanization as the country enters a period of accelerated urbanization.     

绿色空间对休闲性体力活动影响的社区分异 ——以广州市为例

以广州市20个典型社区为例,构建多元线性回归模型,探讨了绿色空间对居民休闲性体力活动的影响,并剖析绿色空间对不同类型社区居民休闲性体力活动影响的作用机制。结果发现：1）不同类型社区居民的休闲性体力活动水平存在明显差异,低档社区的为782.99 MET-min/w,中档社区的为871.70 MET-min/w,高档社区的为1 227.91 MET-min/w;2）影响不同类型社区居民休闲性体力活动水平的绿色空间因素有所不同,低档社区、中档社区和高档社区的显著因子分别为“到最近公园广场距离”“邻里绿化覆盖率”和“健身活动设施数量”;3）绿色空间对休闲性体力活动水平影响的作用机制存在社区差异,低档社区居民休闲性体力活动主要受到成本作用的约束,中档社区居民主要受绿化环境作用影响,而高档社区居民主要受机会作用影响。     

Hispanic Community Types and Assimilation in Mex-America

I argue that discrepancies among Hispanic assimilation models can be interpreted through three distinct types of Hispanic communities—continuous, discontinuous, and new. Continuous communities were founded by Hispanics and Hispanics have always been the majority population. As a result, Hispanics have not assimilated as predicted by traditional models. Discontinuous communities were originally settled by Hispanics, but eventually were filled by a minority population. Since WWII, many of these communities have experienced a Hispanic demographic resurgence making assimilation more problematic. Hispanics in new communities are recent immigrants to Anglo dominant communities and are more apt to follow the traditional assimilation model.     

Korean Americans in Los Angeles: Decentralized Concentration and Socio‐spatial Disparity

This study analyses the socioeconomic and demographic make‐up of Koreans in Los Angeles metropolis, the largest hub of Koreans in the United States, to better understand the decentralized concentration of Koreans by addressing their within‐ and among‐group variations. By employing the rarely used measures of correspondence and typology analyses, we delineate the boundaries for Korean clusters using Getis and Ord G* local statistic, wherein each cluster's neighborhood and demographic characteristics are compared to gain nuanced insights of within‐group variations, and its evolution during 1970–2010. Cluster level analysis of Koreatown suggests that even though it was classified as a Korean cluster, Korean Americans were unevenly distributed across these clusters, with underrepresentation in white‐dominant neighborhoods, whereas much of their intraurban spaces were shared with Hispanics. All clusters except extended Koreatown exhibited Li's ethnoburb‐style spatial patterns. The Koreatown and suburban clusters were also distinct in terms of their demographic/ethnic, socioeconomic, educational, age/life cycle, and housing characteristics, suggesting socio‐spatial polarization. Our analysis, challenges the commonly perceived notion of Koreans being a homogenous group and Asians being model minorities. We illustrate significant within‐group differences among the Koreangelos. We, thus, propose innovative measures to analyze population groups to flesh out rich narratives of America's fast changing social geographies.     

Shared Learning: Feminist Student Research on Household Reuse Behavior

Abstract

This paper describes collaborative student research on waste management that first compiled home interviews with women professors in Oxford, Ohio, USA, and Beijing, China, on household reuse for a graduate thesis and then communicated the findings in a handbook for undergraduate students. The women participants described diverse household reuse activities and important differences in how items enter and leave their homes. Reuse behaviors were derived intuitively from local contexts but could also be learned through cross-cultural education. These projects show positive links between feminist research and pedagogy in geography that encourage shared learning and promote women's contributions to environmental conservation.     

Creating public space,creating ‘the public’: immigration politics and representation in two Copenhagen parks

ABSTRACT

Contestations over immigration, citizenship, and belonging play out every day in urban public space. In this article we study the design processes and use of two Copenhagen parks, Superkilen and Mimersparken, to explore the creation of public space and the “public” in Denmark. Who is part of the Danish “public”? What right do immigrant residents have to shape public space and their neighborhoods? How are the boundaries of Danish national identity policed and contested in public space in Copenhagen? The Danish government has increasingly moved toward far-right anti-immigrant stances, even while Copenhagen promotes a multicultural vision of a diverse and cosmopolitan city. Superkilen and Mimersparken illustrate the shortcomings of Copenhagen’s multiculturalism: though Copenhagen celebrates immigration, it left little space for residents to make meaningful decisions as political actors. In the case of Superkilen and Mimersparken, designers’ stylized idea of immigration is more celebrated than the actual presence of immigrant residents.