Industrial strategy and rural development in Africa with special reference to Ghana: A review of current trends and suggestions for a plan of action

Africa is a late comer in the field of industrial development and, today, trails considerably behind even developing Asia and Latin America in the contribution of manufacturing to GDP. At independence, African countries inherited a structural and spatial pattern of industries incapable of contributing to rural development and nationally integrated economies. The principal weaknesses of the structural and spatial patterns of industries are the predominance of first-stage processing and consumption goods industries and the lack of basic capital goods industries, the high degree of metropolitan concentration, the low and sometimes insignificant development of intersectoral and interregional linkages, the high capital-labor ratios, the growing balance of payments' problems caused by the heavy reliance on imported materials and equipment and the monopolistic control of output and markets fostering rising domestic prices. These limitations are discussed and the main ingredients of an alternative industrial allocation pattern outlined. The sustaining thesis is that any African country seeking alternative industrial allocation patterns calibrated to stimulating rural development and the integration of the space economy must initiate critical changes in the inherited structural and spatial patterns.     

Critical determinant factors (CDFs) for developing concentrated rural settlement in post-disaster reconstruction: a China study

Housing reconstruction is always the top priority issue in post-disaster reconstruction of rural areas in developing countries. However, the traditional reconstruction approaches, including reconstruction in situ, and resettlement are not sustainable enough for post-disaster reconstruction. Against the dispersion pattern of settlement, this study argues that developing concentrated rural settlement is able to increase the resilience of rural villages and to provide a basis for sustainable development post-disaster. Little study has reported developing concentrated rural settlement in post-disaster reconstruction until the reconstruction post 5.12 Sichuan Earthquake. Yet, there is still an unclear understanding of the factors taken into account when developing concentrated rural settlement in post-disaster reconstruction. This study aims to explore the critical determinant factors to be considered for developing concentrated rural settlement in post-disaster reconstruction with particular reference to the reconstruction post of 5.12 Sichuan Earthquake in China. Through content analysis, a preliminary list of determinant factors was firstly identified. Interviews with the local government officers, planners, and rural victims were conducted to collect opinions on the critical factors. It was found that governmental guidance, victims’ willingness, and economic development condition are three critical dimensions. The findings from this research can help understand the preconditions for developing concentrated rural settlement in post-disaster reconstruction and promote this approach in future.     

The role of rural industries in the arid and semi-arid areas of the Sudan

The aim of the study is to evaluate the socio-economic contribution made by traditional industries in the arid and semiarid areas of the Sudan, and to assess their environmental impact. Two study areas, known for their diversified rural industries, have been chosen: the Mahmiya-Damar area as an example of riverine settlements, an non-riverine example of the Butana area (mainly El Subbagh region) in E Sudan.Rural industries in both areas were surveyed through direct interviews. A complete survey was made of the independent small industrial units, which are usually located in the markets, whilst a random-sample house survey was also carried out in both areas. In both areas the industries found have been grouped into seven classes.The survey, limited as it was in the residential areas, nonetheless revealed certain important characteristics of the production, distribution, and labour structure of the industries. It also revealed certain problems and difficulties which may lead in the end to a reduction of their role in these regions.     

Retailing in rural areas: A case study in Norfolk

In Britain the decline of facilities in rural settlements in the face of increasing urban dependence is becoming a major policy issue; despite high mobility, many people still lack access to essential facilities. This paper is based on fieldwork carried out mostly during 1976 in two rural areas of Norfolk, as part of a Government-sponsored study of rural transport and accessibility. It looks first at the pattern of shops and their location related to parish size, and then discusses levels of use in comparison with urban facilities, drawing on household activity surveys. The paper then analyses in depth the ownership and operation of village shops, using the results of a survey carried out among the proprietors of the shops in the two study areas, and also considers the issues that concern shopkeepers and villagers. Finally it notes changes over the past two years in the pattern of facilities and discusses the case of two villages. The implications for rural planning are examined, and the author concludes that development of rural settlements must be based on sensitive and local understanding, rather than directive blanket policies, if reasonable access to shops and similar facilities is to be retained.     

Changing distribution of gender in the Extended Bangkok Region under globalization

This study examines recent changes in the structure of migration and population by gender in the Extended Bangkok Region (EBR) taking the influences of economic globalization into consideration. The EBR is understood here to consist of three concentric zones, namely the Bangkok Metropolis (BM), the Vicinity and the Extended Urban Region (EUR). The spatial policy of the Thai government has encouraged investors to build manufacturing factories outside the BM. Consequently the industrial structure of the BM has turned strongly into service-dominated while the Vicinity and the EUR have attracted factories mainly owned by foreign capitals. Light industries and electronics industries, both of which set up relatively earlier, concentrated on the Vicinity, the adjacent provinces to the BM, while heavy and petrochemical industries are recently have developed in the outer regions, the EUR. Service sectors and light industries as well as electronics industries prefer females to males to employ as workers. As a consequence the population structures of the BM and the Vicinity became female-dominant while male workers were likely to gather in the EUR attracted by heavy and petrochemical industries. The gender imbalance in the population in the areas in concern may have been one of the consequences of the economic globalization of Thailand. The Thai government supported the economic globalization through its investment promotion policy, but it seems that the government did not assume the policy resulted in such gender imbalance. It can be suggested that in the future this gender imbalance may cause changes in family formation behaviors of the Thai population. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Structural and locational evolution of industry in Southern Europe

S European Industry is characterized by the importance of certain branches and by plant size. Traditional branches of consumer goods are dominated by the national bourgeoisie, intermediate goods by oligopolistic (state) enterprises, modern consumer and capital goods by multinational corporations. Industrialization was retarded for various social and physical reasons. For the locational pattern some factors had specific importance (diffusion, shipping traffic for supplies, deficient infrastructure, urbanisation economies, social structure). Economic nationalism and interventionism from the thirties to the late fifties had structural and locational effects. Subsequent opening led to important foreign investment with diverse locational consequences: the large majority of the market-orientated companies concentrated on big cities and induced industrial suburbanisation. Export-orientated plants, relatively often in Portugal, also decided for rural areas and provincial towns. Regional industrial policy which began weakly with fiscal allowances in the fifties and soon adopted the growth pole idea led to results remaining only far beyond expectations. International economic crisis has heavily stroken the countries which turned out to be very dependant.     

湖北省磷矿资源的空间富集规律及其产业布局

湖北省的磷矿资源储量居全国之首,矿床类型以元古宙海相沉积型磷块岩矿床为主,分布集中在五大区域,开发利用条件较好。虽然湖北的磷矿资源勘查近年取得了突破性的进展,但由于资源利用合理度欠缺、磷化工企业规模小、产业链不完善及产业集中度低等原因,对磷矿开发和磷化工产业的可持续发展构成了制约。磷矿资源的合理开发利用对建设磷矿开发及磷化工产业集群、保障国家粮食安全具有重要意义。因此,在勘查部署上,要根据成矿条件、空间富集规律和勘查开发现状,统一部署,分类开展工作;在产业布局上,以宜昌、保康、荆襄、黄麦岭4大磷化工基地为主体,新建鹤峰、黄梅磷肥基地,打造"一圈多点"式产业集群;在产业关联上,新建磷矿产地与现有磷化工基地之间形成以老带新、以新助老、空间互动的产业格局;在产品分工上,支持现有磷化工基地内的骨干企业兼并重组,提高产业集中度。     

Regional policy in Nigeria

The Nigerian growth-pattern, with its shift from more labour-intensive and resource-based to more capital-intensive and import-based industries, caused an increasing spatial concentration of productive forces, resulting in deteriorating living conditions for the majority of the population in rural and in urban areas. The Nigerian government never had a systematic regional policy. The impact of its general economic policy, however, fostered spatial polarisation by favouring import-based industries of the highest technological level while discriminating against other economic activities. As the scope for decentralisation within this pattern of accumulation is extremely limited, the problem cannot be solved by instruments of regional policy but only by altering the overall growth-pattern.     

广东三个翡翠产业集群形成及发展机理初探

通过对广东阳美、四会、平洲三个翡翠产业集群发展状况的研究,揭示该区域翡翠产业的形成及发展机理。研究结果认为,可以将该区域翡翠产业的发展过程分为两个阶段,并且不同的阶段有不同的主导因素、发展方式和发展动力。初步形成阶段的主导因素是政府政策和当地的经济能人,发展方式是模仿和技术扩散,发展动力是攀比效应和信息优势;快速发展阶段的主导因素是市场规律和集群引起的外部效应,发展方式是与集群相关的产业的快速集聚,发展动力是技术创新。     

煤炭资源型城市关闭煤矿产业绿色转型路径研究

随着我国能源供给侧结构性改革以及煤炭去产能政策的实施,我国关闭煤矿数量逐年增加,煤矿关闭后产业如何转型成为迫切需要解决的问题.而关闭煤矿大都集中在煤炭资源型城市,关闭煤矿的发展与煤炭资源型城市发展密不可分,其优势产业的选择应与所在城市产业转型方向相一致,才能使关闭煤矿资源得到有效利用,促进当地经济高质量发展.依据新结构...     

Industrial location and urban areas

Conclusions In order to end the unstructured development of industrial building and working class housing, many countries promoted a multiplication of industrial zones and estates in the outskirts of urban centers. At the same time the difficulties faced by industries implanted in the urban network resulted in the management of many companies leaving the towns and setting up their plants on these new sites.There exists a widespread tendency to de-urbanize industry which is causing big changes in the heart of built-up areas — not always on the positive side. Consequently, a new policy is gradually being developed to aim at a better integration of industrial activities with urban areas.Undoubtedly, industrial areas should be restricted to the outskirts for heavy industry with its harmful effects of space requirement. The present migration of many industrial concerns should be halted if a true re-organization of existing urban areas is desired.In order to achieve this, town planning policies should be reviewed and certain formulas elaborated to enable a true integration of industrial functions with other functions.The location of industrial activities, therefore, seems to have reached a new turning-point in its history. Careful consideration in all urban areas, whether they be new towns or other areas, is absolutely necessary to achieve a better organization of space, which is the ultimate aim of Applied Geography.     

Making the countryside more like the countryside? Rural planning and metropolitan visions in post-quake Chengdu

In 2008, an 8.0-magnitude earthquake struck southwest China less than 100 km north of Chengdu, the booming capital of Sichuan Province. The city government undertook a massive reconstruction project in its rural hinterlands that was guided by existing policies to develop rural areas through coordinated urban and rural planning. Planners sought to avoid replicating urban settlements in rural areas by developing recognizably “pastoral” villages, an approach that is being widely echoed in the relatively new discipline of rural spatial planning in China. This paper argues that such design concessions evade the key feature of the new villages: the concentration of rural residents. The Chengdu government, though this symbolic and actual de-peopling of rural landscapes, has recast rural space as an environmental amenity and an abstract stock of arable land. Drawing on interviews, site visits, and policy and media documents, the paper analyzes the metropolitan plans that provided the framework for rural reconstruction in post-quake Chengdu, and connects these to a model village site in Chengdu’s rural periphery. The case illustrates the need to understand site-level village planning in the context of regional political economies of land, and highlights the new role that metropolitan governments are playing in rural development strategies.     

A generic decision model for developing concentrated rural settlement in post-disaster reconstruction: a China study

The increasing impacts of natural disasters on disadvantaged rural areas, especially in developing countries, have led to concerns regarding post-disaster rural settlement reconstruction. Various approaches, including resettlement and in-situ reconstruction, have been adopted, both of which disregard changing the pattern of dispersed settlement in villages. Against a pattern of dispersed settlement, developing a concentrated rural settlement (CRS) within a village is argued to enable the resilience of rural villages and provide a basis for sustainable development after a disaster. Nevertheless, this has received little attention when determining a plan of actions for post-disaster reconstruction. No specific guidelines can be referenced when developing CRS in post-disaster reconstruction due to the lack of a generic decision model. Therefore, this study examines the process of developing CRS in post-disaster reconstruction by mapping four cases selected in Dujiangyan, China, after the 5.12 Sichuan Earthquake in 2008. The examination leads to establishing a generic decision model for developing CRS in post-disaster reconstruction, which incorporates all the proficiencies embodied in the existing practices. This model provides an alternative tool for planning CRS in post-disaster reconstruction. It can also serve as a vehicle for identifying both effective practices and weak areas by comparing varying cases.     

Changes in carbon intensity of China’s energy-intensive industries: a combined decomposition and attribution analysis

There has been growing interest among researchers in factors influencing carbon emissions of energy-intensive industries in China due to the important roles they play. Such studies mainly focused on evaluating carbon emissions and identifying the contributing factors separately for each energy-intensive industry. Regarding energy-intensive industries as a whole and investigating the contribution of each industry to changes in carbon intensity have not yet been sufficiently addressed and quantified. In order to deeply understand this issue, this study employed the LMDI decomposition analysis to study driving forces (e.g., emission coefficient, energy intensity, and industrial structure) of carbon intensity of energy-intensive industries. Then, attribution analysis was further used to study the contribution of each energy-intensive industry to the percent change in carbon intensity through each impact factor. The results showed that the carbon intensity of energy-intensive industries dropped by 31.83% from 1996 to 2014. The energy intensity effect was largely responsible for this decrease, of which, five industries were the contributors except for the fuel-processing industry. The industrial structure effect also contributed to the decrease, and non-metallic industry and fuel-processing industry played important roles. However, the emission coefficient effect showed a slight impact on increasing carbon intensity, which principally due to chemical industry and power generation industry. The findings suggested that the adaptability and sensitivity of different energy-intensive industries to the implemented policies were various. Based on the results, differentiated and feasible policies related to energy intensity, industrial structure, and energy structure for energy-intensive industries were provided to further mitigate carbon intensity.     

日照市城乡建设用地增减挂钩工作的探讨

随着社会主义市场经济的发展,推进土地集约节约利用,促进城乡统筹发展,是当前和今后一个时期有效的利用现有土地资源,改善农村生产生活条件和环境、缓解建设用地供需矛盾的有效途径和手段。近几年来,日照市严格按照上级有关要求,规范开展了城乡建设用地增减挂钩试点工作,取得了显著成效。     

Agricultural land-use policies i Prairie Manitoba and the farm-size phenomenon

The issues of rural development and agricultural land use planning are topics of growing provincial attention in the Canadian prairies. The focus of this research is an analysis of land-use policies impacting on rural development and an empirical analysis of mechanisms producing instability in the rural areas of Manitoba, Canada.     

Distribution of selected trace elements in sediments of Pamlico river estuary,north Carolina

Sixty-eight samples of sediment collected on a variably-spaced grid pattern from Pamlico River Estuary of North Carolina were analyzed for As, Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, F, Ni, Pb, U, Zn, clay, and organic matter. The major objectives of the study were to determine background and anomalous levels of trace elements in the sediments, and the effects of human activities on concentration and distribution of trace elements in the sediments. Clay and organic matter are more concentrated near the center of the estuary. This causes the highest concentration of trace elements in the sediments to be located there also owing to their preferential uptake of these elements. Highest trace element concentrations were observed in clay and organic matter near industrial sites, housing developments, and tributary mouths that drain areas of human activity. The apparent increase in trace element contents of fine sediments in Pamlico River Estuary owing to human activities is 4 to 1,750 times normal background levels.     

Effect of different industrial activities on heavy metal concentrations and chemical distribution in topsoil and road dust

The development of industrial activity in recent years has promoted the pollution in this environment causing health problems to workers and the neighbourhood nearby. In order to determine the influence of different industrial activities in metals concentration and behaviour in soil and road dust, samples from three different industrial areas (service industry; refinery, fertilizer and power industry; and tannery industry) and a natural area were collected. Physical–chemical properties, metal content (Pb, Zn, Cu, Cr, Co, Ni) and the chemical distribution of metals were carried out. Results show largest accumulation of metals in road dusts samples for all industrial areas, being Zn, Pb, Cr and Cu the metals with highest concentrations. Each industrial activity contributes differently to the concentration of metals in soil and dust, and the highest concentrations of Cr were found from tannery industries, while Pb and Zn showed the highest concentration from refinery and fertilizer industry. It has been showed that industrial activity has influence on the physicochemical properties of soil and road dust and on the bioavailability of all metals. Chemical partitioning indicates that Pb, Zn, Cu and Cr distribution in the different solid phases is affected by industrial activity, while Co and Ni distribution is not affected by the industrial activity.     

Suitability evaluation of rural residential areas under the threat of geological disasters:A case study in Yinchanggou watershed of Pengzhou City

At present, the research on the layout of rural residential areas in the mountainous environment under the threat of earthquake disasters and frequent geological disasters is still rare. Taking Yinchanggou watershed in Longmenshan Town of Pengzhou City as an example, based on the summary of the geological hazard development characteristics in this area, the authors carried out the hazard risk zoning through 8 indexes. Then the geological hazard risk zoning was used as the primary factor to evaluate the suitability of rural residential areas. Besides, combined with the topographical conditions, socio-economic situation and ecological environment, a suitable evaluation index system for rural residential land under the threat of geological disasters was constructed, with the restrictive conditions of extremely high-risk areas, single geological hazards, slopes ≥25° and basic farmland protection areas. Finally, the fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method was used to evaluate the suitability of residential land in Yinchanggou watershed of Pengzhou City. The results show that high suitability areas account for 4.2% of the total area of the study area, moderate suitability areas 11.4%, low suitability areas 10.5%, and unsuitable areas 73.8%. The “suitable” areas for rural residential land are mainly distributed along the highway, and some are multiple “blocky” concentrated distribution areas. The terrain is flat and the traffic condition is convenient, which can provide some guidance for the selection of new rural residential locations.     

地质灾害威胁下的农村居民点用地适宜性评价——以彭州市银厂沟流域为例

目前针对受震灾威胁、地质灾害频发的山地环境下的农村居民点布局研究尚不多见。该文以彭州市龙门山镇银厂沟流域为例,首先在总结分析区内地质灾害发育特征的基础上,基于8项指标进行地质灾害危险性分区; 然后,将地质灾害危险性区划结果作为影响农村居民点用地适宜性评价的首要因素,再结合地形条件、社会经济和生态环境等方面,以地质灾害极高危险区、单体地质灾害危害范围、坡度≥25°和基本农田保护区为限制性条件,构建地质灾害威胁下的农村居民点用地适宜性评价指标体系; 最后,采用模糊综合评价法对彭州市银厂沟流域内居民点用地适宜性进行评价分级。研究结果表明: 高度适宜区占研究区总面积的4.2%,中度适宜区占11.4%,低度适宜区占10.5%,不适宜区占73.8%; 农村居民点用地“适宜”区域主要沿公路分布,并存在多个“块状”集中分布区,这些地区地形平坦,交通条件便利,可为新农村住宅位置的选择提供指导意见。