From picket fences to iron gates: suburbanization and gated communities in Phoenix,Las Vegas and Seattle

Suburbanization has been a prominent urban process in the United States since the World War II. It has transformed American cities in profound ways in every single aspect of urban development; from population and wealth distributions, through political organization and affiliations, to the built environment. This paper investigates the link between gated communities and the process of suburbanization in the context of socio-economic inequality. It has been shown time and again in the scholarly literature on suburbanization, that suburban neighborhoods in American cities have been traditionally more affluent and less diverse than central cities. The research on gated communities in the US also shows that they are, on average, more affluent compared to other communities in terms of family income and housing values. Are gated communities then simply a new form of suburban communities? Is the gated community in fact a suburban community with the added element of security features? The paper investigates these questions based on segregation and spatial analyses. The research contributes to the long line of studies on suburbanization, gating and the larger issues of urban inequality.     

The changing Romanian village: The case of semlac in Arad county, Romania

Change in the village reflects the evolution of society and the conditions in the surrounding territory, including the neighbouring rural settlements and towns with which there is interaction. These considerations will determine the size and functions of a village, moving through centuries of change, often marked by violent events (invasions and wars; epidemics and natural disasters). So the search for equilibrium has often been frustrated by changing events. The paper concentrates on the upheavals associated with communism at the end of the Second World War, leading to the degradation of rural society, and the adjustments now being made in the light of the revolution of 1989. After the upheavals of the first transition years there are signs that prosperity is beginning to return to the villages as higher incomes from agriculture benefit the rural economy as a whole.     

Changing poverty distribution in Bolivia: the role of rural–urban migration and urban services

Bolivia is a country with high levels of poverty and inequality among its peoples and regions. For the nation and its urban and rural areas, trends in the social and spatial distribution of poverty (and extreme poverty) are identified from 1976 to 2003 using UBN data with minor support where appropriate from poverty lines. The main survey between 1992 and 2001 uses composite and selected UBN to track detailed poverty change for the country’s nine departments, its ten largest cities and a selection of other smaller urban and rural municipalities. Because of rising background increases in population in the various surveyed administrative units, many instances of relative reductions in poverty are accompanied by rising absolute increases. Marked spatial variations in poverty and development in the country over the last several decades are identified as the main driver for the country’s quickening pace of rural–urban migration. As a result, the paper concludes by assessing two different but closely related views. One investigation tests the notion that because more poor people have been living in Bolivia’s cities than in its rural areas since the mid to late 1990s, rapid rural–urban migration has simply shifted the locus of poverty from the countryside to the cities in a process called, the ‘urbanisation of poverty.’ A second, more challenging, investigation assesses the view that the flow of poor rural people to the better serviced urban areas of Bolivia has actually acted to alleviate national poverty levels.     

The impact of decentralised forest management on charcoal production practices in Eastern Senegal

In accordance with Senegal’s decentralisation policy, important forest management tasks, including the right to allocate charcoal production rights, have been transferred to rural councils. This paper investigates the impact of these institutional reforms on charcoal production practices using the environmental entitlement framework developed by Leach et al. [Environmental entitlements: dynamics and institutions in community-based natural resource management. World Development 27 (2) (1999) 225]. The councils have not been able to turn their new endowments into entitlements because they lack sufficient strength and legitimacy. Informal institutions, notably the coalition between merchants, state agents and village chiefs, continue to run the charcoal business and are hardly affected by decentralisation efforts. Most rural people, especially those relying solely on agriculture for sustenance, do not benefit at all from the charcoal trade. They do suffer from the environmental costs it brings with it, however. Although tensions between pro-exploitation actors and pro-conservation actors are evident, the pro-exploitation actors’ firm grip on the informal institutions will probably lead to a prolonged subversion of the laws that seek to enhance local control and to sustain the forest.     

Deprivation,resources and planning: Some implications for applied rural geography

Recent concern over social deprivation in rural areas of the U.K. has provided a new focus for applied rural geographers. However, the concept of deprivation may be broadened to include many other aspects of the rural environment, and therefore it offers a framework for more integrated approaches to planning in the countryside. A more dynamic strategy of rural research, involving greater cooperation between academic geographers and practising planners, and focussing upon problems of rural deprivation, is advocated in this paper.     

Differential productions of rural gentrification: illustrations from North and South Norfolk

This paper focuses attention on the making of space for rural gentrification, both discursively and materially. The paper emphasises the differential constructions of gentrification within urban and rural studies. Connections are drawn between production-side theories of gentrification, notions of the ‘post-productivist countryside’ and studies that have related rural demographic change and gentrification with planning and property relations. Drawing on these three sets of ideas, the paper explores gentrification in rural Norfolk. It is argued that the contemporary geography of rural gentrification may in part reflect historic structures of landownership as well as settlement classifications associated with the land-use planning system. Country and District level analysis is followed up by detailed study of gentrification of two villages in Norfolk, which highlights how gentrified rural spaces may be produced in rather different way and through different agencies, and as a result takes different forms.     

An interpolation method taking into account inequality constraints: I. Methodology

Several kinds of data can provide information about a variable measured on a one- or two-dimensional space; at some points, the value is known to be equal to a certain number. At other points, the only information may be that the variable is greater or smaller than a given value. The theory of splines provides interpolating functions that can take into account both equality and inequality data. These interpolating functions are presented. The parallel between splines and kriging is reviewed, using the formalism of dual kriging. Coefficients of dual kriging can be obtained directly by minimizing a quadratic form. By adding some inequality constraints to this minimization, an interpolating function may be calculated which takes into account inequality data and is more general than a spline. The method is illustrated by some simple one-dimensional examples.Work performed at Sohio Petroleum Company     

Political ecology in North America: Discovering the Third World within?

Political ecologists working in many other parts of the world are now heading north, or simply going global, posing a series of important questions related to theory, methodology, politics, and policy along the way. This special issue, contains papers originally delivered at a conference held at Rutgers University in 2003 that addressed this phenomenon. The papers collected offer case studies that reveal the First World as subject to a host of processes that can be insightfully understood via a political ecology perspective. First, globalized production and consumption regimes have created new linkages that demand synoptic analyses of often far-flung research sites. Second, the painful coincidence of deindustrialization and a radical restructuring of agricultural credit and price support systems have devastated North American and European heartlands, effectively producing “Third World” conditions in many depressed rural areas. Third, migration streams originating in Latin America, Africa and many parts of Asia have brought sizable Third World populations into the spatial heart of capitalism. Fourth, the belated recognition of some indigenous claims to resources, especially in Canada, and fierce opposition to others, have reopened questions of (internal) colonial domination. Finally, we see the burgeoning First World political ecology literature as the culmination of what Louise Fortmann has called “the long intellectual journey home” for many scholars who originally carried out research on/in the Third World. All of these factors have combined to help political ecologists discover suitable analytical terrain in the First World.     

A comparative analysis of multi-scalar regional inequality in China

This paper investigates regional inequality across regions, provinces, prefectures, and counties in China from 1997 to 2010 using a comparative and multiscalar framework. Regional inequality is sensitive to geographic scales and regional heterogeneity. The year 2004 was a turning point for trends in inequality, when a new spatial regime started to emerge at the county-level in China. County-level inequality demonstrates a consistent upward trend despite a slight dip in 2005, which is different from a broad inverted U-shape trend at other geographic scales. Furthermore, intensifying inequalities are demonstrated between prefectures than within prefectures, within provinces than between provinces, and between regions than within regions. The underdeveloped Western region of China contributes the most to regional inequalities across counties and prefectures. Based on the heterogeneous characteristics of regional inequality, it is suggested that effective regional policies should adopt a geographic focus to reduce inequalities. Finally, a Markov chain technique is applied to predict the long-run properties of regional development in China. The results show that it is difficult for counties, prefectures and provinces to leapfrog from being less developed to well developed. This paper concludes that regional inequality in China in the long-run does not follow the neoclassical convergence hypothesis.     

Dodging alligators,rattlesnakes, and backyard docks: a political ecology of sweetgrass basket-making and conservation in the South Carolina Lowcountry,USA

There is growing recognition among political ecologists of the need to examine shifting natural resource regimes and their effects on livelihoods in “First World” places. This emerging literature has variously examined the “Third World within,” the persistence of “subsistence activities” in the “First World,” and the “reterritorialization” of land tenure and access. However, much of this work has tended to focus on traditional extractive industries in the American West, indigenous claims to lands and resources in the U.S. and Canada, and non-timber resources on public lands. In contrast, we use a case study of African-American sweetgrass basket-makers, associated with the Gullah culture, in South Carolina’s lowcountry to examine the ways in which ongoing amenity-driven residential development is fundamentally reshaping resource access on private lands. Historically, basket-makers harvested the materials (primarily sweetgrass or Mulenbergia filipes) needed for their culturally important art form from accessible, rural, and privately held tracts of land in close proximity to their communities, but development pressures and changes in resident interpretation of property rights has decreased access to basket-making resources. The case is particularly illuminating, as it examines the emergence of ‘conservation subdivisions’ in the region and raises important questions about what “rural uses” and users are being conserved through responses to exurban, suburban, and urban development in formerly rural areas.     

Is contract farming an inclusive alternative to land grabbing? The case of potato contract farming in Maharashtra,India

In the recent explosion of attention given to the land grabbing phenomenon, contract farming has been identified as a potentially inclusive alternative for smallholders to outright acquisition of farm land by agri-business capital. This paper responds to these claims by resituating contract farming as an equally important form of land control. The focus of the paper is a case study of potato contract farming in Maharashtra, India. While there is ‘nothing new’ about contract farming as a mode of agriculture production in India, its influence on patterns of agrarian change is poorly understood. Adopting an agrarian political economy-informed livelihoods approach, the paper argues that rather than an inclusive alternative to land grabbing, contract farming in the study site represents another way that capital is coming to control land in rural India, with just as important implications for agrarian livelihoods. While some individual households have improved their livelihoods through participation, the contract scheme acts to reinforce already existing patterns of inequality. In particular, the unequal power relations between firm and farmer skew the capture of benefits towards the firm, and render participating households vulnerable to indebtedness and loss of autonomy over land and livelihood decisions.     

The realm of freedom in new rural governance: Micro-politics of democracy in Sweden

Voluntary associations are at the heart of Swedish rural policy and strategies for governance as partners in bringing about ‘development from below.’ Examining the implications of this new responsibility being placed on the civil society in new modes of multilevel governance, I ask: do these changes presage greater political space for individuals vis à vis the state or is Swedish rural policy premised on ideas about an institutional context that might be disappearing? In comparative research in rural Sweden, I discuss state and civil-society relations at the macro level in light of the gendered micro-politics of associational life on the ground. Through ethnographic research with people involved in development work of different kinds, I examine how ideas about community associations are used to mobilize rural policy. I analyze its’ political implications and argue for the importance of analyzing macro in relation to the micropolitics on the ground for a better theoretical understanding of democracy and power in rural governance, in particular its gendered implications. I argue that past collaborative relations between the civil society and the state’s administrative apparatuses as well as the current focus of rural policy have enabled the state to hand over service functions to the civil society and diluted their ‘voice,’ incongrously endangering the institutional basis of rural policy itself. Further, attention to the gendered micropolitics of associational life makes apparent cleavages within civil society and its underlying relations of gender and power that challenge current conceptualizations on the neoliberalization of rural policy.     

Mobile phones and safety in developing countries: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa

This paper is concerned with the relationship between safety and mobile phones with particular reference to Sub-Saharan Africa; and looks at a range of geographical contexts: non-violent, conflict and post-conflict situations. The main part of the paper reports on recent findings of extensive field-work into the use of mobile phones in 11 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. The findings are important partly because from a welfare view, it is use rather than mere adoption that generates actual benefits to consumers. What the survey finds is that use of the mobile phone is mainly for safety-related purposes and that the countries that fare highest in terms of usage are drawn from the richest and poorest members of the sample. In explaining these results I draw heavily on the relationships and interactions between poverty, inequality and crime. For example, the dominance of Southern African countries is ascribed to their exceptionally high levels of inequality, which, in turn, are due partly to the unequal effects of resource abundance.     

The ideology behind the technology - Chilean microentrepreneurs and public ICT policies

Digital divides are differences in access to information and communication technologies (ICTs) which tend to reflect the social and regional inequalities between and within countries. This paper presents a case study from Chile, which is among the leaders in Latin America both in levels of e-readiness and in social and regional inequality. The Chilean state’s ICT policies are situated within the “Third Way” approach of the centre-left government, reflecting the tensions between a pro-active and positive view of neoliberal globalisation, and state social programmes to support poorer sectors of society.The paper presents a multi-level analysis of two elements of Chilean ICT policy: Chilecompra, an online public e-procurement system aimed at creating transparent and competitive transactions in line with neoliberal economic theory, and Red Comunitaria, a network of Community Information Centres which offer free internet access and training to individuals, including microentrepreneurs. Interviews were conducted at the national, regional and local level. Findings were that the Community Information Centres (telecentros) had indeed furthered digital inclusion while in the meantime the shift to e-procurement had excluded many microentrepreneurs who had not registered with the system of Chilecompra. The larger of the local enterprises had registered but were having difficulties competing online with bigger companies located in the regional and national capitals.The paper argues that while both state policies see themselves as successes, the political objectives underlying the technology mirror the Chilean government’s struggle to simultaneously embrace neoliberal globalisation while working towards greater social and regional cohesion. At the local level there is evidence of the failure to reconcile the two approaches which may be indicative of a more general tension between these goals.     

Rural “development” planning under apartheid: Betterment planning in Lebowa, South Africa

An important subject of debate in the Third World is that of the application of alternative strategies of rural development. Critical examination is undertaken of the programme of betterment planning as an agency of rural development in South Africa's impoverished Black Homelands. The rhetoric of “development” obscures the fact that betterment is an important dimension of the political economy of apartheid. A detailed study of betterment planning in Lebowa reveals that the programme is associated with the growth of landlessness, reductions in land available for ploughing, the forced resettlement of large groups of people and major reductions in Africa livestock holdings. Evidence from one case study village shows that the application of betterment may transform formerly self-sufficient rural populations into communities dependent for their existence upon the debilitating migratory labour system.     

Key barriers to community cohesion: views from residents of 20 London deprived neighbourhoods

The notion of community has been central to the political project of renewal of New Labour in the UK. The paper explores how the discourses of community are framed within New Labour and discusses these in the light of the results from research which focuses on how people within urban deprived areas construct their community. It draws upon the results of one part of a larger research project (the ‘Well London’ programme) which aimed to capture the views of residents from 20 disadvantaged neighbourhoods throughout London using an innovative qualitative method known as the ‘World Café’. Our results show the centrality of young people to the development of cohesive communities, the importance of building informal relationships between residents alongside encouraging greater participation to policy making, and the need to see these places as fragile and temporary locations but with considerable social strengths. Government policies are only partially addressing these issues. They pay greater attention to formally encouraging citizens to become more involved in policy making, largely ignore the contribution young people could make to the community cohesion agenda, and weakly define the shared norms and values that are crucial in building cohesive communities. Thus, the conclusion is that whilst an emphasis of the government on ‘community’ is to be welcome, more needs to be done in terms of considering the ‘voices’ of the community as well as enabling communities to determine and act upon their priorities.     

Women’s pay in English rural districts

This paper examines hourly wage payments for women who live in the rural districts of England, both in terms of variability within such districts and in terms of comparisons with non-rural districts. Drawing on the Labour Force Survey’s Local Annual Database, the paper argues that, once education, industry and occupation are taken into account, there is little to distinguish wage rates in rural and urban districts. Regionally there are important differences in wage rates, but these apply to rural as well as urban districts and are largely confined to contrasts between South East England and elsewhere. Rural-urban contrasts in wage levels are apparent in pay differences for men and women, although even here distinctions along a rural-urban divide are restricted to managerial workers, with the key distinction for professionals and technicians being between South East England and the rest of the country. For other occupations there is little to distinguish the relative magnitude of difference in men’s and women’s pay along rural-urban or regional lines. It is suggested that more attention to gender relations in wage determination practices within the workplace and within professions are worth exploring to develop a stronger understanding of division lines in wage inequalities.     

Rural community well-being: models and application to changes in the tobacco-belt in Ontario, Canada

In this paper we develop a model of changes in rural community well-being. The model conceptualizes four interrelated dimensions of rural community well-being: physical, psychological, social, and economic. The model recognizes that a range of external forces (political, economic, etc.) exert pressures on rural communities, of which changes in well-being are one outcome. The paper then applies the model to changes which occurred in the tobacco growing region of southern Ontario, Canada. It is argued that this region was impacted by a variety of forces, some general to farming, others specific to tobacco farming, particularly between 1979 and the early 1990s. The empirical application is based on a personally administered farm survey (n=63) conducted between July 1996 and January 1997 and agricultural census data for the years 1981, 1986, 1991, and 1996. The paper concludes by suggesting that the model provides a useful framework for analysing the forces and changing conditions of other rural communities, not only in Canada, but beyond.     

Shifting frames for local people and forests in a global heritage: the Thung Yai Naresuan Wildlife Sanctuary in the context of Thailand’s globalization and modernization

Focusing on the case of the World Heritage Site and Wildlife Sanctuary Thung Yai Naresuan, the paper sketches the interdependences of international and national forest and conservation policies in Thailand since the middle of the 19th century. In the context of Thailand’s globalization and modernization, these policies resulted in a coercing conservationism which focuses increasingly on the so-called ‘hill tribe’ ethnic minority groups. The shifting cultural and political framings of the area that became a national wildlife sanctuary and a ‘global heritage’ reflect external economic, political, and ideological interests. The people of the Karen ethnic minority group who live in the sanctuary are conceived of as a disruptive factor and never have had a chance to participate in these framings. After the designation of the area as a World Heritage Site, the remaining villages face increasing pressure from the Royal Forest Department which is trying to remove them with the help of the Military. Drawing on the different vested interests and the relativity of cultural conceptualizations, the paper questions the external framing, pointing to three major problems that are raised with regard to Thung Yai, but are symptomatic of modern conservationism at large: inconsistencies between normative claims and political practice; distortions of scale between conceptions designed at different levels of social space from the local to the global, and; the problem to reconcile conflicting cultural patterns and conceptualizations. The paper argues for a reframing of the conflict to conceive the Karen in Thung Yai as an integral part of the ‘global heritage’.     

Agricultural multifunctionality, environmental sustainability and the WTO: Resistance or accommodation to the neoliberal project for agriculture?

The liberalisation of agricultural markets is one of the most contested issues in international politics. Debates surrounding it counter-pose the moral imperative to dismantle protectionist agricultural subsidies in order to combat rural poverty in the South with fears for the livelihoods of marginal farmers and the environmental integrity of the countryside in the developed North. A largely European concern with defending the ‘multifunctionality’ of agriculture is dismissed by critics as a protectionist excuse for continued farm support. In this paper we seek to assess how far support for multifunctionality can be construed as a form of resistance to the neoliberal project for agriculture. The paper begins with an analysis of the European negotiating stance in the Doha round and the subsequent evolution of debates surrounding multifunctionality in an international setting. Having identified the European Union as one of the key sites of articulation concerning the implications of trade liberalisation for a multifunctional agriculture, the paper goes on to argue that multifunctionality within the framework of European rural policy emerges as a much more elusive and susceptible concept, informed by radically different interpretations of the vulnerability of family farmers to greater market exposure and the extent to which agricultural restructuring should be regarded as an issue of wider public concern. This maps onto a technically complex debate about how best to procure environmental public goods in a period of rapid agricultural change. The paper concludes that with these differences still very much in play, questions concerning the compatibility of multifunctionality with market liberalisation remain deeply unresolved at an important moment in the internationalisation of rural policy governance.