The nature of urbanization in the gulf countries

This paper analyses the urban process in the oil producing countries of the Gulf. The mode of urbanization is identified as one characterized by an extreme case of primacy but with rates varying among the countries of the region. This pattern is related to the historical evolution of human settlements as affected by the local environmental qualities and the recent large scale development of urban infrastructures which favoured the already existing capital cities. The relative city growth rates are among the highest in the world but with a declining tendency which reflects expenditure patterns and the nature of the regional economies. The high growth rates are essentially due to massive foreign migration into the region and to extremely high natural increase rate — an abnormal condition in an urban process approaching saturation point. The role of these primate centres in the development of the region is undeniable and, furthermore, all indications suggest that this pattern of urban development will continue in the furture as it is, perhaps economically and politically less costly.     

Using GIS for analysis of urban systems

It is recognized that the spatial organization of urban system can be abstracted as three main components: a set of points, which describes the structural characteristics such as social and economic properties of individual city; a set of lines, which indicates the patterns of interaction among the cities; a set of spheres, which indicates how and to which extent each city affects the area around it. Even if such substance of urban system coincides with the main purpose of GIS for spatial or geometric data types such as point, line and region, little attention has been given to this point. By an evidence analysis of China, the application of potential analytical capabilities of GIS for urban system is attempted in this study. We find GIS acts as an efficient tool not only for the spatial structure analysis of urban system, which including potential distribution of cities, extraction of principal linkages among cities, and delimitation of subsystems; but also for the verification of socio-economic attributes and dynamics of urban system. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Changes in the internal spatial structure of post-communist Prague*

The article overviews the most important changes in the internal urban structure of Prague since 1989. Post-communist urban development has been influenced by government-directed reforms of political and economic system, internationalisation and globalisation, public policies favouring unregulated market development, economic restructuring in terms of deindustrialisation and growth of producer services, and increasing social differentiation. The three most transparent processes of urban change in Prague have been (1) commercialisation of the historical core; (2) revitalisation of some inner city neighbourhoods; and (3) residential and commercial suburbanisation in the outer city. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

县域统筹城乡发展综合评价研究——以陕西省华阴市为例

县域是统筹城乡发展最为关键和迫切的地域单元。统筹城乡发展,须以区域经济社会发展进入一定阶段为前提,涉及城乡经济、社会、文化、基础设施等多个方面,构建统筹城乡发展评价体系具有明显的复杂性。在回顾总结已有测评研究和对统筹城乡发展进行再认识的基础上,构建了3个一级指标、18个二级指标组成的评价指标体系,据此对陕西省华阴市统筹城乡发展水平进行综合评判,提出了统筹城乡发展的对策建议。     

Entrepreneurial Regionalist Planning in a Rescaled Spain: The Cases of Bilbao and València

European politics and planning have recently been characterized by a shift to economic entrepreneurialism at sub-national scales, and the planned redevelopment of the city-region in pursuit of global competitiveness, which scholars have interpreted in light of political-economic “rescaling” or regionalization and the emergence of a “new regionalism.” Analyzing rescaling largely in terms of shifting economic and institutional structures, however, many accounts underestimate the complexity and enduring power of so-called ‘old’ regionalist politics of culture and identity as backdrop to urban redevelopment planning. In this paper we address how the urban planning process mediates between the seemingly dichotomous tendencies of regionalized entrepreneurialism and cultural regionalism. Using case studies of two Spanish autonomous regions and their major urban centers – the Basque Country or Euskadi (Bilbao) and the Comunitat Valenciana (València) – we review the historical geography of planning in the European region in order to explore how cultural regionalism collides with economic rescaling and entrepreneurialism, in and through the planned landscape. We propose that such emerging and hybrid politics and planning be understood as a form of entrepreneurial regionalism, a culturally inflected form of economic competitiveness characteristic of but not unique to the Spanish region. This specific notion of entrepreneurial regionalism may illuminate how planners mediate global and local imperatives within political discourse and landscapes that materialize them, and allow us to better reconceptualize the relationship between economic globalization, state restructuring, and cultural politics in a new Europe of the Regions.     

Entrepreneurial Regionalist Planning in a Rescaled Spain: The Cases of Bilbao and València

European politics and planning have recently been characterized by a shift to economic entrepreneurialism at sub-national scales, and the planned redevelopment of the city-region in pursuit of global competitiveness, which scholars have interpreted in light of political-economic “rescaling” or regionalization and the emergence of a “new regionalism.” Analyzing rescaling largely in terms of shifting economic and institutional structures, however, many accounts underestimate the complexity and enduring power of so-called ‘old’ regionalist politics of culture and identity as backdrop to urban redevelopment planning. In this paper we address how the urban planning process mediates between the seemingly dichotomous tendencies of regionalized entrepreneurialism and cultural regionalism. Using case studies of two Spanish autonomous regions and their major urban centers – the Basque Country or Euskadi (Bilbao) and the Comunitat Valenciana (València) – we review the historical geography of planning in the European region in order to explore how cultural regionalism collides with economic rescaling and entrepreneurialism, in and through the planned landscape. We propose that such emerging and hybrid politics and planning be understood as a form of entrepreneurial regionalism, a culturally inflected form of economic competitiveness characteristic of but not unique to the Spanish region. This specific notion of entrepreneurial regionalism may illuminate how planners mediate global and local imperatives within political discourse and landscapes that materialize them, and allow us to better reconceptualize the relationship between economic globalization, state restructuring, and cultural politics in a new Europe of the Regions.     

Beer-Sheva,capital of the Negev desert —Function and internal structure

The rapid growth and development in modern times of Beer-Sheva, the city of the Patriarchs, and its transformation into a major centre of growth in the southern desert part of Israel has intrigued experts who deal with urban growth and development. In this paper we examine the major factors that have contributed to the city's place and function in Israel's urban system, its economic base and ecological structure — all with reference to the city's historical background.     

苏南地区城乡聚落空间演化过程及其格局特征

当前,城乡聚落空间正由自然和经济社会条件存在差异的等级体系转变为密切联系的网络化结构,城乡融合已经成为中国城乡聚落空间演化发展的重要方向。以苏南地区为例,对20世纪90年代以来的城乡聚落空间演化过程及其格局特征进行分析,发现2000年以后城镇聚落扩张强度远高于乡村聚落,城乡聚落空间结构可进一步归纳为集中、双心、多核和密集4种基本格局。该研究对乡村振兴背景下的城乡聚落空间优化布局具有一定指导作用。     

青藏高原东缘民族区域城镇可持续发展研究

青藏高原东缘区域,由于独特的地理环境和多元民族、经济结构的制约,民族宗教文化、民族贸易的超常亲合及资源开发、人居环境的改善是城镇发展的主要动力.低水平、小规模、职能分工不明确、空间分布差异大是城镇发展的主要特征.严酷封闭的地理环境、落后的社会经济发展状态和脆弱的生态环境是主要的障碍因素.因此选择"小规模、多中心、多层次、适当集中"的区域城镇化模式,强化城镇及区域特色产业,优化生态环境,营造城镇与区域协调发展的外部环境,培育中心城镇是城镇可持续发展的关键.     

Growth and decline in the Canadian urban system: the impact of emerging economic,policy and demographic trends

The Canadian urban system was first shaped by exogenous demand for staples and, subsequently, by the dichotomy between an industrial heartland and a resource based hinterland. Presently, transformations affecting the economy, policy-making and demography herald profound changes in the future configuration of the Canadian urban system. One possible scenario is a revival of the staples economy as economic globalization raises demand for commodities. Another scenario would entail a concentration of growth in large urban centres, by virtue of their attractiveness to specialized and high-order service occupations, two rapidly expanding economic sectors, and their strong pull on immigrants. In the case of either scenario, we can expect further polarization between growing and shrinking portions of the urban system (parts of the heartland in the first case and small urban areas in the second) in a neo-liberal policy context that is unfavourable to regional economic development interventions. The evolution of the Canadian urban system between 1971 and 2006 and present distributions of factors of growth and decline point to the second scenario, a growing large city-small city dichotomy. The article closes by discussing likely consequences of the resulting urban system configuration on labour market adjustments and public sector expenditure.     

Warsaw under transformation: new tendencies in the housing market

The aim of this paper is to show how and in what sense the post-socialist transformation process has influenced the urban spatial structure of Warsaw with the help of empirical evidence dealing with housing. Therefore, the main focus of the study is the transformation of the housing market in the 1990s under social and economic restructuring process. The article comprises two parts: the first part involves the geographical development of the urban spatial structure within the context of housing market changes. In order to explain today's transformation, the system of socialist time is also discussed. In the second part emphasis is placed on the evidence of the transformation in urban space, dealing with new tendencies and challenging mechanisms in the housing market. The last period of transformation is also investigated in terms of changes in the urban space since housing is seen as an important factor of urban transformation. Hence, following the brief outline of historical development of the urban space housing market changes including the privatization of urban land is going to be the concern of the paper. The problems of the transformation and practical implementation of the privatization process are also discussed. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Strategic planning in the Paris region and French urban policy

Many of the imbalances which the successive strategic plans for the Paris region sought to correct have persisted, whether in employment location, transport access or structure and location of the housing stock. The reasons for these relative failures can be found, in part, in the content of the strategies, in housing, land and transport policies and in shortcomings of the urban planning and economic planning systems. The weakness of the Paris Region as the strategy's executor in relation to the central and local governments and public corporations cannot, however, be underestimated. In the first part, French strategic planning is assessed within the urban planning system, followed in the second part by a detailed study of the failures of plan implementation in transport policy and housing and office location.     

Vicissitudes experienced by the oldest urban center in Bangladesh in relation to the migration of the Brahmaputra River

Bangladesh is one of the most densely populated countries in the world. There are 57 trans-frontier rivers in the country, the widest being the Brahmaputra River. The river's channels have frequently changed course, but the relationship between such river migrations and human settlement patterns has remained unstudied. In this paper, optically stimulated luminescence and radiocarbon dating techniques were applied to sedimentary and organic materials in the oldest urban center (Wari-Bateshwar) in Bangladesh. The results showed that the landscape around the urban center was dominated by floodplain and peatland facies between 7.9–7.6 and 4.7–1.6 ka, respectively. Humans occupied this area at ~3.2 ka, and manufactured delicate semi-precious gemstone beads between ~2.4 and 1.8 ka. The urban center might be the same as an important city of the Gangaridai described in historical records. Due to fluvial migration at ~1.8 ka, the area surrounding the urban center was covered by fluvial sand. Humans might have been forced to abandon the urban center, leading to the bead processing technology in Bangladesh being lost forever.     

Old cities, new pasts: Heritage planning in selected cities of Central Europe

Heritage is the contemporary usage of a past and is consciously shaped from history, its survivals and memories, in response to current needs for it. If these needs and consequent roles of heritage, whether for the political legitimacy of governments, for social and ethnic cohesion, for individual identification with places and groups, or for the provision of economic resources in heritage industries change rapidly, then clearly we expect the content and management of that heritage to do likewise. The cities of Central Europe have long been the heritage showcases that reflected the complex historical and geographical patterns of the region's changing governments and ideologies. The abrupt economic and political transition and reorientation of the countries of Central Europe has thus, unsurprisingly, led to many equally abrupt changes in the content and management of urban heritage throughout the region. The uses made of heritage are clearly drastically changing but so also is the way that heritage is currently managed. What is happening, as well as how, is however uncertain and investigated here. The revolutionary eradication of a rejected past, a return to some previous pasts or the beginnings of a new past in the service of a new present are all possibilities. Answers are sought to these questions through the examination of a selection of cases of types of heritage city and their management in the region. These include an archetypical European gem city (Eger, Hungary), a tourist-historic honey-pot (?esky Krumlov, Czechia), a medium-sized multifunctional city (Gdansk, Poland), a major metropolis (Budapest, Hungary), the relict anomaly (Kaliningrad/ Königsberg, Russia) and the national cultural centre of Weimar.     

论基础地质与城市地质之关系及存在问题

城市地质是基础地质理论在城市建设中的应用领域。基础地质调查成果是城市地质研究的基础。目前，我国城市地质研究中普遍存在基础地质薄弱、灾害地质调查忽视基本的成因分析、第四系覆盖区地质调查带有明显的盲目性、基岩出露区地质调查忽视基本结构构造分析等问题。基础地质调查在国民经济建设中的地位不应该被忽视。如果城市地质在城市建设和可持续发展中处于基础地位，基础地质则是基础中的基础。它成为薄弱环节，是严重的策略性失误。     

The British isles and the age of exploration — a maritime perspective

The basic patterns of economic and political development of the British Isles region in a European context is outlined for the half century following Columbus’ discovery of America, noting the separate identities of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. The maritime dimension of these developments was based on trade with Europe, developed mainly in England and Scotland; and upon considerable development of the fisheries. Exploration and colonial expansion did not begin until after 1550 and continued into the seventeenth century. The historical role of the British Isles in Europe is considered as a sequence of approximately half-century phases extending from 1500 until the present, in which British maritime supremacy played a role in the nineteenth century similar to that played by the Spanish Empire in the sixteenth century.     

Territorial exclusion and violence: the case of the state of São Paulo, Brazil

If we had to point out one single feature to define Brazilian cities today, it would be the existence of a dual built environment: a landscape produced by private entrepreneurs and contained within the framework of detailed urban legislation, and another one, three times greater, self-produced by the poor and eternally situated in an intermediate zone between the legal and the illegal. In addition to being an expression of economic and social disparities, this contrast has profound implications on the form and functioning of the cities. The sprawl of the precarious peripheries has lead to an absurd disconnection of poorly urbanized spaces and the city center where jobs, cultural and economic opportunities are concentrated. The effects of this persistent territorial exclusion are devastating and occur in both the peripheries and the city center. The purpose of this paper is to explore the nexus between the precarious and risky urbanization which took place in Brazilian cities and the urban violence that seems to be the most recent and visible face of this model, using the concrete example of different cities in the state of São Paulo. In order to construct the links it is first important to understand how patterns of economic development and population trends have contributed to the generation of risk urbanization and how planning and urban management policies interact with it.     

Budapest and the European metropolitan integration

Budapest is going to take over Vienna's gateway functions esp. in case Berlin succeeds to be a global city of Central Europe and will develop a parallel urban system like the present one of London and Paris for Western Europe. Budapest will be able to fulfill the role of a subregional continental centre. To prove these expectations, the paper discusses the competitiveness of the Hungarian capital, compared to Prague and Warsaw. The advantageous position of Budapest lies partly in its geographic situation, partly in the reforms giving way to private enterprise in the last decades of socialism. Most of the Central European post-communist capital cities, with the exception of Ljubljana and Bratislava, are large and developed enough to enter a European urban competition. Belgrade and Zagreb will be delayed due to the civil war in their region; Bucharest and Sofia have infrastructural, economic and social problems, while Budapest, Prague and Warsaw may have an opportunity to join the developed European urban network. Their chances are examined in this study, with special regard to the Hungarian capital.     

基于历史航卫片的城市“隐形”活动断层精确定位——以大同盆地水峪断裂为例

活动断层是城市地震灾害的重要风险源，准确厘定活动断层的空间几何展布是有效降低城市地震灾害和开展活动断层避让的基础。而城市化建设对原始地貌的严重改造使得原先出露地表的活动断层成为"隐形"断层，难以准确确定断层的几何展布。大同盆地中部的水峪断裂北段位于马铺山东缘，断错地貌明显，但南段进入大同市御东新区被城市建筑物覆盖，成为"隐形"断层。研究基于大同地区1965年历史航片影像资料，结合1∶10000地形图，运用航片像对和航空立体摄影的方法重建了该地区的数字高程模型（DEM）和正射影像（DOM），重点对水峪断裂"隐形"段进行识别和定位，厘定了水峪断裂断层陡坎的几何展布特征。研究结果表明，水峪断裂北段山前陡坎线性特征明显，由影像可以准确解译出断层几何展布位置；水峪断裂南段可基于2000年之前的Keyhole历史遥感影像、DOM与DEM资料，根据断层两侧的颜色差异及陡坎高度差异，精确厘定该段的断层几何展布位置；DEM提取的地形剖面表明"隐形"段陡坎高度在19 m左右。同时，基于野外调查的断层剖面与浅层人工地震剖面证明该陡坎就是水峪断裂的位置，这也表明利用历史航卫片对城市"隐形"活动断层进行精确定位的方法是可行的。该研究不仅为大同地区的地震危险性评估提供了重要依据，而且为城市"隐形"活动断层探测提供了一个新的思路和途径。