The potential of a “green” economy in the socioeconomic development of Irkutsk Oblast

We examine the institutional fundamentals of the goals of sustainable development of a territory from the perspective of the development vector of a “green” economy that is responsible for the main directions of transformation of the economic complex of countries and regions. The possible main development directions of the socioeconomic structure of a typical Siberian region (Irkutsk oblast) are generalized, based on the principles of the modern view of the practical implementation of basic branches (sectors) of a “green” economy. Account is taken of the factor of the resource-oriented development model of the oblast for the foreseeable future by analyzing the main conceptual-strategic and planning documents defining the socioeconomic status of the territory into 2030. The main directions of modernization of the Irkutsk oblast’s economic complex are suggested having regard to the principles of a “green” economy in order to ensure favorable conditions for future generations, including ecological conditions. A priority is given to an increase in the proportion of the branches (kinds of economic activity) in the gross regional product as well as in other socioeconomic indicators, which have the least negative influence on the environment. We formulated the development directions of one of the kinds of activity of current relevance to the oblast, namely waste management in the form of an environment protection infrastructure, and three structurally-hierarchically arranged main development and functioning levels of the modern environment protection infrastructure are suggested on the principles of a “green” economy (regional, subregional, and local) within the framework of the updated Strategy of Development of the Oblast’s Productive Forces.     

The development of geographical information systems in Japan†

Abstract

Geographical information systems are not as popular in Japan as they are in North America, but they have recently been attracting keen interest from national and local governments. This paper reviews (I) the present status of the introduction and use of geographical information systems in Japan, (2) national and local digital geographical information systems in Japan.     

The Weavers of the “Western Isles”

This study provides an in-depth investigation of Turkish primary school students’ perceptions of geography. Gender differences in students’ perceptions of geography were investigated, including definitions of geography and its field of study. The findings showed that landforms, our geographical regions/Turkey, mapwork, and countries dominated among students’ definitions. Geography topics cited were mainly within the physical geography category and mostly those of landforms and cartography. A chi-square test revealed a statistically significant difference between girls and boys in the Turkey category and the history-related issues category.     

“Clusters” or “communities”? Analysing the spatial agglomeration of video game companies in Australia

In this paper, I question whether agglomerations of video game companies in Australia function as clusters (spatially bound) or rather as communities (not spatially bound). The two case studies included in the analysis are the main agglomerations of video companies in Australia—Brisbane and Melbourne. The data have been collected through 21 semi-structured interviews performed between 2012 and 2014. The main findings are as follows: (1) the primary reason that video game companies come together is to share tacit knowledge and skilled labour; (2) these agglomerations do not have the attributes of “creative clusters”; and (3) new technologies enable experienced game developers to operate at the geographic periphery of the main agglomeration of developers. Therefore, to paint a more accurate picture of why some video game companies are successful—beyond simply positive externalities associated with co-localization—I propose the term “networked communities.” This recognizes that social networks at varying scales (local, national, international) are being developed by video game firms in order to thrive and reach a global audience.     

《the agglomeration of the animation industry in East Asia》书评

<正>为了推动日本地理学术成果的国际化,日本地理学会启动了英文双书出版,集结可以代表日本地理学研究最新成果的系列书籍以英文出版。《the agglomeration of the animation industry in East Asia》(ISBN:978-4-431-55092-1)即是2014年由Springer出版社出版的该系列书籍之一。作者聚焦1990年代之后发达国家城市经济发展中具有重要作用的     

A Review of “The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World”

In contrast to the conventional gravity model that estimates flows between cities of given sizes, the reverse gravity model attempts to reconstruct the theoretical gravitational attractions of cities from network flow data. This article introduces the particle swarm optimization (PSO) method in solving the reverse gravity model. With comparison to the linear programming (LP) and the simplified algebraic method (SAM), the advantages of the PSO method include flexibility in the impedance function and better goodness of fit. The method is applied to the case study of air passenger transport in China. The results indicate that estimated nodal attractions in cities are generally in line with their population sizes, but there are significant discrepancies between them. A close examination of the discrepancies reveals that a better developed tertiary sector and higher tourism revenue per capita are associated with overestimated attractions in air transport, and stronger railway dominance influences their underestimation. The changes of gravitational attractions in major cities from 2001 to 2008 indicate the declining dominance of the largest cities and a move toward a more balanced development in the air transport system of China.     

Representations of utopian urbanism and the feminist geopolitics of “new city” development

Increasingly over the past few years the building of new cities “from scratch” has become a key strategy to promote development across much of the Global South. While several projects are currently under construction, many others exist primarily as proposals awaiting adequate investment or government action. This paper builds on previous literature that considers representations of such projects – promotional materials, digitally-produced video simulations, and master plans – as key components in the production of imagined urban futures. Through an exploration of the proposed Zone for Economic Development and Employment (ZEDE) in Honduras, this article demonstrates a feminist geopolitical approach focused on how such representations of utopian urbanism circulate through the local communities slated for new city development. I examine how representations of future urban spaces and future urban governance regimes become appropriated by local residents in organizing opposition or otherwise making sense of the proposed project’s potential impact on their lives.     

Developers in the public interest? The role of urban development corporations in the Anglophone Caribbean

Urban centres in the Caribbean face a wide variety of infrastructural and planning challenges. One of the key strategies that has been adopted by national governments to address these challenges is the formation of urban development corporations. These are governmental agencies with powers to facilitate urban regeneration in specific areas. This paper examines the history, role and function of urban development corporations in Jamaica, Antigua and Barbuda, and Trinidad and Tobago. The Urban Development Corporation (UDC) was formed in Jamaica in 1968, the St John's Development Company (SJDC) in Antigua and Barbuda was created in 1986, and the Urban Development Corporation of Trinidad and Tobago (UDeCOTT) was established in 1994. These bodies share the characteristic of having far-reaching planning and development powers within specific areas. For example, the SJDC is able 'to acquire, manage, or dispose of lands and to lay out, construct, and maintain roads, buildings, public parks, piers, car parks, and other public amenities' within specified designated areas, whilst Jamaica's UDC is empowered 'to carry out and/or secure the laying out and development of "designated areas". These three urban development corporations can be seen to act as developers in the public interest, as agents of modernisation, and as responses to neoliberalisation. However, whilst they have succeeded in effecting large-scale transformations to the urban landscape, this has often been achieved through a top-down development process with exemption from planning regulations and little accountability to the residents of the cities.     

The development of a historical digital cadastral database†

With an ever-increasing number of land information systems being developed, there is a growing demand by users for systems which support the use of temporal data for time-based studies. System managers, however, may have difficulty responding to these calls because of the lack of available research to guide them in their task. This paper examines the simple method of storing and processing temporal graphical data by the addition of time-encoding attributes to data elements as required. To illustrate the technique, a historical digital cadastral database has been created which al lows users to display and report on the cadastral parcellation of a region at any time in the past. The method can also be widely applied to other data to assist a broad range of space/time-related studies.     

A Review of “Putting “America” on the Map: The Story of the Most Important Graphic Document in the History of the United States”

Leinbach, Thomas R. and Brunn, Stanley D. (eds.) Worlds of E-Commerce: Economic, Geographical, and Social Dimensions

Calthorpe, Peter and Fulton, William The Regional City: Planning for the End of Sprawl

Furuseth, Owen J. and Lapping, Mark B. (eds.) Contested Countryside: The Rural-Urban Fringe in North America

Sharp, Joanne P. Condensing the Cold War: Reader's Digest and American Identity

Gleeson, Brendan and Low, Nicholas (eds.) Governing for the Environment: Global Problems, Ethics, and Democracy

Isenberg, Andrew The Destruction of the Bison: An Environmental History, 1750 – 1920

Albert, Donald P., Gesler, Wilbert M. and Levergood, Barbara (eds.) Spatial Analysis, GIS, and Remote Sensing Applications in the Health Sciences

Wright, Dawn J. and Bartlett, Darius J. (eds.) Marine and Coastal Geographical Information Systems

Jankowski, Piotr and Nyerges, Timothy Geographic Information Systems for Group Decision Making: Towards a Participatory Geographic Information Science

Gerber, Rod and Chuan, Goh Kim (eds.) Fieldwork in Geography: Reflections, Perspectives, and Actions

Craige, Betty Jean Eugene Odom: Ecosystem Ecologist and Environmentalist

Lowenthal, David George Perkins Marsh: Prophet of Conservation

Schroeder, Richard Shady Practices: Agroforestry and Gender Practices in The Gambia

Lovell, W. George A Beauty that Hurts: Life and Death in Guatemala

Lichtenberger, Elisabeth Austria: Society and Regions     

The Travels of Critiques of Neoliberalism: Urban Experiences from the “Borderlands”

This article contributes to the ongoing scrutiny of the travels of critiques of neoliberalism in urban studies. Using the case of a state-led urban regeneration program implemented in Portugal since 2000, the Polis Program, the article weighs in on meta-analytical discussions about the hegemonic status of neoliberalism as a theoretical concept and as an analytical framework and on discussions about the travels of dominant critiques of neoliberalism beyond the sites of epistemological production. The article argues that the current analytical overinvestment in neoliberalism may obscure important drivers of contemporary urbanization and that recourse to a diversity of concepts may be a more profitable line of inquiry. The article suggests that current efforts at epistemological renewal within urban studies benefit from taking up cities in the “borderlands” of urban theory as relevant cases in their own right. The article offers further considerations on the purchase of neoliberalism in contemporary urban literature.[Key words: neoliberalism, critiques, urban theory, urban planning and policy, Portugal, Polis Program]     

The “Cultural Turn” in the Classroom: Two Examples of Pedagogy and the Politics of Representation

Abstract

This article offers video lessons that interweave visual and written materials in order to introduce university undergraduates (who may or may not be geography majors) to some recent shifts in geographic inquiry. What is often described as the “cultural turn” in human geography invites us to examine more closely the politics of representation, whereby power relations animate the ever-unfolding construction of cultural identities. These examples of pedagogy explore the formulation of geographic knowledge about two cultural groups—the Maori and the Romany (a.k.a. Gypsies).     

Reply to “Comments on Climatology: The Challenge for the Eighties Revisited”

Book reviews in this article

The Heated Debate: Greenhouse Predictions Versus Climate Reality. ROBERT C. BALLING JR. San Francisco: Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy, 1992. xxxvi and 195 pp., diags., tables, index, and biblio. $21.95 cloth (ISBN 0-936488-47-6).

Mountain Weather and Climate, 2nd edition. ROGER G. BARRY. New York: Routledge, Chapman and Hall, 1992. xx and 402 pp., maps. diags., photos, index, and biblio. $89.95 cloth (ISBN 0-415-07112-7); $29.95 paper (ISBN 0-415-07113-5).

Late Quaternary Environmental Change: Physical and Human Perspectives. MARTIN BELL and MICHAEL J. C. WALKER. Essex, England: Longman Group, 1992. xiv and 273 pp., maps, diags., index, and biblio. $39.95 paper (ISBN 0-582-04514-2).

Planning for Earthquakes. PHILIP R. BERKE and TIMOTHY BEATLEY. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992. xv and 210 pp., maps, diags., photos, tables, app., acronyms, index, and biblio. $38.00 cloth (ISBN 0-8018-4255-7).

Industrialization and Development in the Third World. RAJESH CHANDRA. London: Routledge, 1992. xvii and 124 pp., maps, figs., photos, and index. $14.95 paper (ISBN 0-415-01380-1).

Waste Location: Spatial Aspects of Waste Management, Hazards and Disposal. MICHAEL CLARK, DENIS SMITH, and ANDREW BLOWERS, eds. London: Routledge, 1992. xv and 257 pp., maps, diags., index, and refs. $85.00 cloth (ISBN 0-415-04824-9).

Water Diversion and Export: Learning from Canadian Experience. J. C. DAY and FRANK QUINN. Waterloo, Ontario: Department of Geography, University of Waterloo, 1992. xx and 215 pp., 14 maps, 4 diags., 17 tables, 12 photos, glossary, and biblio. $25.00 (Can.) paper (ISBN 0-921083-42-4).

The Native Population of the Americas in 1492, 2nd edition. WILLIAM M. DENEVAN, ed. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1992. xxxviii and 353 pp., maps, figs., tables, index, biblio. $45.00 cloth (ISBN 0-299-134-30-X); $14.95 paper (ISBN 0-299-13434-2).

Touring North America (series). ANTHONY R. DE SOUZA, ed. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1992. 13 volumes; pages varying from approximately 100 to approximately 300 each; maps, diags., indices, and biblios. $9.95 each paperback; $25.00 each volume in cloth; boxed gift set of all 13 volumes in paperback $129.95. (ISBNs for cloth and paperback editions range from 0-8135-1870-9 to 0-8135-1895-4 inclusive).

Urban Transport Planning: A Developmental Approach. HARRY T. DIMITRIOU. New York: Routledge, 1992. xviii and 346 pp., diags., index, and biblio. $92.50 cloth (ISBN 0-415-03857-X).

Colonialism and Development in the Contemporary World. CHRIS DIXON and MICHAEL HEFFERNAN, eds. Rutherford, NJ: Mansell, 1991. viii and 232 pp., maps, diags., index, and biblio. $70.00 cloth (ISBN 0-7201-2072-1).

The Betweenness of Place: Towards a Geography of Modernity. J. NICHOLAS ENTRIKIN. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. xii and 196 pp., notes, and indices. $38.50 cloth (ISBN 0-8018-4083-X); $13.95 paper (ISBN 0-8018-4084-8).

The Women Outside: Meanings and Myths of Homelessness. STEPHANIE GOLDEN. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. ix and 265 pp., index and biblio. $25.00 cloth (ISBN 0-520-07158-1).

The Transformation of Agriculture in the West. DAVID GRIGG. Oxford, England, and Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 1992. xiv and 141 pp., maps, diags., index, and biblio. $19.95 paper (ISBN 0-631-17094-4).

Derelict Landscapes: The Wasting of America's Built Environment. JOHN A. JAKLE and DAVID WILSON. Savage, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1992. xviii and 342 pp., illus., index, biblio. $65.00 cloth (ISBN 0-8476-7735-4); $23.50 paper (ISBN 0-8476-7736-2).

Iranian Cities: Formation and Development. MASOUD KHEIRABADI. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991. xiv and 132 pp., maps, diags., photos, appendices, notes, glossary, biblio., and index. $27.50 cloth (ISBN 0-292-72468-3).

The Pentagon and the Cities. ANDREW KIRBY, ed. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1991. Urban Affairs Annual Reviews, vol. 40. x and 207 pp., tables, maps, index, and biblio. $43.95 cloth (ISBN 0-8039-3845-4); $19.95 paper (ISBN 0-8039-3846-2).

Geographic Perspectives on Soviet Central Asia. ROBERT A. LEWIS, ed. London and New York: Routledge, 1992. xv and 323 pp., maps, diags., index, and biblio. $69.95 cloth (ISBN 0-415-07592-0).

Conquest and Survival in Colonial Guatemala: A Historical Geography of the Cuchumatan Highlands, 1500–1821. W. GEORGE LOVELL. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1992. xxxviii and 279 pp., maps, diags., glossary, notes, index, and biblio. $19.95 paper (ISBN 0-7735-0903-8).

Contested Lands: Conflict and Compromise in New Jersey's Pine Barrens. ROBERT J. MASON. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992. xii and 257 pp., maps, tables, index, and biblio. $44.95 cloth (ISBN 0-87722-925-2).

Making Sense of Place: Children's Understanding of Large-Scale Environments. M. H. MATTHEWS. Savage, MD: Harvester Wheatsheaf, Barnes and Noble Books, 1992. xiv and 271 pp., maps, diags, tables, index, and biblio. $54.50 cloth (ISBN 0-389-20987-2).

Sources of Metropolitan Growth. EDWIN S. MILLS and JOHN F. MCDONALD, eds. New Brunswick: Center for Urban Policy Research Press, 1992. xxvii and 306 pp., maps, diags., index, and biblio. $29.95 cloth (ISBN 0-88285-135-7).

Resource Management in Developing Countries. PETER H. OMARAOJUNGU. Harlow, England: Longman, 1992. xvi and 213 pp., maps, diags., tables, index, and biblio. $39.95 paper (ISBN 0-582-30102-5).

A Moveable Shore: The Fate of the Connecticut Coast. PETER C. PATTON and JAMES M. KENT. Durham: Duke University Press, 1992. viii and 143 pp., maps, diags., index, and biblio. $49.95 cloth (ISBN 0-8223-1128-3); $19.95 paper (ISBN 0-8223-1147-X).

Agricultural Reform in China: From Communes to Commodity Economy 1978–1990. SIMON G. POWELL. Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, 1992. viii and 231 pp., maps, diags., tables, and biblio. $69.95 cloth (ISBN 0-7190-3382-9).

The Caribbean in the Wider World, 1492–1992: A Regional Geography. BONHAM C. RICHARDSON. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. xvi and 235 pp., maps, tables, index, and biblio. $49.95 cloth (ISBN 0-521-35186-3); $16.95 paper (ISBN 0-521-35977-5).

Scavengers, Recyclers, and Solutions for Solid Waste Management in Indonesia. DANIEL T. SICULAR. Berkeley: Center for Southeast Asian Studies, University of California at Berkeley, 1992. xii and 197 pp., maps, tables, photos, glossary, biblio., and index. $16.50 paper (ISBN 0-944613-13-6).

The Sphinx in the City: Urban Life, the Control of Disorder, and Women. ELIZABETH WILSON. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. 191 pp., plates, index, and biblio. $35.00 cloth (ISBN 0-520-07850); $14.00 paper (ISBN 0-520-07864-0).

The Cultural Geography of the United States: A Revised Edition. WILBUR ZELINSKY. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1992. ix and 226 pp., maps, diags., index, and biblio. $21.95 paper (ISBN 0-13-194424-X).     

What's on top for geography teachers? National Certificate of Educational Achievement and the prioritization of professional development

Geography teachers' work is influenced by multiple education policy initiatives. Professional development opportunities emerge to support these policy changes and associated compliance issues. This paper reports the results of a survey in which geography teachers self‐reported their knowledge and prioritized professional development needs. The data indicate that some compliance issues associated with assessment policy reform have largely been resolved, while more substantive assessment and course design issues continue to be prioritized for professional development. However, professional development that continues to focus on assessment reform may marginalize geography teachers' engagement with concurrent curriculum and pedagogical policy initiatives.     

A Review of “The Power of Place”

Two qualitative case studies, one focusing on K-12 teachers and the other on middle school students, explore key factors associated with using Geographic Information Systems in the classroom. In both studies, access to appropriate hardware is a critical barrier. Time is another critical barrier—time to learn the GIS software and time in the curriculum to incorporate GIS as a learning experience. In both case studies, learning the technology at the expense of learning spatial analysis was a danger, suggesting the need for conscious focus on the goal of using GIS to learn how to “do geography.”