Metropolitan government in Toulouse: From fragmentation to federalism

This paper examines changes in governance in the metropolitan area of Toulouse, which includes 78 communes and contains a population of 761,000. As in most French cities local government is very fragmented. Until the end of the 1980s, the urban services were delivered by many associations of communes, both single-purpose and multipurpose. This pragmatic form of governance made it possible for the communes to preserve their identity and their decision-making autonomy, which is the basis of the French traditional model of local democracy. But it is rather important to face the new challenges posed by inter-city competition across Europe, by continuing urban growth, and by the reinforcement of residential segregation. The recent creation of `Grand Toulouse', a metropolitan two-tier government with many competences and a taxing power appears to bring an institutional solution, but one can wonder if local leaders will try to make it simply another co-ordinating mechanism. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Gated communities and urban fragmentation in Latin America: the Brazilian experience

Since the mid-1970s, gated housing areas of the privileged have been spreading in Latin American cities. They have to be seen as a visible consequence of the deepening social disparities within Latin American societies and the resulting fragmentation of urban space. Condomínios fechados (Brazil) or barrios cerrados (Argentina) can be typified following different criteria, such as formation, location, size, fittings, construction typology, as well as social structure. Three groups of actors influence the process of their expansion: the real estate companies, for which the new form of living offers an attractive market segment, the target groups, whose increasing expectations regarding security and living comfort need to be met, and the public authorities, who have to find adequate responses concerning the further orientation of urban development. Based on case studies from Brazil, the paper will discuss the different phases of gated community expansion and the reasons why this is happening. Their internal structure and differentiation, as well as consequences for socio-spatial development and urban planning will also be dealt with.     

New York: the Big Apple in the 1990s

New York plays a fundamental role in the world economy as both a motor and beneficiary of globalization. This paper traces New York’s international ties in the 1990s. While the city’s global pre-eminence as a center of finance capital is well known, New York is also an important international center of corporate headquarters, business services, communications, tourism, and commercial real estate. Next, it reviews the spatial configuration of employment, with an emphasis on the overwhelming concentration of jobs in Manhattan, a reflection of the enormous agglomerative economies found there. Third, it notes the marginalized populations that have not benefited from globalization. Fourth, it addresses changing regimes of governance that have accompanied the city’s intersections with the global economy.     

Dynamics of land use/cover changes and the analysis of landscape fragmentation in Dhaka Metropolitan, Bangladesh

Rapid urban expansion due to large scale land use/cover change, particularly in developing countries becomes a matter of concern since urbanization drives environmental change at multiple scales. Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, has been experienced break-neck urban growth in the last few decades that resulted many adverse impacts on the environment. This paper was an attempt to document spatio-temporal pattern of land use/cover changes, and to quantify the landscape structures in Dhaka Metropolitan of Bangladesh. Using multi-temporal remotely sensed data with GIS, dynamics of land use/cover changes was evaluated and a transition matrix was computed to understand the rate and pattern of land use/cover change. Derived land use statistics subsequently integrated with landscape metrics to determine the impact of land use change on landscape fragmentation. Significant changes in land use/cover were noticed in Dhaka over the study period, 1975–2005. Rapid urbanization was manifested by a large reduction of agricultural land since urban built-up area increased from 5,500?ha in 1975 to 20,549?ha in 2005. At the same time, cultivated land decreased from 12,040 to 6,236?ha in the same period. Likewise, wetland and vegetation cover reduced to about 6,027 and 2,812?ha, respectively. Consequently, sharp changes in landscape pattern and composition were observed. The landscape became highly fragmented as a result of rapid increase in the built-up areas. The analysis revealed that mean patch size decreased while the number of patches increased. Landscape diversity declined, urban dominance amplified, and the overall landscape mosaics became more continuous, homogenous and clumped. In order to devise sustainable land use planning and to determine future landscape changes for sound resource management strategies, the present study is expected to have significant implications in rapidly urbanizing cities of the world in delivering baseline information about long term land use change and its impact on landscape structure.     

Mine ventilation planning in the 1980s

Conclusions In this paper, the author has attempted to trace the development of mine ventilation planning from the traditional, manual and largely empirical methods of the past to the numerate computer-based techniques of the 1980s.The computer revolution has changed the face of many engineering disciplines, not least mine environmental engineering. Nevertheless, the mining industries of the world have not all been equally progressive in adapting to the flexibility, power and practical utilization of the new methodologies. It is, for example, incongruous that current textbooks on mine ventilation separate completely the topics of network analysis and ventilation planning with very little cross-referencing. Many of the current generation of mine ventilation engineers recognize the need to know about computers but find difficulty in translating this into their daily work. The growing availability of self-teaching, friendly software for personal microcomputers, coupled with interactive graphics, will assist greatly in promoting uncomplicated but powerful usage of computers.Young engineers now graduating from universities and colleges have been brought up in a computer-oriented environment and are competent in interacting with these machines. Indeed, they wonder how the job was ever done without magnetic data bases and high-speed computation aid.     

Searching for metals in the 1980s

The past four decades have seen an unprecedented development of metal exploration techniques because as exposed and easily exploitable mineral deposits have been used up, exploration geologists have been forced to find new ways of looking deeper into the crust.     

Quaternary geology in Sweden in the 1980s

The author gives a brief review of the most important research on Quaternary geology in Sweden during the last few years and the main lines of development of ideas. Emphasis is put on the present 'state of the art' within the following fields: Mapping, international projects, Quaternary deposits, dating methods, Pleistocene stratigraphy, glaciation models, deglaciation, sea-level changes, and Holocene.     

Striving for equity: Aboriginal socioeconomic transformation and development in the 1980s

Although over the last three decades some of the gaps between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal living standards and material wealth have narrowed, change has been very gradual, has been by no means universal and, in some areas, such as unemployment levels, the Aboriginal position has actually deteriorated. It seems likely that, in socio-economic terms, Aboriginal inequality will persist for many decades to come. Inequality cannot be attributed solely to lack of Government expenditure: considerable financial resources have been devoted to the improvement of Aboriginal welfare. It is clear, however, that resources have not always been used in appropriate ways and it is argued that such misallocations will continue to occur until the underlying causes of Aboriginal disadvantage, as perceived by the Aborigines themselves, are better understood. In this understanding the land question is crucial. This paper analyses Aboriginal socioeconomic transformation in the context of control over land as a vital resource.     

Wetland conservation: Change and fragmentation in Trinidad’s protected areas

Conservation efforts often neglect the importance of monitoring of protected areas, which is key to adaptively managing dynamic landscapes. In many developing countries, like Trinidad, protected areas are set aside as a result of an agreement with an international conservation organization, often resulting in inadequate planning and monitoring of the protected area. Monitoring of protected areas allows for an examination of the conservation scheme implemented and enables improved conservation decisions to be made. The research presented provides an example of the use of technology in monitoring conservation strategies in two protected wetlands, Caroni and Nariva, in Trinidad. Remote sensing and fragmentation analyses are used to quantify land cover change within these two protected wetlands. Results show that the classification of Caroni immediately identifies a shift towards anthropogenic land cover types, suggesting an increase in human activity within the park. This finding is further supported by the continuous measures used, such as decreases in mean NDVI and greenness values suggesting a decrease in the amount or health of the vegetation. While the classification of Nariva suggests a return to natural land covers, the continuous measures of land cover change indicate the opposite. Land cover change analyses are limited in Trinidad and in the Caribbean in general, partly due to satellite data availability, thus this research presents remote sensing and landscape fragmentation analyses as new tools for monitoring land cover change and conservation effectiveness in Trinidad.     

Yandal greenstone belt, Western Australia: 12 million ounces of gold in the 1990s

After a century of virtual neglect, exploration in the Yandal greenstone belt of the Yilgarn Craton of Western Australia has yielded resources of 12 Moz Au during the 1990s. Success has come from a combination of conceptual geological models, surface prospecting, understanding the weathering environment, and systematic drilling. The Archaean Yandal greenstone belt comprises a lowermost banded iron formation, extensive basalt and dolerite sills, ultramafic rocks, intermediate to felsic volcanic rocks, and variable clastic sedimentary rocks. Early shear zones trend NNW and form the greenstone belt margins, or trend N–S within the belt. Later brittle cross-faults are critical in gold localization. Gold resources and past production at major deposits include Bronzewing (4 Moz Au), Jundee (5 Moz) Mt.␣McClure (1 Moz) and Darlot (3␣Moz, some of which was produced before 1990). All major deposits are hosted by Fe-rich mafic rocks, and mineralization displays a combination of different orientations and morphologies. Quartz veins are surrounded by broad carbonate alteration with proximal K-mica and Fe-sulphides. The recognition of a critical role for the late brittle structures in localizing gold implicates mid-crustal processes within the greenstone belt for fluid generation, and with the host rock control, supports the model in which fluid was derived by metamorphic devolatilization. Received: 19 September 1997 / Accepted: 7 January 1998     

West Siberian Oil Production in the Mid-1990s

A Western specialist on the liquid fuel industries and resources of Russia surveys trends in and factors affecting output in Russia's most important oil-producing region, accounting for nearly 70% of the country's production in 1994 and a similar share of oil reserves. A prolonged decline in oil output in the region, starting in 1988, appears to be bottoming out as a function of efforts to rehabilitate idle wells and liberalized regulations governing oil exports. A focus is on documenting trends in production within a series of regional production associations charged with operation of specific fields (of widely variable age and reserves) in West Siberia and on surveying Western participation in joint ventures involved in field development for deposits characterized by difficult geological conditions. Official projections of West Siberian crude oil output based on various assumptions regarding rates of investment, well rehabilitation, exploratory drilling, secondary recovery, etc. are reviewed and evaluated.     

There’s nothing inherent about scale: political ecology, the local trap, and the politics of development in the Brazilian Amazon

This paper argues that research in political ecology would benefit from more explicit and careful attention to the question of scale and scalar politics. Although political ecologists have extensively considered scale as a methodological question, they have yet to develop an explicit theoretical approach to scale as an object of inquiry. We highlight one principal drawback to this underdeveloped approach to scale: what we call “the local trap” in which political ecologists assume that organization, policies, and action at the local scale are inherently more likely to have desired social and ecological effects than activities organized at other scales. Over the past 10 years or so, an increasingly sophisticated literature on scale has been developing among scholars in geography working in the political economy tradition. This literature has argued that scale is socially produced rather than ontologically given. Therefore, there is nothing inherent about any scale, and so the local scale cannot be intrinsically more desirable than other scales. We suggest that a greater engagement with this scale literature offers political ecology a theoretical way out of the local trap. As a first approximation of the kind of scalar analysis we advocate, we present a case study that examines the scalar politics that have shaped environmental change in the Brazilian Amazon.     

Urban integration of Israeli immigrants in the 1990s: a comparison of Be'er Sheva, Ashkelon, Kiriat Gat

As a result of the opening of the borders of the former Soviet Union, Israel has been the destination of numerous immigrants. This article deals with the impact of immigration between 1989 and 1994, upon three towns in the south of Israel, Be'er Sheva, Ashkelon and Kiriat Gat. These towns correspond to three socio-economic levels of urban area in the southern region. On the one hand, the immigrants from the former Soviet Union arrive with specific demands, on the other hand the political, economical and social context in Israel is very unusual. The sucessful integration of immigrants and the constructive development of the host country depend on the conformity of these demands and proposals. What the government offers in terms of housing, reception and employment in each of the three towns plays a key role: the town's social and economical heritage influences the integration of the new population while at the same time the arrival of a new workforce influences the development of the local area. Every town wants to grow and reinforce its position in the region, but only the large town, Be'er Sheva, is able to offer a certain diversity and therefore answers more fully the needs and wants of this new population. Government decisions and policies are not made to oppose the liberal economic system and to suppress the spacial inequalities despite some measures aiming at a more equal balance. The importance of heritage and the lack of communal development schemes within regions together ensure the continuation of qualitative inegalities in the south of Israel and even accentuate the problem. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Deforestation modifying terrestrial organic transport in the Rio Tapajós, Brazilian Amazon

The concentration and biomarker compositions of sedimentary organic matter (OM) as well as fine and coarse suspended particles were analysed to identify the impact of deforestation on the transport of terrigenous organic matter (OM) in the Rio Tapajós, a major tributary to the Amazon. Substantial shifts in the concentration and composition of recently deposited sedimentary OM suggest that intensive deforestation over the last few decades has considerably modified the natural inputs of sedimentary materials to the aquatic ecosystems by disrupting the terrigenous fluxes of humus and soil materials from the drainage basin. The observed compositional changes of bulk OM and land derived biomarkers (e.g. lignin) in recent sediments illustrate a sedimentary enrichment in OM from soil horizons that, under normal forest cover, tend to be retained in the drainage basin. On average, the recently accumulated OM is nitrogen-rich ((C/N)a=12–15) and more highly degraded ((Ac/Al)v=0.4–0.6 and DHBA/V=0.15–0.20) than deep materials ((C/N)a=20–30, (Ac/Al)v=0.25–0.4, and DHBA/V=0.05–0.10), showing that this recently accumulated material is more humified than original inputs to the aquatic system, and consistent with increased exportation of fine eroded mineral and organic particles from surface soils along river banks. The present study illustrates the relevance of using OM oxidation products in sediment profiles to evaluate deforestation impacts on aquatic ecosystems and to characterize the nature of eroded soil materials, complementing studies on mineral/metal cycling.     

Globalization failures in a neo-liberal world: the case of FIAT Auto in the 1990s

In the 1990s FIAT Auto embarked on an ambitious globalization project (Project 178). FIAT Auto’s main aim was to enter new markets in emerging economies, although globalization also opened up opportunities for cost reduction through global sourcing. The countries chosen were ones in which it was anticipated that neo-liberal programmes of economic reform would result in fast economic growth. The result however was slow growth and economic crises. For FIAT Auto the consequence was a massive shortfall in anticipated sales which contributed along with a number of other factors to a deep financial crisis and a dramatic restructuring of the FIAT Group. This paper seeks to examine and explain these events drawing on a global value chain approach to the analysis of corporate profit and accumulation strategies.