Mosquitoes in the mix: How transferable is creative city thinking?

This paper contributes to recent debates about whether urban policy discourses are transferable and what is at stake in their translation. It draws on discussion of Darwin (Northwest Territory, Australia), a tropical savanna location that the local government wants to promote as a 'creative city', without quite knowing what this might require. We discuss relevant debates on research knowledge construction, the creative city and the path-dependent character of neoliberal governmental objectives. We then turn to the geographical, demographic and cultural characteristics that make Darwin a challenging and distinct context for translation of global theories of creative city rejuvenation. As well as arguing a case for more nuanced, locationally specific, analysis of the capacity of places to embrace travelling policy discourses, we suggest ways in which creative city research can be refreshed through engaging with literatures on (post)colonial urban politics and intersections with policy initiatives other than those targeted at 'creative industries' per se . We systematically outline the particular challenges that tropical cities in remote locations provide to accepted wisdom about creativity-led urban planning.     

How is the precipitation distributed vertically in arid mountain region of Northwest China?

Precipitation in the arid region of Northwest China (NWC) shows high spatial and temporal variability,in large part because of the region's complex topography and moisture conditions.However,rain gauges in the area are sparse,and most are located at altitudes below 2000 m,which limits our understanding of precipitation at higher altitudes.Interpolated precipitation products and satellite-based datasets with high spatiotemporal resolution can potentially be a substitute for rain gauge data.In this study,the spatial and temporal proper-ties of precipitation in the arid region of NWC were analyzed using two gridded precipitation products:SURF_CLI_CHN_PRE_DAY_GRID_0.5 (CHN) and Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) 3B43.The CHN and TRMM 3B43 data showed that in summer,precipitation was more concentrated in southern Xinjiang than in northern Xinjiang,and the opposite was true in winter.The largest difference in precipitation between mountainous areas and plains appeared in summer.High-elevation areas with high precipitation showed more stable annual precipitation.Different sub-regions showed distinctive precipitation distributions with elevation,and both datasets showed that the maximum precipitation zone appeared at high altitude.     

Is salinity the only water quality parameter affected when saline water is disposed in rivers?

The effect of saline lake water disposal from the Lough Calvert Drainage Scheme on water quality of the Barwon River, in south west Victoria, Australia, was investigated. The Scheme is used to regulate the levels of several saline lakes outside the Barwon's catchment. This study found that the disposal of saline lake water was associated with increased total phosphorus, PO₄, TKN, suspended solids, electrical conductivity and stream discharge and lower NOx in the Barwon River. Thus, when disposing of saline water, factors other than salinity should be considered in order to prevent an impact on the aquatic environment. At present this is generally not done. The results are discussed with reference to the effects of saline water disposal on aquatic biota and how the effect of saline lake water disposal on water quality may differ from the disposal of saline groundwater.     

The consequences of Brazil’s lack of transport planning is written in the blood of sparrows

The medium-sized cities of Brazil are those with populations of between 100,000 and 500,000 inhabitants. These cities are growing rapidly, and are characterized by poor urban planning, a loss of biodiversity and decreasing health prospects for residents. Historically, urbanization in Brazil has been associated with incentives to increase the use of private vehicles for local transport. The air pollution resulting from this “car dependency” has been quantified in some major cities in Brazil, such as the megacity of São Paulo. In this paper, we demonstrate through a bioindication study carried out in the Brazilian city of Rondonópolis, that atmospheric pollution resulting from vehicular emissions is also a measurable reality for medium-sized cities. Most Brazilian cities lack air quality measurement equipment, and we used an inexpensive and easy to apply bioindication assay to measure air pollution, and this approach could be easily implemented in those cities and beyond.     

Estimating the size and distribution of South Asian religious populations in Britain: is there an alternative to a religion question in the census?

This paper addresses the question of whether there is an alternative to asking a direct religious question in the 2001 Census through a systematic review of alternative methods of quantifying religious populations. After establishing the limited availability of direct information on religion, the paper considers the application of an inferential method for estimating religious populations based on data from the 1994 Fourth National Survey of Ethnic Minorities (NSEM). Except for the monoreligious Pakistani and Bangladeshi populations, evidence of substantial spatial variation in the association between ethnicity and religion severely limits application of the method below national level. Using the religiously diverse Indian population of outer London as a case study, the NSEM is investigated to see whether the incorporation of other ?predictors? of religion as weighting variables improves sensitivity of the method to this variation. In a second method, logistic regression is employed to develop predictive models of religious affiliation for application to census microdata. Based on these two applications, it was concluded that very little of the variation in the religious geography of Indians in outer London can be inferred from measured characteristics in the census. However, this does not necessarily imply support for inclusion of a religion question in the 2001 Census. It was suggested that it may be more appropriate and cost effective to define and solve the need for data locally.     

How circular is Minangkabau migration?

The author uses 1970-1971 survey data to examine changes in the migration paterns of the Minangkabau of West Sumatra, with a focus on the increase in permanent out-migration and the decline of return migration     

What is the Meaning of ‘Social Mix’? Shifting perspectives in planning and implementing public housing estate redevelopment

This paper unravels a variety of perspectives about the concept of social mix, drawing on a case study of the implementation of a redevelopment project in Melbourne. The first part provides a theoretical overview of two internationally predominant academic debates around policy interpretations of this concept, namely social mix as a means for promotion of social inclusion; and as a state-led form of gentrification. These two arguments are usually presented as one, with social inclusion and reductions of concentrations of disadvantage one side of the ‘social mix policy’ coin, and state-led gentrification the other. This paper contributes to the national and international literature on public housing estate regeneration and social mix policies through exploring the question of whether these two ideas about social mix were shared by different stakeholders as the ‘messy’ process of redevelopment unfurled. Interviews were conducted with public tenants, homeowners and homebuyers, private renters and local service providers at the Carlton Housing Estate to explore the diverse perspectives of various stakeholder groups as estate design and implementation shifted. The study identified that as a result of the global financial crisis and the developers exerting pressure on government there was a gradual move away from perceiving social mix as a policy tool for encouraging social inclusion at Carlton, between public housing tenants and private residents, towards a different form of social mix and inclusion. Contrary to intentions, the revised form of social mix at Carlton was perceived as a means to harness market capital and attract higher income residents to the inner city.     

“The city is an apartment house”: property,improvement and dispossession in early twentieth-century Halifax,Nova Scotia

In early twentieth-century Halifax, municipal policies of property taxation and assessment became an important object of political discussion and contestation. Central to these political contests was a particular, theoretically informed distinction between “land” and “improvements.” This distinction would ultimately ground a set of changes in municipal taxation and assessment (introduced between 1914 and 1918) and would help to constitute a new and consequential logic of state action within property relations. Drawing on the literature on property “enactment,” this article examines how early twentieth-century struggles over municipal taxation and assessment reshaped the prevailing understanding of real property in the city of Halifax. Consistent with existing research, I demonstrate how a new perspective on property—including a new distinction between land and improvements—gradually came into being through a series of performances, practices and material devices. Embedded within this new perspective, crucially, was a specific logic of dispossession, a new and calculative rationale for the expropriation and redevelopment of the city’s “underimproved” land. While the literature on property enactment has quite often investigated practices of dispossession, I point out that its analysis of dispossession’s logic or rationale has tended to be confined to a single property theorist, John Locke, and his justifiably famous distinction between land and improvements. Emphasizing the rather different, post-Lockean conception of property that emerged in early twentieth-century Halifax, I suggest that more attention ought to be paid to the multiple and varying logics of dispossession that are liable to be contained within prevailing property enactments.     

“There is No Program Without Farmers”: Interactive Radio for Forest Landscape Restoration in Mount Elgon Region,Uganda

Increase in ownership and use of radios and mobile phones in Uganda may present opportunities for interactive and efficient agricultural extension services. Yet the impact of interactive radio on rural development has rarely been evaluated. In a participatory project, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature together with Farm Radio International and stakeholders from local government, radio, and community-based organizations promoted the increased use of forest landscape restoration activities though interactive rural radio programs, including innovative methods to reach populations not covered by radio. An evaluation found that 98% of people who listened to most or all of the broadcasts carried out one of the practices, whereas 84% of those who had listened to only one episode had used one of the practices. Inclusion of a wide range of community stakeholders from project inception was vital for presenting the project and embedding it within local institutional contexts.     

What is urban about critical urban theory?

This essay takes as its provocation a question posed by the feminist philosopher Nancy Fraser: “What’s Critical about Critical Theory?” In urban studies, this question has been usefully reframed by Neil Brenner to consider what is critical about critical urban theory. This essay discusses how the “urban” is currently being conceptualized in various worlds of urban studies and what this might mean for the urban question of the current historical conjuncture. Launched from places on the map that are forms of urban government but that have distinctive agrarian histories and rural presents, the essay foregrounds the undecidability of the urban, be it geographies of urbanization or urban politics. What is at stake is a critical urban theory attentive to historical difference as a fundamental constituting process of global political economy and deconstruction as a methodology of generalization and theorization.     

“This venue is brought to you by…”: the diffusion of sports and entertainment facility name sponsorship in urban Europe

ABSTRACT

Drawing on a database of 193 football (soccer) grounds and 115 indoor arenas, as well as press releases and media reports associated with them, this study charts the diffusion of sporting and entertainment facility name sponsorship across metropolises, cities, towns, and smaller settlements in six European contexts. Our results show the emergence of naming rights deals in the 1990s, their peak in the mid-2000s, and the current situation with a steadier growth of name sponsorship. Thus far, the corporate re-branding of venues has remained less prevalent in Italy, Norway, and Scotland than in England and Wales, Finland, and above all Germany. In financing newly built venues, however, the corporatized landmark language in focus has become a practically invariable part of local growth, austerity and (re)branding policies. Despite voices of resistance in all regions studied here, pressure towards the corporate renaming of even hereditary, communally endorsed football stadiums is increasingly being felt by municipal and private-sector venue owners.     

What is the topset of a shelf-margin prism?

The siliciclastic topset of a continental margin, or a shelf-margin prism in subsiding nonplate-margin deepwater basins, is the flat-lying upper part of the margin succession; it is coeval basinwards with deepwater slope clinoforms. Topsets develop by the aggradation of repeated, cross-shelf, shoreline regressions and transgressions, thereby hosting the shelf portion of stacked, fourth-order stratigraphic sequences. Sediment spreading downdip and along strike during the cross-shelf transit of the sediment delivery system, as well as process regime changes of deltas and shorefaces (regressive) and of estuaries, barrier–lagoon systems and shelf ridges (transgressive) are highly variable over short distances, so that correlation within a single stratigraphic sequence is far more difficult than correlation of the cross-shelf maximum flooding surface boundaries. Thickness of individual regressive–transgressive, fourth-order sequences is given by shelf accommodation, typically <10 m in embayment or on the inner shelf and up to 200 m on outer shelf. Tectonic subsidence and compaction will enhance this thickness only if rates are very high compared to shelf-transit time. In very high subsidence rate settings, the transgressive tracts are well preserved and often thickly developed. Topset sequences in an Icehouse climate setting tend to have a high proportion and greater landward development of marine vs nonmarine deposits, compared to Greenhouse sequences, because of the importance of eustatic rise of sea level in the former. Previous numerical experiments show that even for very wide shelves and irrespective of Icehouse or Greenhouse conditions, deltas rarely take more than 10 s of ky to reach their shelf edge, suggesting that it is fourth-order (or higher) sequences that are the fundamental ones in sequence stratigraphy.     

Nordic innovation models: Why is Norway different?

ABSTRACT

The study objective is to assess why official statistics give the impression that Norway has low levels of innovation compared to other Nordic countries. The author examines innovation practices in Denmark and Norway to demonstrate that this is not the case. The results reveal that official statistics are misleading and that Norway has a high level of innovation but spends relatively less on scientific research. A further finding is that in Finland and Sweden innovation is heavily based on science and technology, whereas Denmark and Norway are clearly more pragmatic and base their innovation more on a ‘doing, using, and interacting’ (DUI) post-science, technology, and innovation (STI) approach. Additionally, in Denmark systems are led by small and medium-sized enterprises, whereas in Norway they are led by large enterprises. The author discusses the explanations for such differences in national and regional ‘innovation systems’ among countries that appear to outsiders to have a lot in common. He concludes that, by contrast, the ‘insiders’ are aware that they are quite distinctive societies that are evolving notably divergent developmental pathways. A key and probably controversial conclusion is that in the contemporary post-specialisation and post-cluster era the DUI systems have advantages over the STI-led ones.     

How much information is geospatially referenced? Networks and cognition

The aim of this article is to provide a basis in evidence for (or against) the much-quoted assertion that 80% of all information is geospatially referenced. For this purpose, two approaches are presented that are intended to capture the portion of geospatially referenced information in user-generated content: a network approach and a cognitive approach. In the network approach, the German Wikipedia is used as a research corpus. It is considered a network with the articles being nodes and the links being edges. The Network Degree of Geospatial Reference (NDGR) is introduced as an indicator to measure the network approach. We define NDGR as the shortest path between any Wikipedia article and the closest article within the network that is labeled with coordinates in its headline. An analysis of the German Wikipedia employing this approach shows that 78% of all articles have a coordinate themselves or are directly linked to at least one article that has geospatial coordinates. The cognitive approach is manifested by the categories of geospatial reference (CGR): direct, indirect, and non-geospatial reference. These are categories that may be distinguished and applied by humans. An empirical study including 380 participants was conducted. The results of both approaches are synthesized with the aim to (1) examine correlations between NDGR and the human conceptualization of geospatial reference and (2) to separate geospatial from non-geospatial information. From the results of this synthesis, it can be concluded that 56–59% of the articles within Wikipedia can be considered to be directly or indirectly geospatially referenced. The article thus describes a method to check the validity of the ‘80%-assertion’ for information corpora that can be modeled using graphs (e.g., the World Wide Web, the Semantic Web, and Wikipedia). For the corpus investigated here (Wikipedia), the ‘80%-assertion’ cannot be confirmed, but would need to be reformulated as a ‘60%-assertion’.     

Unpredictable Outcomes in Forestry—Governance Institutions in Practice

Community forest management in the Amazon has been subject to institutional changes because of a shift from government to governance. Although these changes aim to create opportunities for local communities, the effectiveness of new institutions remains arbitrary. In particular, the unpredictability of legislative outcomes—as one of the institutional changes—evokes discussion on how local people respond to new institutions. This article analyzes the effects of forest institutions at the local level. By using the concept of institutional bricolage, the article argues that institutions in practice work differently than intended.     

Trust Matters – Social Capital in Herding Cooperation in Finland

Reindeer herding is a nature-based livelihood of the indigenous Sámi people in northern parts of Europe and Russia. During the last decades, reindeer herding has become a more significant issue in the context of the market economy: the livelihood has transformed toward entrepreneurship, and the subsidies demand growth in the scale of herding. According to the national administration, the market values are highlighted. However, for herders, market economies are only one part of their livelihood. Another important part is their experience of reindeer herding as a way of life; for many reindeer herders trust in their livelihood and the social relations associated with their way of life are of equal or greater importance than economic aspects. In this paper, the role of social trust in the changing process of reindeer herding is discussed. Inherited tacit and cultural knowledge, as a part of social capital, strengthen reindeer herders’ experience of trust.