A Debt to the West: Recent Developments in the International Financial Situation of East-Central Europe

East-Central Europe is undergoing a rapid political and economic transformation. The unprecedented depth and speed of the economic reforms have produced serious questions about the stability of the region, and its future relations with western Europe and the world economy. This paper surveys and evaluates the size and character of existing debt stocks owed to the West by Hungary, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. The future political and economic stability of East-Central Europe and the European Community depends, to a large extent, on the ability of the Western financial system to respond to the long-term needs of the region.     

A COMPUTER SOLUTION FOR DETERMINING STUDENT MIGRATION∗

Western investment and trade in East-Central Europe is likely to play a key role in the economic fortunes of the region over the next decade. Currently, the capital cities and the western parts of Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary are the primary beneficiaries of economic interaction with the West. As such, existing regional inequalities are being reinforced. Deepening regional socioeconomic disparities within individual states could complicate the economic restructuring process and jeopardize state stability in the years ahead.     

Western Investment in East-Central Europe: Emerging Patterns and Implications for State Stability*

Western investment and trade in East-Central Europe is likely to play a key role in the economic fortunes of the region over the next decade. Currently, the capital cities and the western parts of Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary are the primary beneficiaries of economic interaction with the West. As such, existing regional inequalities are being reinforced. Deepening regional socioeconomic disparities within individual states could complicate the economic restructuring process and jeopardize state stability in the years ahead.     

Geography and Politics of the United States in the Year 2000

Abstract

The future as a productive subject of scholarly inquiry has only recently been recognized by geographers. The discipline's concern with man's spatial behavior and structure in a social, economic, and political vein suggests that teaching, research, and planning efforts can be funneled in these directions. Predicting future events and processes in the social sciences and in most areas of geography is difficult, probably more so in political geography than in many other fields. For this reason studies of a political nature represent a ready challenge and opportunity to examine present political worlds and suggest the likelihood of future political events, problems, and processes. This study, which focuses on the United States, identifies six developments and characteristics that are expected to be representative of the nation's political geography by the year 2000. Specifically, it is believed that by that date boundaries will have less meaning, the city will become the focus of political attention (as opposed to the state), new political cultures will emerge accompanied by new voting patterns, centralized authority at the national level will continue, and political considerations will play a key role in environmental planning and protection.     

Comments

Abstract

Latin America is the world's fastest growing region in population, and the consequent problems confronting Latin America are already evident in other underdeveloped regions and will become even more aggravated as demographic growth rates rise. Mortality can decline still further in some countries of Latin America and those countries will be especially hard-pressed in the near future. Implementation of fertility control will apparently be a slow process, so that the prospects are for continued very rapid growth for at least one or two decades. Population pressure on food supplies, resources, employment opportunities, and social services will continue to be formidable and further aggravate the fragile socio-economic structure and promote additional political instability. Much greater attention to population policy and program implementation is necessary to cope with population growth and the attendant problems in order to promote stability and improve living conditions in the region.     

Rural and Urban: Using American FactFinder on the Census Bureau Web Site Lesson Plan: Grades Four through Eight

Abstract

Regional survey courses are often perceived as ancillary to the systematic foci taught by geography programs. This situation stands in contrast to the recent recovery of place and region as key elements in the practice and theory of geography. In this article, I outline one possible approach for bridging the gap between regional geography's revival in theory and research and its instruction in the classroom. This approach is described in the context of a survey course about the former Soviet Union—a region where the conventional boundaries of place have been severely questioned by political, economic, and social upheavals.     

Constructing Risk: multi-scale change,livelihoods and vulnerability in the Mekong Delta,Vietnam

ABSTRACT

Change has been at the heart of the livelihoods concept since its inception, allowing for a clear focus on how people perceive, respond to and experience risk. The ardent focus on ‘the local’ within livelihoods work, both in research and programmatic terms, has to some extent overshadowed attention on the role of wider-scale political economic and environmental processes in generating change and determining responses to change. Livelihoods in the Mekong Delta have never been ‘local’, having long been historically embedded in international, regional and national economic, political and environmental transformations. Drivers of change at these wider scales have intensified, complicating local responses to change, whether through economic, social or political means. A more nuanced appreciation of how scaled relations can be supported is required to better anticipate and respond to the political ecology of risk.     

The Asian Economic “Flu”: A Geography of Crisis

This paper examines the recent economic turmoil in East Asia which has been linked to the convulsive nature of global capital movements. East Asia, once the site of rapid capital accumulation, lost its economic momentum beginning in July 1997 with a series of currency devaluations, culminating in a net outflow of private capital within a year. International capital's ability to disembed the region, however, has been highly uneven over space. That China, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan are far more territorially resilient while others like Indonesia, Thailand, and South Korea initiated major political changes suggests that the geography of crisis is far more complex than is currently presented.     

Proposed Revisions Of Constitution And Bylaws

A useful index of the status of women should be mappable, in order to allow global and regional comparisons. Ideally, such an index should include political, economic, and social components. In actuality, data that measure political and economic equality are available only in Western societies. An index that measures the general well-being of women, however, can be mapped and used crossculturally. An index is proposed that includes indicators from the areas of health, education and fertility.     

Uneven urban metabolisms: toward an integrative (ex)urban political ecology of sustainability in and around the city

ABSTRACT

Expanding cities present a sustainability challenge, as the uneven proliferation of hybrid landscape types becomes a major feature of 21st century urbanization. To fully address this challenge, scholars must consider the broad range of land uses that being produced beyond the urban core and how land use patterns in one location may be tied to patterns in other locations. Diverse threads within political ecology provide useful insights into the dynamics that produce uneven urbanization. Specifically, urban political ecology (UPE) details how economic power influences the development decision-making that proliferate urban forms, patterns of uneven access, and modes of decision-making, frequently viewing resource extraction and development through the urban metabolism lens. The political ecology of exurbia, or, perhaps, an exurban political ecology (ExPE), examines the symbolic role nature and the rural have played in conservation and development efforts that produce social, economic, and environmental conflicts. While UPE approaches tend to privilege macroscale dynamics, ExPE emphasizes the role of landowners, managers, and other actors in struggles over the production of exurban space, including through decision-making institutions and within the context of broader political economic forces. Three case studies illustrate the strengths and weaknesses of these approaches, demonstrating the benefits for and giving suggestions on how to integrate their insights into urban sustainability research. Integrated political ecology approaches demonstrate how political-economic processes at a variety of scales produce diverse local sustainability responses.     

Aids in sub-saharan africa: A diffusion simulation

Abstract

This paper provides a geographic approach to teaching about HIV and AIDS in a non-U.S. setting. A simulation is used to illustrate the path and means by which AIDS is diffusing across sub-Saharan Africa, the region most severely affected by this pandemic. A biological simulation to illustrate disease transmission has been adapted to give it a spatial dimension. Students occupy several countries on a hypothetical continent and migrate within and across political boundaries. They are given profiles based on the characteristics of those most at-risk in spreading the disease. An overview of the pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa is provided. The simulation can be used as a springboard for examining the global dimensions, diffusion patterns, and social and economic consequences of this pandemic.     

Community resilience,natural hazards,and climate change: Is the present a prologue to the future?

ABSTRACT

The nexus of natural hazards, climate change, and community resilience poses both conceptual and methodological challenges. One key consideration is the underlying notion of dynamic change or transformation in the systems that affect community resilience—social systems, natural systems, technological systems—and the degree to which the interdependencies influence who is resilient, to what, where, and to whom. The article examines community resilience from the broad perspective of affluent societies and illustrates the considerable variability in both the temporal and spatial nature of community resilience to natural hazards in the short term, and climate changes in the longer term, especially in more affluent societies. The author finds that, given the rapidity of environmental, social, economic, political, technological, and cultural changes, present circumstances and remedies may not be adequate predictors or precursors of future conditions. She concludes that the challenges associated with community resilience, natural hazards, and climate change require transformational thinking and action if achievements are to be made in terms of significant disaster risk reduction and any semblance of a sustainable future when extreme weather events will be the norm, not the exception.     

The trials of China’s technoburbia: the case of the Future Sci-tech City Corridor in Hangzhou

ABSTRACT

Set against the wider background of global suburbanization, this paper contributes to the emerging literature on the formation of technoburbia in China, and more importantly, the potential “urban contradictions” accompanying this process. Through a bottom-up empirical exploration of the Future Sci-tech City Corridor in Hangzhou and its embedded Featured Town initiative in particular, we observe how the future of technoburbia in China is by no means free from similar challenges in housing affordability and labor stratification. However, these contradictions are managed entirely differently in China. Nevertheless, the highly planned nature of China’s technoburbia also rubs up against political decentralization, demographic change and economic upgrading, implying significant trials and tribulations along the way.     

The importance of Swedish–Norwegian border residents’ perspectives for bottom-up cross-border planning strategies

ABSTRACT

There is political interest in Sweden’s proximity to Norway, which is reflected in the regional policy focusing on developing business needs. As such, proximity at the regional level is simply expected to generate economic growth. The authors propose a holistic approach to spatial planning in a Swedish–Norwegian border region in place of the simplistic economic perspective. The aim of the article is to highlight the importance of adopting a bottom-up cross-border planning perspective that is based on the perceptions of the border region residents by showing that the proximity of Norway is important to communities in Värmland Province, on the border with Norway, in a different way from how regional authorities and policymakers perceive it. The authors used a qualitative method in their study. They found that residents were more interested in the individual, social, and cultural opportunities of the border, while authorities stressed traditional growth strategies. In conclusion, the authors recommend that policymakers should implement a bottom-up cross-border planning strategy (CBPS) in Värmland that includes the residents’ perspective, as a reinforcement of place-based policy approaches.     

Some observations on migration within and from the former USSR in the 1990s

"Patterns of population distribution revealed from 1989 census data are used to assess how future population movements could be affected by current political, social, and economic changes. Much migration in the USSR has reflected central planning decisions as much as the spontaneous decisions of individuals. To the extent that the influence of the command economy diminishes and a market economy emerges, major new directions of migration flows can be expected. The return of ethnic 'expatriates' to home republics can be expected to increase, as can economic migration to areas with favorably perceived economic prospects, and migration to Central and Western Europe."     

The Economic Dimension Of Demographic Transition

Abstract

Conventional published illustrations of the demographic transition are deficient in two respects. They relate demographic changes to time only, with no indication of economic levels at various demographic stages; and they wrongly employ only England and Wales as the case presumed to represent advanced countries. The addition of two economic indicators to the conventional transition chart of England and Wales renders it more useful. A study of the demographic histories of four other European countries shows that England and Wales do not necessarily represent Europe, and furthermore shows there is great variety among advanced countries regarding the economic stages at which decline in fertility occurred.     

Metropolitan Chicago's Regional Cultural Park: Assessing the Development of the Illinois & Michigan Canal National Heritage Corridor

Abstract

The United States is undergoing rapid demographic change leading to growing racial, ethnic, religious and economic diversity in our classrooms. Our students can be sensitized to this growing diversity through exposure to the concept of social justice. The purpose of this article is to provide examples of how social justice issues can be included in classroom discussions of the American system of political representation. For this purpose, it examines selected aspects of the redistricting process. It points out that our historic reliance upon the winner-take-all single-member district system of electing representatives to legislative bodies limits the opportunity for minority groups to be fairly represented. It also provides an overview of the impact of the criminal justice system upon fair political representation. The article concludes with an example of a classroom exercise to demonstrate its major points.     

Problems of People and Place in Arid Africa and the Middle East

Abstract

Nowhere else does aridity beset so large an area and affect so many contiguous nations as in Africa and the Middle East, yet the problems confronting these states do not stem solely from environmental constraints but also from cultural traditions and social characteristics of the people. Insufficient water sharply circumscribes economic activity and population distribution is directly related to presence or absence of water; enormous evaporative loss from impounded water further complicates efforts at redistribution of that vital resource. Man has learned, however, to cope with such environmental handicaps; plant domestication in the Middle East in the Neolithic reflects successful coping with distinctly seasonal precipitation regimes.

Annual rates of population increase in the region are high and likely to remain so in the foreseeable future. A dispersed, rural population with a high dependency ratio poses obstacles to governments seeking to improve the quality of life and to meet rising expectations. Planning for the future of these areas requires close attention to elements of both man and land, and a strong fabric of development can be woven only by incorporating appropriate threads from each of these elements.     

Metropolitics in Motion: The Dynamics of Transportation and State Reterritorialization in the Chicago and Toronto City-Regions

Abstract

The global economic crisis exposed the instability of financialized urban governance at precisely the moment when governing coalitions have launched ambitious, expensive plans to reimagine urban transportation infrastructure, driven by the imperatives of restoring accumulation amid intensifying economic and regional competition. In Chicago and Toronto, processes of urban restructuring and state reterritorialization disclose contradictory tendencies in the city-regions’ modes of urbanization. Tracing the contingent path-dependencies of transportation crises highlights tensions between, and within, preexisting metropolitan dynamics and an ascendant neoliberal city-regionalism. The mobilization of collective regional agency appears necessary to overcome the inertia of divisive metropolitan politics, yet the specific political–economic contexts of the case city-regions significantly condition the structural capacity of actors producing, and the potential articulation of, emergent city-regional governance.     

Constructing Alterity in Ile De France?

Abstract

The aim of the article is to determine whether the Walt Disney Company has manufactured a landscape “other” to French culture around its parks in the Eastern Paris Basin. Val d'Europe is contentiously constructed by three main groups, not just one enterprise: the French state, the Walt Disney Company and local and regional governments, as well as by present and future residents, within the constraints of a contract based on French laws. The Company's investment has been a tremendous boost to the French state's project but did not lead to Disneyfication of the Briard landscape of agricultural lands in the Eastern Paris basin. In Val d'Europe the French state did not abdicate its authority in favor of commoditization of Paris as a global metropolis. The French state and French culture were never “weak” and overwhelmed.