Continuity and change in commuter partnerships: avoiding or postponing family migration

While most people in post-industrial societies, such as The Netherlands, continue to live as nuclear families, new household arrangements have emerged in which couples no longer commit to living in one shared residence. One such household arrangement is the commuter partnership, in which one partner lives near work part of the time. The objective in this article was to gain a better understanding of the sustainability of commuter partnerships and to contribute to uncovering the function that this household arrangement can have in the coordination of parallel careers of different household members over time. The study draws on in-depth interviews with both individual partners in 30 commuter partnerships with at least one residence located in The Netherlands, and a follow-up survey of the same commuter couples several years later. Our findings indicate that, for most couples, the commuter partnership should not be regarded as a prelude to family migration, but rather as a household arrangement by which family migration is avoided altogether, either for a limited period, or as a long-term alternative to the nuclear family. The findings further indicate that, when couples look on their commuter partnership as the result of their individual choice, they generally envision the future duration of their commuter partnership quite accurately. When their choice is guided by the external circumstances of job contracts, couples appear to be less accurate in predicting the future duration of their commuter partnerships.

Struggles over family land? Tree crops,land and labour in Ghana’s Brong-Ahafo region

Agricultural land use in much of Brong-Ahafo region, Ghana has been shifting from the production of food crops towards increased cashew nut cultivation in recent years. This article explores everyday, less visible, gendered and generational struggles over family farms in West Africa, based on qualitative, participatory research in a rural community that is becoming increasingly integrated into the global capitalist system. As a tree crop, cashew was regarded as an individual man’s property to be passed on to his wife and children rather than to extended family members, which differed from the communal land tenure arrangements governing food crop cultivation. The tendency for land, cash crops and income to be controlled by men, despite women’s and young people’s significant labour contributions to family farms, and for women to rely on food crop production for their main source of income and for household food security, means that women and girls are more likely to lose out when cashew plantations are expanded to the detriment of land for food crops. Intergenerational tensions emerged when young people felt that their parents and elders were neglecting their views and concerns. The research provides important insights into gendered and generational power relations regarding land access, property rights and intra-household decision-making processes. Greater dialogue between genders and generations may help to tackle unequal power relations and lead to shared decision-making processes that build the resilience of rural communities.     

A study on the optimization of the arrangement of flotation circuits

The optimum utilization of available plant capacity has been investigated by simulation of a three-stage flotation circuit. By using simple models of the flotation process a wide variety of cell arrangements has been investigated and the findings tested against a number of operating flotation plants. It is concluded that the efficiency of operation of flotation systems is rather insensitive to circuit arrangement unless the circuit becomes grossly unbalanced. Circuit performance is much more sensitive to the flotation conditions and selectivity in the banks and it is only if a new circuit configuration leads to significantly improved flotation conditions that real improvements are likely. Simulation studies would require detailed modelling of such effects to be useful for circuit optimization studies.     

Estimation of indirect economic loss caused by house destruction in a natural disaster

Designing appropriate post-disaster emergency and recovery housing policies requires accurate estimation of the indirect or “flow” loss generated by the involuntary displacement of households to housing other than their own destroyed homes. We employed the stated choice method to measure residence choice following a hypothetical disaster in a procedure developed to estimate flow loss due to house destruction. This method was applied to households in the city of Nagaoka in Niigata Prefecture to estimate flow loss for a range of residence types and residence attributes following relocation. The results revealed that the relocation residence type itself (such as a shelter, temporary dwelling, rental housing, or one’s own home) had a substantial effect on residence choice. Regarding residence attributes, residential expenses such as rent, housing loans, and spaciousness had a significant effect on residence choice. Moreover, we found that respondents placed a very high value on living in their own home compared with other residence types, indicating that subsidizing the prompt repair and rebuilding of private homes is likely to be an effective recovery support policy. In addition, a cost–benefit analysis of our results revealed that rent subsidies are more efficient than the construction of public housing as a means of financially assisting economically constrained households after a disaster.     

Gender and voluntary work in late adulthood in rural communities in the Netherlands

This article discusses the involvement of older women and men in voluntary work in rural communities in the Netherlands. Gender, ageing and civil society form the core concepts in the article. Politicians and policy makers in the Netherlands are worried about the perceived decline of civil society and about the consequences of this decline for specific categories of older women in terms of well-being and social exclusion. The paper presents the results of two surveys of involvement of older women and men in civic organisations, voluntary work and local actions. The surveys indicate high levels of involvement of both women and men. No gender differences are found in activity level. However, the data demonstrate the gendered nature of civil society. Women are more engaged in informal voluntary work and informal local actions, while men are more active in formal organisations and functions. This gender segmentation is not absolute, however. Many older women and men transgress the traditional feminine–masculine boundaries. The surveys highlight the involvement of women and men in rural communities, but indicate lower activity levels in urban areas.     

浅析住宅区规划

居住空间是城市空间的延续,是城市重要组成部分,住宅区规划设计应该全面考虑满足人的需求,对与影响、建设与运营的经济性以及景观形象的塑造等要求,以可持续发展战略为指导,遵循社区发展、共享社区的住宅区设计的总体原则以及相应的住宅区规划设计原则,建设文明、适居的居住社区。笔搞好住宅小区的规划设计首先要注重以下几个方面的问题。一、住宅区设计应符合当地特点二、住考虑功能分区三、住宅区设计应注重生态环境资源的利用和营造四、住宅区设计应注重交通组织设计应注重设施的完善。用和要应区要作化,计宅的优为设位商境态认区、陆环生者宅五     

New populations in the British city centre: Evidence of social change from the census and household surveys

Encouraged by government policies to promote city centre living and to increase residential land use on brownfield sites, there has been considerable repopulation of the city centre. Through detailed small-area census analysis of Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff and Swansea, supplemented by household surveys and key informant interviews, the research points to a range of population characteristics and changes occurring in the British city centre. Certain characteristics such as a high proportion of lone person households, fewer children and low car ownership remain fairly consistent. However, substantial population expansion affirms that a large part of the population is “new”. Between 1991 and 2001, men came to outnumber women, and each of the city centres saw a relative expansion of its young adult population. The new residents have a higher appreciation than longer term residents of proximity to work and leisure facilities, and of the stylishness of city centre living. Most of the new residents rent their accommodation, generally in flats, and the predominance of renting is associated with a transient attitude to city centre residence among the new population. Socio-economic evidence indicates a striking rise in social status or gentrification in all the city centres investigated, especially where high status private housing developments encourage the trend. With policies promoting residential development, the city centre is becoming increasingly socially exclusive.     

Opal-associated particulate phosphorus: Implications for the marine P cycle

Previous attempts to evaluate ocean P mass balance and residence time have utilized sequential extraction techniques to isolate and analyze P associated with Fe and Mn oxides and oxyhydroxides, authigenic minerals, detrital, and organic phases. However, in many oceanographic settings, diatoms are the primary producers, and the traditional sequential extraction protocol does not result in complete dissolution of diatom frustules and may not liberate all of the opal intrinsic P associated with the frustules themselves. By adding an opal dissolution step to the end of the extraction protocol, additional P was liberated from the sediments, suggesting that there is an opal-associated P fraction that likely contributes to total reactive P concentrations. In opal-rich sediments, the opal-associated P fraction averages as much as 50-60% of extractable P, and total reactive P concentrations are often more than double when the opal-associated P fraction is included. The presence of opal-intrinsic P potentially has significant implications for ocean P mass balance and residence time of P in the oceans. For example, P burial has possibly been underestimated in settings dominated by diatoms. Additionally, consideration of a significant sedimentary opal-P component suggests that the residence time of P in the oceans may be even shorter than currently suspected.     

Modern and post-modern cities and ethnic residential segregation: Is Los Angeles different?

Dear and others associated with the ‘Los Angeles School of Urbanism’ have presented a series of challenging ideas regarding changes in urban form as a consequence of the shift from modernism to post-modernism. Some of those challenges relate to a city’s ethnic diversity and residential segregation, with Los Angeles presented as a paradigm exemplar of an emerging new urban form. This paper evaluates the arguments that Los Angeles in particular, and Californian metropolitan areas more generally, differ from metropolitan areas elsewhere in the United States in the nature of ethnic residential segregation there. Regression analyses provide little support for the argument, but graphical analyses show that although Los Angeles does not differ from the general, US-wide trends, its almost unique nature in terms of its ethnic diversity means that it clearly stands out as a place with a different pattern shared by very few others.     

The impact of residential desegregation on social integration: Evidence from a South African neighbourhood

This paper analyses the potential for social integration in post-apartheid urban South Africa by examining the lives of those already living in desegregated spaces. The case study is a low-cost state-assisted housing project situated in the wealthy southern suburbs of Cape Town. In this social housing project, named Westlake village, coloured and Black African (alongside a handful of white and Indian) residents were awarded state housing in 1999 as replacement for their previous homes (informal and formal), which were demolished to make way for a mixed land-use development, of which their new homes form a small component. Westlake’s desegregation is found to extend beyond mere residential abode, affecting resident’s everyday lives to the extent that apartheid’s history and geography are superseded by other factors (such as proximity and affordability) in decision-making. Furthermore, integration at the everyday level of informal neighbourly mixing is prevalent. Although more formal cross-race friendships are rare, discussion reveals this as a consequence of Westlake’s specific socio-historic identity rather than racial divisions per se. Empirical evidence is used to propose a continuum of social integration experience. This continuum addresses the form of integration, for example greeting in the street, visiting homes, inter-marriage; and also the spaces of integration, for example physical space (shared neighbourhood), economic space (common employment-type), social space (cross-race friendship), political space (common involvement in civic organisations) and cultural space (shared sense of belonging).     

Rural-urban migration and the problem of town planning —

The conurbation of Khartoum has been long the main destination area of the rural-urban migration in the Sudan. The town-planning office has become unable to provide the inmigrant masses with the least required housing infrastructure. The result is that the inmigrants have been living for some decades now in squatter areas without any right of residence. The way from the formation of a squatter settlement which is officially non-existent and illegal to a demarcated residential area is long and tedious. The author describes this process using the example of Um Badda which is a traditional destination area of inmigrants. The analysis shows that the officials of the town-planning treat the ethnic groups on unequal basis with a strong bias against southern Sudanese.     

西安地区住区热环境优化设计研究

本文以住区热环境优化为出发点,以西安典型住区热环境调研及实测为依据,描述了西安地区中高层住区热环境存在的问题,并针对西安小高层为主的住区绿化、朝向及住宅间距方面提出了热环境优化策略,在此基础上,笔者给出了一个实例。     

The practicalities of using CFCs and SF6 for groundwater dating and tracing

Knowledge of groundwater residence time is important in understanding key issues in the evolution of water quality, whether this occurs due to water–rock interaction or simply by mixing or contamination. The build-up in the atmosphere of the trace gases chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and sulphur hexafluoride (SF₆) from the middle of the last century offers a convenient way of dating waters up to ∼60 a old. The gases are well-mixed in the atmosphere so their input functions are not area-specific as is the case with ³H. While any one of these trace gases can in principle provide a groundwater age, when two or more are measured on water samples the potential exists to distinguish between different modes of flow including piston flow, exponential flow and simple end-member mixing. As with all groundwater dating methods, caveats apply. Factors such as recharge temperature and elevation must be reasonably well-constrained. Primarily for SF₆, the phenomenon of ‘excess air’ also requires consideration. Primarily for the CFCs, local sources of contamination need to be considered, as do redox conditions. For both SF₆ and the CFCs, the nature and thickness of the unsaturated zone need to be factored into residence time calculations. However, as an inexpensive dating method, the trace gases can be applied to a wide range of groundwater problems where traditional age indicators might once have been used more sparingly. Examples include tracing flowlines, detecting small modern inputs in ‘old’ waters, and pollution risk assessment. In the future, with the main CFCs already declining in the atmosphere, new anthropogenic trace gases are likely to take their place.     

Residential location decision-making and gender in Nigeria

The paper examines women’s involvement in residential location/relocation decision-making among tenants in Ibadan, Nigeria. The data used in the paper is from a larger cross-sectional survey of 721 households on gender and housing in Ibadan, Nigeria. The analysis in the paper focused on 365 subgroup of households that are tenants in the sample survey. Analysis of variance (ANOVA), correlation and simple statistical techniques such as frequencies and percentages were used to analyse the data. The result shows that generally there is low involvement of women in residential location/relocation decision-making. There is significant intra-urban variation in the involvement of women in residential location/relocation decision-making. Significant relationships are found between the level of women involvement in residential location/relocation decision-making and their educational level, occupation, and marital status. In addition, significant relationships are found between cultural and social support variables and involvement of women in residential location/relocation decisions. These results suggest that female empowerment and greater involvement in decision-making could be greatly enhanced by improved access of women to education, employment, the provision of good and reliable social support facilities and a reorientation of women’s view about responsibility for household housing provision.     

Reconciling heterogeneity in crystal zoning data: An application of shared characteristic diagrams at Chaos Crags,Lassen Volcanic Center,California

Isotope, trace element, and textural crystal zoning patterns record heterogeneity in magmatic systems not resolved by whole rock analyses. These zoning data are used to infer crystal residence times, magma mixing, and other magmatic processes in many magmatic systems. We present the shared characteristic diagram (SCD) as an organizational framework for crystal zoning data that compares information from different phases and chemical tracers in a common framework. An example from Chaos Crags in the Cascade arc, produces three main results. (1) Anorthite zoning profiles in plagioclase have fewer shared characteristics in mafic inclusions than in the host rhyodacite. (2) Single-crystal ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr data from previous studies (Tepley et al. 1999) are consistent with more shared history between crystals than in anorthite profiles. This difference reflects a more homogeneous distribution of ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr than the intensive parameters controlling plagioclase composition. (3) The Chaos Crags system exhibits a layer of heterogeneity in crystal populations that is not represented in whole-rock analyses that indicate only simple binary mixing. The inconsistency between ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr and anorthite zoning data highlights decoupling between compositionally controlled and temperature/water-controlled zoning in plagioclase from Chaos Crags.     

不同框架锚杆布置方式对加固边坡效果影响分析研究

俯斜式锚杆,因其设计相对简单,施工方便,国内外在进行边坡防护时,得到大规模应用,但从其受力特性来看,此种布置方式不能充分发挥锚杆抗拉强度大的这一特点。基于此,本文通过数值模拟的方法对比分析研究了仰斜式、平行式、俯斜式三种不同锚杆布置形式在防治边坡时的加固效果并得到如下结论:在相同的框架梁结构的情况下,就单从监测点的位移变化来看,仰斜式的布置方式要优于平行式布置方式和俯斜式布置方式,俯斜式布置方式为最不利布置方式。当采用仰斜式锚杆进行边坡加固时,锚杆轴力偏大,在锚杆抗拉能力允许的情况下,仰斜式锚杆可充分发挥锚杆的优点,但在实际工程中需适当增加锚杆锚固段长度。采用仰斜式布置形式时,坡面无明显滑动,框架梁基本处于低受力状态,边坡加固效果要明显优于平行式布置方式和俯斜式布置方式。     

Exploring lava‐flow hazards at Pico Island,Azores Archipelago (Portugal)

Pico, the youngest island of the Azores Archipelago (Portugal), is characterized by a central volcano and a 30‐km‐long fissure zone. Its eruption rate is the highest of the Azores islands, with more than 35 eruptions in the last 2000 years. Here, we estimate the lava‐flow hazard for Pico Island by combining the vent opening probability derived from the spatial distribution of eruptive fissures, the classes of expected eruptions inferred from the physical and chemical characteristics of historical eruptions, and the lava‐flow paths simulated by the MAGFLOW model. The most likely area to host new eruptions is along a WNW–ESE trend centred on the central volcano, with the highest hazard affecting the two main residential zones of Lajes do Pico and Madalena. Our analysis is the first attempt to assess the lava‐flow hazard for Pico Island, and may have important implications for decision‐making in territorial management and future land‐use planning.     

Features of groundwaters in basins shared between Ethiopia and Kenya and the implications for international legislation on transboundary aquifers

The implementation of laws relating to transboundary aquifers necessitates field knowledge so that the laws can be coincident with reality on the ground. The definition of ‘shared aquifer’ is more complex than the mere physically shared body of groundwater flowing from country A to country B. The border between Ethiopia and Kenya is characterized by low-volume groundwater storage and low transboundary flows. However, groundwater has visible environmental, social and economic functions. The characteristics of groundwater flow and storage in aquifers shared between Ethiopia and Kenya are different from those used in setting the foundation of the international legal framework on shared aquifers. By describing the characteristics of the groundwaters that are shared between Ethiopia and Kenya, this work demonstrates that the international legal framework is inadequate when applied in this region. The main inadequacies are: (1) international law does not specify the minimum volume of transboundary flow in an aquifer for it to qualify to be treated under the law, and (2) the physical aspects of water get more emphasis than the functions of groundwater. A more adequate international legal framework would be one that considers specific types of groundwater and local needs.     

Climate change and increased risk for the insurance sector: a global perspective and an assessment for the Netherlands

Climate change is projected to increase the frequency and severity of extreme weather events. As a consequence, economic losses caused by natural catastrophes could increase significantly. This will have considerable consequences for the insurance sector. On the one hand, increased risk from weather extremes requires assessing expected changes in damage and including adequate climate change projections in risk management. On the other hand, climate change can also bring new business opportunities for insurers. This paper gives an overview of the consequences of climate change for the insurance sector and discusses several strategies to cope with and adapt to increased risks. The particular focus is on the Dutch insurance sector, as the Netherlands is extremely vulnerable to climate change, especially with regard to extreme precipitation and flooding. Current risk sharing arrangements for weather risks are examined while potential new business opportunities, adaptation strategies, and public–private partnerships are identified.     

Rainstorm waterlogging risk assessment in central urban area of Shanghai based on multiple scenario simulation

With the acceleration of the urbanization process, waterlogging problems in coastal cities are becoming more and more serious due to climate change. However, up until now, the common procedures and programs for rainstorm waterlogging risk assessment in coastal cities still have not formed. Considering a series of impact factors of rainstorm waterlogging in coastal city, the present study established a paradigm for rainstorm waterlogging risk assessment through the combination of hydrological modeling and GIS spatial analysis, and took the residence in central urban area of Shanghai as an example. First, the simplified urban waterlogging model was applied to simulate the depth and extent of rainstorm waterlogging under six hypothetic scenarios. Second, the residence exposed to rainstorm waterlogging was extracted and analyzed supported by spatial analysis module of ArcGIS. Then, stage-damage curves were applied to analyze the loss rate of structure and contents of residential building. Finally, the waterlogging loss maps of residence in different scenarios, the annual average loss, and the risk curve were taken as the expression of waterlogging risk. The results show that the inundated water depth, vulnerability, and losses of residence all increase as the intensity of rainstorm increases. The old-style residence is most vulnerable to rainstorm waterlogging, followed by the new-style residence, and villa is less vulnerable to rainstorm waterlogging. The annual average loss of residence in Shanghai central urban area was about CNY 22.25 million. The results also indicate high risk in Yangpu and Putuo districts, Xuhui, Hongkou, Changning and Zhabei districts come under medium-risk zone, and Jing’an, Luwan and Huangpu districts come under low-risk zone. These results provide important information for the local government, and the methodology can be applied in other cities to provide guidance on waterlogging risk governance.