Governing a city of unicorns: technology capital and the urban politics of San Francisco

San Francisco is now widely considered to be the most important city in the world for the location of new technology start-up firms, especially high valuation “unicorns,” and is increasingly seen as both a locational and metaphorical extension of Silicon Valley. In this paper, I trace some of the political strategies and tensions that have accompanied the city’s prominence in this area, and in particular the distinctive role of technology and venture capital in the political economy of urban development. The paper has four empirical sections. It describes (1) the political machinations surrounding the 2011 and 2015 municipal elections, which saw the election of Ed Lee as Mayor with significant support from individual technology investors such as Ron Conway and Marc Benioff, and accompanied by various “tech-friendly” policy shifts; (2) the foundation of the “tech chamber of commerce” sf.citi as a means of enhancing the policy influence of the tech industry in San Francisco; (3) the introduction of a low taxation regime in the city’s Central Market area that has attracted technology companies such as Twitter as tenants; and (4) the urban policy tensions associated with the evolution of new “sharing economy” firms such as Uber and Airbnb, which have aggressively challenged municipal regulations in the taxi and property rental fields. Throughout these machinations, we can see a reshaping of capital fractions, with venture and angel capital increasingly involved in reengineering the labor, housing, and public transport markets of the city in order to circumvent the accumulation problems that tech investors had suffered in the earlier dot.com failures.     

人口城镇化与土地城镇化协调性测度及优化——以南昌市为例

人口与土地是城镇化的重要组成部分,分析二者之间状态演化对促进城市健康发展具有重要意义。在界定人口城镇化与土地城镇化二者概念基础上,基于人口构成、人口素质、人口生活、城镇规模、城镇投入、城镇产出等构建评价指标体系,并通过耦合协调模型对省会型城市南昌市2002~2011年两者之间的协调关系进行测度和分析,结果表明：① 人口城镇化指数与土地城镇化指数呈波动变化并持续上涨,城镇发展由土地滞后型向人口滞后型转变;② 人口城镇化与土地城镇化的协调状态由失调衰退区向过渡协调区演进,发展类型则由高度不协调状态向勉强协调状态过渡。在此基础上分析了南昌市人口城镇化速度滞后于土地城镇化速度的原因,指出两者关系主要受到城市发展外在制度与内在基础的共同作用,并认为构建人口与土地城镇化双重优化路径是协调人口城镇化与土地城镇化同步发展的有效途径。     

Unpacking ecosystem service bundles: Towards predictive mapping of synergies and trade-offs between ecosystem services

Multiple ecosystem services (ES) can respond similarly to social and ecological factors to form bundles. Identifying key social-ecological variables and understanding how they co-vary to produce these consistent sets of ES may ultimately allow the prediction and modelling of ES bundles, and thus, help us understand critical synergies and trade-offs across landscapes. Such an understanding is essential for informing better management of multi-functional landscapes and minimising costly trade-offs. However, the relative importance of different social and biophysical drivers of ES bundles in different types of social-ecological systems remains unclear. As such, a bottom-up understanding of the determinants of ES bundles is a critical research gap in ES and sustainability science.Here, we evaluate the current methods used in ES bundle science and synthesize these into four steps that capture the plurality of methods used to examine predictors of ES bundles. We then apply these four steps to a cross-study comparison (North and South French Alps) of relationships between social-ecological variables and ES bundles, as it is widely advocated that cross-study comparisons are necessary for achieving a general understanding of predictors of ES associations. We use the results of this case study to assess the strengths and limitations of current approaches for understanding distributions of ES bundles. We conclude that inconsistency of spatial scale remains the primary barrier for understanding and predicting ES bundles. We suggest a hypothesis-driven approach is required to predict relationships between ES, and we outline the research required for such an understanding to emerge.     

人力资本空间效应与区域经济增长

基于资本外溢性和省域技术水平间存在空间依赖性的假设,在Mankiw、Romer和Weil模型(简称MRW模型)中引入了变量的空间滞后项,构建了空间MRW模型,运用中国全域及东部、西部面板数据进行固定效应的空间面板估计,证实了模型假设的正确性,得到以下主要结论:第一,在中国全域及东、西部区域中,人力资本及其空间外溢效应对经济增长的贡献均不显著;第二,东部地区人力资本及其空间外溢效应对区域经济增长的贡献值均约为西部地区的两倍。     

Dictators and their capital cities: Moscow and Berlin in the 1930s

Stalin and Hitler planned major changes in the townscapes of their capital cities. These plans were part of their effort to install highly mobilized despotic regimes that needed a wide-ranging set of symbols to focus allegiance and to impress awe. These plans remained to some extent paper exercises but part of it left significant traces in the contemporary cities, particularly in Moscow. The intended changes showed similarities in their megalomania expressed in plans for a gigantic dome surrounded by a huge public square in the core of the city. There were also differences as regards the type of symbols used due to both dictotors' different roles within their regimes, the degree of didactic intent due to the nature of the commanding ideologies and the level of modernization of both countries, and the diverging versions of antimodernist building style (which they shared with many others elsewhere at the time).     

经济欠发达地区人力资本开发研究：以邵阳市为例

通过对技术转移与人力资本理论的分析，探讨了经济欠发达地区人力资本短缺形成机制，提出采取加大对教育的投入，稳定和充实科技队伍，改革户口制度，发展小城镇规模等措施来提高当地劳动者的素质，开发当地人力资源，形成人力资积积累，顺利实现技术转移，发展当地经济。     

河北省灾害评估与辅助决策系统中地理信息数据库的建设

简要介绍了“首都圈防震减灾系统工程”的子系统———河北省灾害评估与辅助决策系统 ,并对系统中地理信息数据库的内容与关键技术进行论述。     

(ANTI)SOCIAL CAPITAL IN THE PRODUCTION OF AN (UN)CIVIL SOCIETY IN PAKISTAN*

ABSTRACT. Pakistan is home to some of the most widely admired examples of civil‐society‐based service‐delivery and advocacy groups. Pakistan has also spawned some much‐maligned nongovernmental actors with violent agendas. This article uses the social capital / civil society conceptual lens to view the modes of (anti)social capital mobilization that contribute to the civil and uncivil spaces of Pakistani society. The case examples of Jamaat‐e‐Islami, an Islamic revivalist organization, and the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan are used to understand the geography of social and antisocial forces in Pakistan. It is argued that the processes that mobilize social capital‐whether positive or perverse‐are multiscalar and that, in the Pakistani context, no compelling cultural or religious reason exists for the ascendance of one type of social capital over the other. Positive social capital can be mobilized to contribute to a more civil social discourse in Pakistan, given the right policy choices.     

再论金融创新与风险勘查投资机制创新

风险投资是泛指一切具有高风险和潜在高收益的投资融资行为。风险勘查是一种典型的风险投资。风险投资和风险勘查都是对创新理念的投资。风险投资不仅是一种新型的投资理念，还是一种新型的投资工具。借鉴风险投资这一金融创新成果。提出了风险勘查一种新的投资机制。并列出这一投资机制的示意图和要点。     

SOCIAL CAPITAL,DEVELOPMENT, AND INDIGENOUS POLITICS IN ECUADORIAN AMAZONIA*

ABSTRACT. This article examines the formation of social capital—defined as the norms of trust and reciprocity integral to social relations—and the ways in which it may help rural people's organizations gain access to rights and resources. The formation of social capital must be viewed within the context of the symbolic systems, or cultural capital, that imbues social relations with meaning. The concept of social capital provides a valuable conceptual framework for analyzing the multiscale processes of environmental management, rural development, and resource conflicts with which many rural social movements are involved. The role played by social capital is illustrated through a detailed case study of an indigenous political and cultural organization in the Ecuadorian Amazon. The organizational history of a lowland Quichua federation and the successes and problems it has had in managing development projects and achieving political objectives provide insight into the importance of social capital in the development of the region.