BOOK REVIEWS

Books Reviewed in this article: Lob Trees in the Wilderness . Clifford and Isabel Ahlgren . Satellite Microwave Remote Sensing . T. D. Allan , ed. Sunbelt Cities: Politics and Growth Since World War II . Richard M. Bernard and Bradley R. Rice , eds. Legacy of Minneapolis: Preservation Amid Change . John R. Borchert , David Gebhard , David Lanegran , and Judith A. Martin . Bloomington, MN: Preparing a Historic Preservation Ordinance. Richard J. Roddewig . The Mountains of Northeastern Tasmania, A Study of Alpine Geomorphology . Nel Caine . Introductory Cartography . John Campbell . Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Changing Climate . Manual of Remote Sensing, Second Edition . 2 Vols. Robert N. Colwell , ed.-in-chief; David S. Simonett and John E. Estes , vol. eds. Remote Sensing in Meteorology, Oceanography and Hydrology . A. P. Cracknell , ed. Multidimensional Scaling . Mark L. Davison . Environmental Karst . Percy H. Dougherty , ed. The Urban Environment . Ian Douglas . Geomorphology of Europe . Clifford Embleton , ed. An Introduction to South Asia . B. H. Farmer . Great Geological Controversies . A. Hallam . Hazardous Waste Management: In Whose Backyard? Michalann Harthill , ed. Energy for Subsistence . Margaret Haswell . Perspective on Ratzel's Political Geography . James M. Hunter . Economic Deposits and their Tectonic Setting . Charles S. Hutchison . Energy Risk Assessment . Herbert Inhaber . Discovering the Vernacular Landscape . John Brinckerhoff Jackson . Climate and Energy Systems: A Review of Their Interactions . Jill Jäger . Dilemmas in Regional Policy . Antoni Kuklinski and J. G. Lambooy , eds. California Farmland: A History of Large Agricultural Landholdings . Ellen Liebman . The Spatial Organization of New Land Settlement in Latin America . Jacob O. Maos . Dark Continent: Africa as Seen by Americans . Michael McCarthy . Westport, CT: Climatology: An Introduction . John E. Oliver and John J. Hidore . Columbus, OH: The Geography of Warfare . Patrick O'Sullivan and Jesse W. Miller . The Expanding City. Essays in Honour of Professor Jean Gottmann . John Patten , ed. Scotland's Environment During the Last 30,000 Years . Robert J. Price . Integrated Urban Models . S. H. Putman . Development and the Environmental Crisis: Red or Green Alternatives? Michael Redclift .     

Migration patterns of Neolithic settlements on the abandoned Yellow and Yangtze River deltas of China

Archaeological records of the Neolithic settlements on the eastern China coast between 35°N and 30°N, an area covering the abandoned Yellow River and the Yangtze River delta plains, reveal that Neolithic people moved from the Yellow River basin onto the northern coast for fishing, hunting and dry-land agriculture ~ 7000 yr ago. Marine transgression interrupted their activities on the low-lying (2-5 m in elevation) coastal wetlands between 6000 and 5000 yr ago, after which they reclaimed their land near the river mouths. Their migration routes on the southern Yangtze delta plain indicate another scenario: early Neolithic communities moved onto the plain for wet-rice cultivation. Despite relative sea-level rise from 7000 to 4000 yr ago, a large number of settlements were established on the lowlands between the eastern Chenier Ridges and the western Taihu Lake depression. The Chenier Ridges, with ~ 1.0 m higher topography than the adjacent coastal area, played a role in sheltering the Neolithic people. Subsequently, settlements waned considerably, possibly due to further marine inundation combined with cold climate. The present study shows that migration patterns of the Neolithic settlements are closely associated with a gradually rising sea level between 7000 and 4000 yr ago.     

Postrevolutionary land encroachments in Cairo: Rhizomatic urban space making and the line of flight from illegality

After the January 2011 revolution, new and unpermitted constructions on previously empty land went up across Cairo at striking speed. This paper explores a case of such land encroachments carried out by waste collectors in the neighbourhood of Manshiet Nasser in Cairo, Egypt. It begins with theoretical debates about the production of urban space, arguing that the de Certeauian paradigm, in which urban marginals poach or hijack others' spaces evanescently, fails to account for the way such encroachments produce permanent new spaces rhizomatically alongside the pre‐existing order. The paper then turns to a close examination of the events in Manshiet Nasser. Although in a broad view the actors are marginals living in the ‘informal’ city, the conditions enabling the encroachments were such that only the wealthiest and most powerful members of the ‘community’ benefitted. In a context of generalized ‘illegality’, the squatters rely on practical norms and de facto recognitions to obtain some degree of tenure security. Since these efforts rely on and play off legal norms even as the squatters violate them, the paper argues that property rights in this context should be understood not in classificatory terms based on the legal/illegal binary, but rather through a trajectory of ‘becoming‐legal’: a ‘line of flight’ that approaches legality asymptotically.     

New insights into a late-Pleistocene human occupation in America: The Vale da Pedra Furada complete chronological study

Within the framework of the studies focusing on the Pleistocene peopling of the Americas, our French-Brazilian team has undertaken a pluridisciplinary research on different archaeological sites, inside and in the neighborhood of the Serra da Capivara National Park, in Brazilian Nordeste. The present study regards an archaeological site, Vale da Pedra Furada, situated in the Piauí state in Brazil. The results of technological and functional studies suggest the existence of different successive human occupations during the Pleistocene in this region. Moreover, the geological and geomorphological studies shed new light on our understanding of sedimentary processes and confirm that the levels were not subject to any significant post-depositional processes. This is also confirmed by macro- and micro-analysis of quartz artefact surfaces. The chronological study has recently been completed employing both radiocarbon and luminescence techniques; radiocarbon dates were obtained on charcoal, multi-grain and single-grain OSL ages on sedimentary quartz grains. The results obtained with the different methods are consistent with each other: the most recent archaeological level is dated to around 8 ka and the oldest to 24 ka, indicating the open-air site of Vale da Pedra Furada to be a succession of human occupations beginning from OIS 2. These results are discussed in the context of some archaeological sites studied in the Serra da Capivara National Park of the last few decades.     

传统民居聚落智能化管理与移动旅游自助服务系统研究

随着旅游经济的快速发展,传统民居聚落环境正遭受着来自各方面的破坏和压力,这对传统历史文化的传承和弘扬影响深远。如何有效、科学地管理和保护特色鲜明的传统民居聚落这一载体已成为迫切需要解决的问题之一。针对传统民居聚落街巷机理特点,创新性地提出了集成GIS、360°全景影像、移动测图系统(mobile mapping system,MMS)、航空摄影测量、全球导航卫星系统(global navigation satellite system,GNSS)测量和移动物联网等多技术协同的传统民居聚落基础环境数据采集方法和工艺流程,以及基于Geodatabase和Postgre SQL的传统民居聚落特色的多源空间数据存储解决方案,并开发出一套功能完备的传统民居聚落智能化管理系统与移动旅游自助服务系统。实证表明,该系统显著提高了传统民居聚落管理智能化和旅游服务信息化水平。     

Texture-based identification of urban slums in Hyderabad, India using remote sensing data

This paper outlines a methodology to identify informal settlements out of high resolution satellite imagery using the concept of lacunarity. Principal component analysis and line detection algorithms were applied alternatively to obtain a high resolution binary representation of the city of Hyderabad, India and used to calculate lacunarity values over a 60 × 60 m grid. A number of ground truthing areas were used to classify the resulting datasets and to identify lacunarity ranges which are typical for settlement types that combine high density housing and small dwelling size - features characteristic for urban slums in India. It was discovered that the line detection algorithm is advantageous over principal component analysis in providing suitable binary datasets for lacunarity analysis as it is less sensitive to spectral variability within mosaicked imagery. The resulting slum location map constitutes an efficient tool in identifying particularly overcrowded areas of the city and can be used as a reliable source in vulnerability and resilience assessments at a later stage. The proposed methodology allows for rapid analysis and comparison of multi-temporal data and can be applied on many developing urban agglomerations around the world.     

社区人居环境吸引力研究——以大连市为例

城市人居环境研究中一个重要的理论问题就是人居环境吸引力。本文提出人居环境吸引力和引力场的概念,构建了社区人居环境满意度指标体系,运用引力势能模型计算出184个社区的人居环境引力势能,借助MapInfo软件中的Vertical Mapper工具得到大连市人居环境引力势能等值线图和空间分布图,研究表明:(1)运用引力场理论对人居环境评价研究,是一种有效的评价方法;(2)大连市社区人居环境供求关系在空间上形成了"两心一带"分布格局;(3)大连市社区人居环境引力势能空间分异明显,大致呈东北西南向"带状"分布,在中心广场、西安路锦辉商场等值线由同心圆状向外逐渐递减;(4)社区人居环境供求关系与引力势能成正比,与社区与引力势能中心的距离呈反比,城市空间发展结构、海岸带是大连人居环境引力势能空间分布的驱动机制。     

The future of informal settlements: lessons in the legalization of disputed urban land in Recife, Brazil

The aim of this paper is to explore the relationship between legalization of land tenure and people's capacity to compete for and sustain their stake in the urban land market. Two aspects of land regularization are taken into account: the benefits of land regularization (as collateral for investments); and the perverse aspects of disputes over improved land (due to increased scarcity of illegal, but affordable housing land). Most research on illegal urban land has systematically investigated how to legalize illegal settlements to improve the effectiveness of service provision, whilst attracting public investments. But, few understand the underlying factors motivating people to improve and consolidate their houses where no legal tenure exists. The absence of substantial understanding about people's perceptions of their tenure security has encouraged most research to conclude that improving tenure security leads to higher levels of housing consolidation. What this paper shows is that the relationship between people's perceptions of land tenure security and housing consolidation is much more malleable and complex than conventionally assumed. The subtle difference between tenure of the land and tenure of the house indicates that people are willing to invest in their housing conditions almost irrespectively of their land tenure situation. This finding challenges the orthodox views of the property rights school of thought. In addition, this paper contends that what legalization is really doing is to reduce the available land stock for the poorest families, because legalization decreases the amount of illegal land (illegal land is undesirable, but affordable for the poor). The orthodox legal system needs to be revised to include the poorest families in the urban society of the new millennium.     

桩的垂直静载试验极限承载力判定方法综述

桩的垂直静载试验极限承载力（或极限荷载）的确定是试验数据处理的关键。本文汇集编录了极限承载力的各种判定方法，但需指出的是：在具体应用判定试桩的极限承载力时，应以现行规范规定的方法为准，必要时可用其它方法进行校验。     

Digital world meets urban planet – new prospects for evidence-based urban studies arising from joint exploitation of big earth data,information technology and shared knowledge

ABSTRACT

The digital transformation taking place in all areas of life has led to a massive increase in digital data – in particular, related to the places where and the ways how we live. To facilitate an exploration of the new opportunities arising from this development the Urban Thematic Exploitation Platform (U-TEP) has been set-up. This enabling instrument represents a virtual environment that combines open access to multi-source data repositories with dedicated data processing, analysis and visualisation functionalities. Moreover, it includes mechanisms for the development and sharing of technology and knowledge. After an introduction of the underlying methodical concept, this paper introduces four selected use cases that were carried out on the basis of U-TEP: two technology-driven applications implemented by users from the remote sensing and software engineering community (generation of cloud-free mosaics, processing of drone data) and two examples related to concrete use scenarios defined by planners and decision makers (data analytics related to global urbanization, monitoring of regional land-use dynamics). The experiences from U-TEP’s pre-operations phase show that the system can effectively support the derivation of new data, facts and empirical evidence that helps scientists and decision-makers to implement improved strategies for sustainable urban development.