Spatial dimensions of New Zealand's environmental management

New Zealand's regional council boundaries drawn as part of the 1989 local government reforms privilege integrated catchment management. This privilege is now challenged by calls to both fragment and amalgamate councils and centralise decision‐making but with little analytic assessment of the spatial differentiation to support them. The spatial underpinnings of these calls were explored using a case study that assessed the spatial dimensions of environment management. Analysis of the Land Environments and River Environment Classification databases and councils' planning documents highlights challenges local governments face in applying integrated natural resource management within single purpose jurisdictions and implications for wider sustainable development policy.     

A Review of “The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World”

In contrast to the conventional gravity model that estimates flows between cities of given sizes, the reverse gravity model attempts to reconstruct the theoretical gravitational attractions of cities from network flow data. This article introduces the particle swarm optimization (PSO) method in solving the reverse gravity model. With comparison to the linear programming (LP) and the simplified algebraic method (SAM), the advantages of the PSO method include flexibility in the impedance function and better goodness of fit. The method is applied to the case study of air passenger transport in China. The results indicate that estimated nodal attractions in cities are generally in line with their population sizes, but there are significant discrepancies between them. A close examination of the discrepancies reveals that a better developed tertiary sector and higher tourism revenue per capita are associated with overestimated attractions in air transport, and stronger railway dominance influences their underestimation. The changes of gravitational attractions in major cities from 2001 to 2008 indicate the declining dominance of the largest cities and a move toward a more balanced development in the air transport system of China.     

A Review of “The Middle East Today: Political,Geographical and Cultural Perspectives”

The tremendous changes in China's development philosophy and regional economies during the last two decades have carved out selectively new locations of development across the nation. While politicians heatedly debate the acceptable levels of regional inequality, most scholarly studies focus on broad aggregate trends of inequality among provinces and groups of provinces, and pay little attention to identifying and conceptualizing sources and major agents of spatial change. This paper aims at revealing detailed spatial ramifications of the reforms, and at understanding the impacts of the state, local agents, and foreign investors on regional development. To this effect, we conduct a disaggregated and empirical study of Jiangsu, a coastal province experiencing dramatic economic and spatial restructuring. We show that local agents which favor rural industrial enterprises accelerated new growth in selected rural areas, in contrast to slower growth of older cities and state-owned enterprises, resulting in a net decline of intercounty inequality. But the coalescence of state policy, local agents, and foreign investment has widened the historical gap between northern and southern Jiangsu, and is likely to accelerate intercounty inequality in the future. Our study demonstrates the utility of the “developments from above, below and outside” framework for analyzing key forces of regional growth in socialist transitional economies.     

The Spatial–Temporal Hierarchy of Inequality in Urban China: A Prefectural City–Level Study

Inequality has been the subject of intense debates in China, but inequality across cities remains less studied. This article investigates economic inequality based on prefectural-level cities during the period from 1990 to 2010. Statistical analyses indicate that interregional inequality among cities has increased, which is mostly attributable to widening intraregional inequality, especially within the western region. The high gross domestic product (GDP) per capita clusters emerged in the Pearl River Delta in the 1990s, spread to the Yangtze River Delta in the 2000s, and then reached north China in the 2010s. In contrast, the number of low GDP per capita clusters significantly increased in the central and western regions in the 2010s. In addition, the significance of national development zones and foreign direct investment indicates the greatest effect of globalization on the increasing intercity inequality. Decentralization also contributes to the intercity inequality of China. We suggest that in addition to national programs aimed at reducing the inequality between the eastern region and the rest of China, efforts are needed to reduce inequality within each region through provincial and local government policies, especially in western China. Key Words: China, cluster, decentralization, globalization, regional inequality, urban inequality.     

Russia's Far East: A Region at Risk

Abstract

In this article I ask to what extent geographers can draw on psychoanalytic theory when examining interview data. I consider Freud's theory of the mind and its unconscious processes to ask how bringing the unconscious to bear on identity studies potentially impacts qualitative research on subjectivity and identification. Existing geographic debate on psychoanalytic theory and methods provides an organizing framework for my argument. Although the article advocates an ontology of the psychoanalytic subject, I suggest that researchers must avoid psychoanalyzing research subjects. This distinction limits the ways in which scholars can “read” personal narratives for unconscious processes.

     

THE IMPACT OF FEDERAL LOCAL PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION ASSISTANCE UPON TRAVEL BEHAVIOR

Despite substantial amounts of federal assistance to local public transportation, ridership has declined considerably in the country as a whole since 1964, suggesting an ineffective government program. A city-by-city comparison of assistance received with changes in transit ridership shows that declines in transit usage were least in cities receiving the most federal aid, and greatest in cities receiving the least aid. This demonstrates that federal aid has had an impact upon travel behavior. Indeed, it is the single most important factor explaining differences between cities in travel behavior changes in the 1970's.     

广州漱珠涌历史文化景观与旅游开发

位于广州海珠区西北部的漱珠涌在上世纪六七十年代已被覆盖改造成为地下排污渠,从此它作为一条河涌连同名字在广州地图上消失了。百年前,这条涌曾经十分繁华,时人称其不让秦淮。这一带是清代广州"河南"地区商业开发最早的区域,又是清代中国最早对外开放的旅游区之一,曾经蜚声海外。当年许多中外画家、摄影师、诗人和志书编撰者为后人留下了许多有关漱珠涌的文字与形象资料,使我们今天仍能窥得漱珠涌昔日的辉煌。为了让人们留住广州城市发展的这一份历史记忆,文中提出建设一个集休闲、娱乐、美食、购物、旅游于一体的漱珠涌历史文化旅游区,重现漱珠涌的历史文化风貌。这将是一个很大的系统工程。其中,如何治理漱珠涌污染,发挥漱珠涌在水利、生态、美学、休闲游憩等方面的综合功能,是一个困难而又必须解决的关键问题。     

国内外有机农业发展演化与区域比较研究

本文对世界有机农业发展演化进行梳理,将其发展历程分为产生、发展和增长阶段,并介绍了各阶段的主要特点。以大洋洲、北美洲、欧洲和亚洲有机农业发展较好的区域进行典型性对比分析,选取有机农田面积、有机农业从业人员和有机产品销售等标志性指标,综述了世界有机农业的发展动态,并对各地区有机农业发展的成功经验进行总结。简述我国有机农业的发展演化,从有机产品贸易额、有机农产品产区分布和有机企业空间分布总结了我国有机农业的发展现状,并提出我国未来有机农业的发展对策。