Is there diversity in the New Urbanism? Analyzing the demographic characteristics of New Urbanist neighborhoods in the United States

The New Urbanism (NU) planning movement aspires to create socially diverse neighborhoods. It is unclear, however, whether this movement lives up to its aspirations in practice. In an effort to systematically examine this aspect of the movement, this paper analyzes age, family type, income, and race data of 70 NU neighborhoods in the United States. The paper uses a diversity index to compare the NU neighborhoods with control sites. Findings show that NU neighborhoods have lower racial diversity, but may have higher income diversity. Consideration of variations within the way NU is implemented reveals that the low racial diversity is associated with a single approach, but higher income diversity is associated with all variants. This paper argues that NU generates places that are more socially diverse than what is described in the literature and uses two case studies to explore the ways in which diversity is produced and its relation to gentrification.     

安徽省大别山区扶贫开发的产业选择和发展对策

大别山区扶贫开发和功能区生态环境保护是目前人们所广泛关注的重要课题。合理发展产业经济是实现国家重要生态功能区环境保护和脱贫的重要途径。结合大别山区贫困县的生态功能定位和产业基础,构建生态产业集中发展区和生态经济综合配套区,以六安市为例选择优势主导产业、各贫困县的生态产业,且提出生态补偿式扶贫开发中产业具体发展对策。     

Commentary: Neoliberal Landscapes of Deception: Detroit,Ford Field,and the Ford Motor Company

Microfinance is often presented as a solution to rural poverty. However, increasingly, many countries across the world are turning to it as a mechanism for dealing with the contingencies arising from the marketization of basic services and shrinking welfare provisions. Using examples of urban microfinance from India, this essay shows how, through microfinance, market rationalities are increasingly finding their way into food and housing provision for the urban poor and are displacing social relations that have traditionally sustained them.     

Rehabilitation and Sustainable Use Pattern of Rocky-desertified Land in Southwest China＇s Poverty-stricken Karst Mountainous Areas ——A Case Study in Benggu Township, Xichou County, Yunnan, China

The rocky desert in a karst area directly causes the lack of soil, water and forest, hence leading to the poverty there. In 1990, the villagers from the Muzhe Village in Benggu Township, Xichou County, Yunnan declared a war against rocky desert in an attempt to ask the fields for more yields. They invented a distinctive land rehabilitation and sustainable use pattern called ＂transforming heaven and earth＂ that had been practiced in Southwest China＇s karst areas. The key mechanism of the pattern was to develop terraced fields with well conserved soil, water and fertility by exploding rocks in the fields, building stone walls, gathering more soil, and improving soil quality and productivity for the fields in combination with building of irrigation facilities and roads, as well as with forestation and agriculture structure adjustment. The purpose of the pattern was to alleviate poverty in the karst areas by improving soil productivity and promoting agricultural development. A typical area was studied with the help of Participatory Rural Appraisal （PRA） and the pattern was carried out there for fifteen years, have produced excellent ecological benefits and good economic benefits. Its application in the area approved that it was a sustainable land use pattern for rocky desert areas.     

基于生态系统服务价值评估的我国集中连片重点贫困区生态补偿研究

本文基于2010年Landsat TM/ETM+数据,HJ-1卫星CCD数据,MODIS17A3净初级生产力数据和土壤,气候的地面实测数据,采用以生态系统服务价值为基础的区域差异化生态补偿估算方法,对中国14个集中连片贫困区生态补偿标准进行了估算.研究结果表明,2010年中国14个集中连片贫困区生态系统服务总价值达20 627.4亿元,与同年该区域GDP总量 22 096.2亿元大体相当,在南疆三地州,四省藏区和西藏片区3个西部片区,每年的生态系统服务总价值为GDP总量的2-12倍,这对保障中国生态安全具有重要意义.在14个集中连片特困区,生态补偿所需资金每年约为1971.0亿元,平均每县约为2.9亿元.目前,国家给予的生态补偿资金与此相比严重不足,即使是接受一般性财政转移支付的国家重点生态功能区,其各县市平均每年接受补偿资金也仅为0.94亿元,不到所需金额的1/3.生态补偿资金不足不但给各片区扶贫工作带来巨大压力,也带来了严重的生态风险.因此,生态补偿资金增量的投入可能是解决集中连片特困区贫困问题关键所在,在此增量补偿资金基础上,集中连片特困区可建立以国家购买生态产品为主,开发性扶贫增长为辅的可持续经济增长模式,这可能是彻底解决中国集中连片特困地区贫困问题的基本途径.     

GIS的不同次区域之间相似性度量

GIS属性相似度量有相似系数及以空间位置的空间自相关.这2种方法都不能计算全域为背景的次区域相似性问题,而以隶属函数的粗糙度量很好地解决了这个问题.本文利用粗糙集计算了 GIS的离散型数据的次区域相似度量.利用邻域粗糙集计算了连续属性值的上下近似逼近,并利用邻域信息粒子计算连续属性值的粗糙隶属问题,从而计算连续属性值次区域相似度量问题.本文方法能度量次区域而不是全域或单个元素之间的空间相关与自相关问题,考虑了全区域背景下的GIS相似问题.并针对GIS连续属性值,利用距离函数和邻域粗糙集来划分连续属性的上下近似,以及分类问题,提出一种基于邻域信息粒子的粗糙隶属函数.最后利用粗糙相似度量公式度量GIS次区域的相似问题.     

Changing poverty distribution in Bolivia: the role of rural–urban migration and urban services

Bolivia is a country with high levels of poverty and inequality among its peoples and regions. For the nation and its urban and rural areas, trends in the social and spatial distribution of poverty (and extreme poverty) are identified from 1976 to 2003 using UBN data with minor support where appropriate from poverty lines. The main survey between 1992 and 2001 uses composite and selected UBN to track detailed poverty change for the country’s nine departments, its ten largest cities and a selection of other smaller urban and rural municipalities. Because of rising background increases in population in the various surveyed administrative units, many instances of relative reductions in poverty are accompanied by rising absolute increases. Marked spatial variations in poverty and development in the country over the last several decades are identified as the main driver for the country’s quickening pace of rural–urban migration. As a result, the paper concludes by assessing two different but closely related views. One investigation tests the notion that because more poor people have been living in Bolivia’s cities than in its rural areas since the mid to late 1990s, rapid rural–urban migration has simply shifted the locus of poverty from the countryside to the cities in a process called, the ‘urbanisation of poverty.’ A second, more challenging, investigation assesses the view that the flow of poor rural people to the better serviced urban areas of Bolivia has actually acted to alleviate national poverty levels.     

改进的模糊聚类遥感影像分割

聚类是数据挖掘的重要分支之一,引入模糊理论的模糊聚类分析为显示数据提供了模糊处理能力,在许多领域被广泛应用。本文应用考虑邻域关系的约束模糊C均值(Fuzzy C-Means with Constrains,FCM_S)算法,将邻域像素引入到目标函数中,进而有效地利用邻域像素信息,提高分割精度。本文应用FCM_S算法对模拟彩色纹理图像进行分割,计算其混淆矩阵,定性定量地与FCM算法进行对比分析,证明了该算法的鲁棒性。     

中国11个集中连片特困区贫困程度比较研究——基于综合发展指数计算的视角

综合比较11个集中连片特困区的贫困程度对于更好地实施连片特困区区域发展与扶贫攻坚战略十分重要。基于"发展"与"贫困"之间的对应关系,通过构建涵盖经济、社会和生态3个维度24项指标的综合发展指标体系,测算和比较分析了11个集中连片特困区的贫困程度。结果表明:1在经济、社会和生态3个维度中,11个集中连片特困区的经济发展严重滞后,经济贫困相对更为突出,社会服务有所改善,但仍然十分落后,生态条件较好、生态负荷较小,但生态脆弱性不容忽视;2 11个集中连片特困区的贫困程度在空间上呈"东部-北部-西南部"走向依次递增的特征,西南腹地是中国贫困的"重灾区";3 11个集中连片特困区在人均GDP、人均财政收入、农村居民人均纯收入、平均受教育年限、万人科技人员数等反映经济发展水平和区域自我发展能力的指标上较为相似,但在建制村硬化公路通达率、人口密度、九年义务教育巩固率、村卫生室普及率和青壮年文盲率等表征社会公共服务的指标上具有明显差异。     

Agricultural policy reforms and sustainable land management: a New Zealand case study

This paper examines the link between poverty and land management within the context of New Zealand's almost total removal of subsidies to agriculture since 1984. The impact of these policy changes is explored through the findings from a detailed study of sixteen farms in the North Island hill country. Stress is identified as a primary link between social damage and environmental degradation. This link reinforces the impact of other linkages expressed in reduced production, lower stocking rates, and reduced capital inputs. Deregulation is claimed to be good. This paper shows that in certain circumstances this is not so.