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Daghestan's urban culture, in its Russian–European variety, is a relatively new phenomenon. Until the 1970's, weddings in cities have been celebrated only by hereditary citizens, i.e. Russians, Armenians, Jews, Azerbaijanis, Kumyks, occasionally, while the rest of the city residents preferred to go to their home villages and play weddings there, after which the bride and groom would return if they were going to live in the city. Since the 1990's, with the growth of the urban population due to the influx of the rural population, this tradition has disappeared in Daghestan, as rural residents often have to come to the city to celebrate the wedding.This article is based on ethnographic materials identified through field observation included. The authors focus on the presentation of the preserved traditional elements of urban wedding rituals and the new ritual and other components that have appeared in recent decades. The analysis of the modern family and public holiday, which the wedding has always been for the peoples of Daghestan, demonstrates the close connection between local traditions and Russian-European innovations, under the influence of various factors. Modern city weddings in Daghestan find in different cities a different ratio between the secular and Islamic components in wedding ceremonies. The authors consider the modern wedding in the cities of Daghestan as a multicomponent ceremony, consisting traditionally of preliminary preparations, the wedding itself and the ceremonies after the wedding.The innovations used in urban wedding rituals are an expression of value orientations, ethnic, ethical, aesthetic, and ethnocultural preferences of modern Daghestan citizens.Under the conditions of ethnocultural dynamics influenced by the intensive migration of the population from the mountains to the plain, where all the modern Daghestan cities are located, the "urban culture" radically transforms not only the marriage traditions, but also the very perception of these traditions. A look at the ratio of the traditional and the modern in the urban wedding rituals is now in each generation its own. And perhaps it is partly subjective and needs to be discussed.

AbstractA significant proportion of city dwellers in Ghana reside in slums where groundwater is the major source of water for domestic uses. This study examined the quality of groundwater from boreholes (seven) and hand‐dug wells (13) in five major slums in the city of Accra, Ghana. Water samples were tested for a total of 27 microbial and physicochemical contaminants at the central laboratory of the Ghana Water Company Limited. Overall, the water quality in the slums was poor as most of the parameters tested did not meet the 2017 WHO standards. Four out of the five slums (in Nima, Chorkor, Jamestown, and Abokobi‐Pantang), for instance, recorded high amounts of lead, with average values of 0.25 mg/L, 1.00 mg/L, 0.25 mg/L, and 1.5 mg/L, respectively, which are above the WHO standard of 0.01 mg/L. pH values in Nima (5.09), Sabon Zongo, Chorkor (6.09), and Abokobi‐Pantang (6.17) did not meet the WHO standard of 6.5–8.5. All five slums indicated various degrees of bacteriological contamination. The average Escherichia coli values per slum ranged between 12.50 CFU/100 ml and 249.00 CFU/100 ml, while the mean total coliform per slum ranged from 90.75 CFU/100 ml to 490.25 CFU/100 ml. The poor quality of groundwater found is attributable to improper disposal of waste, siting of boreholes/wells close to toilets, and the coastal location of some of the slums. Strict enforcement of water‐quality control checks, intensive sensitization on the dangers of improper waste disposal to groundwater quality, and the provision of sanitation facilities in the slums by city authorities are highly recommended.

Using a newly developed geographic information system transportation database, we study the impact of gaining access to rail transportation on changes in population density and the rate of urbanization between 1850 and 1860 in the American Midwest. Differences-in-differences and instrumental variable analysis of a balanced panel of 278 counties reveals only a small positive effect of rail access on population density but a large positive impact on urbanization as measured by the fraction of people living in incorporated areas of 2,500 or more. Our estimates imply that one-half or more of the growth in urbanization in the Midwest in the late antebellum period may be attributable to the spread of the rail network.

There has been substantial urban growth in Stockholm, Sweden, the fastest-growing capital in Europe. The intensifying urbanization poses challenges for environmental management and sustainable development. Using Sentinel-2 and SPOT-5 imagery, this research investigates the evolution of land-cover change in Stockholm County between 2005 and 2015, and evaluates urban growth impact on protected green areas, green infrastructure and urban ecosystem service provision. One scene of 2015 Sentinel-2A multispectral instrument (MSI) and 10 scenes of 2005 SPOT-5 high-resolution instruments (HRI) imagery over Stockholm County are classified into 10 land-cover categories using object-based image analysis and a support vector machine algorithm with spectral, textural and geometric features. Reaching accuracies of approximately 90%, the classifications are then analyzed to determine impact of urban growth in Stockholm between 2005 and 2015, including land-cover change statistics, landscape-level urban ecosystem service provision bundle changes and evaluation of regional and local impact on legislatively protected areas as well as ecologically significant green infrastructure networks. The results indicate that urban areas increased by 15%, while non-urban land cover decreased by 4%. In terms of ecosystem services, changes in proximity of forest and low-density built-up areas were the main cause of lowered provision of temperature regulation, air purification and noise reduction. There was a decadal ecosystem service loss of 4.6 million USD (2015 exchange rate). Urban areas within a 200 m buffer zone around the Swedish environmental protection agency&rsquo ; s nature reserves increased 16%, with examples of urban areas constructed along nature reserve boundaries. Urban expansion overlapped the deciduous ecological corridor network and green wedge/core areas to a small but increasing degree, often in close proximity to weak but important green links in the landscape. Given these findings, increased conservation/restoration focus on the region&rsquo ; s green weak links is recommended.

China is in the process of accelerated urbanization. The National Bureau of Statistics has reported the population of 1.3 billion at the end of year 2010, at least half of them live in the urban area. The Chinese urbanization since 1949 shows a specific model by the historical heritage of the centralized planned economy. After the economic transition of 1978, the system of residence notebooks, the hukou, which keeps the peasant population in the rural areas is gradually relaxed to allow, without changing the status, to mobilize rural workforce for serving the gigantesque construction of urban agglomeration. The movement took its real start in 1990. China has entered a new urban stage: that the megalopolization. The object of this thesis is to understand, to analyze, through the nature and the evolution of principal Chinese megalopole, the specialty of Chinese urban model, with the institutional characteristics and the public politics, and of lighting all the diversity of real situations in the object for the urbanization and the economic development of China more stable and durable. We study to explain China's by agglomeration economics, especially to examine the characteristics of urban grow during this recent period of strong urbanization pour understand why in China the megalopolization is taken on the metropolization. During this discussion, both theoretical and empirical, we have require in which scale the Chinese urbanization strategy can do object of comparison with others emerging countries, surtout with India who is the same grand population of China, to enrich the urban development model for the others countries in developing. ; La Chine est en processus d'urbanisation accélérée. Le Bureau national des Statistiques a rapporté une population de 1,3 milliard à la fin de l'année 2010, au moins la moitié d'entre eux vivent dans la zone urbaine. L'urbanisation chinoise depuis 1949 montre un modèle spécifique par l'héritage historique de l'économie planifiée centralisée. Après la transition économique de ...