Suchergebnisse

This paper aims at demonstrating how countries' dependency on natural resources plays a crucial role in urban concentration. The Zipf's Curve Elasticity is estimated for a group of countries and related to a set of indicators of unilateral transferences. Results show that in comparison to others, countries with higher urban concentration explained by higher Zipf's Curve Elasticity have a higher percentage of income coming from natural resources and education expenditures whereas public spending in health and outflow of Foreign Direct Investment seem to have spatial redistribution effects. Summing up, there are signs that the spatial allocation of property rights over natural resources and related rents influences urban concentration.

This paper aims at demonstrating how regional governance plays a crucial role on urban concentration and spatial justice. The paper presents the "The Zipf's Curve" estimates for the South Asian countries and maps for India and Pakistan the various city regions in relation to the estimated Curve. The analysis of the results indicate that the spatial distribution of rents of natural resources and from public transferences do have a role in the spatial distribution of wealth. Summing up, there are signs that governance influences spatial justice governance specifically by the spatial allocation of property rights over natural resources and by the spatial distribution of public spending.

Nesta lembrança do Professor António Simões Lopes proponho-me analisar um exercício que ajudei a implementar sobre o futuro da Ciência Regional (Kourtit, Royuela, Dentinho e Nijkamp, 2016), tendo como referência à memória que guardo dos pensamentos de António Simões Lopes.
O exercício feito no âmbito da criação da Academia de Ciências Regional promovida por Peter Nijkamp e consistiu em (i) selecionar um conjunto de pensamentos sobre a ciência regional enunciados por conhecidos cientistas regionais de todo o mundo; (ii) solicitar que classificassem esses pensamentos tendo em atenção o nível de concordância com os mesmos; e (iii) proceder a uma análise das componentes principais que identificassem os pensamentos estruturais implícitos às diferentes classificações. Qual seria o posicionamento do Prof. António Simões Lopes nestas diferentes e, no entanto, complementares linhas de orientação da ciência regional?

The aim of this essay is to understand the attitudes on Trans- Himalayan Cooperation. The approach was to pick up the main thoughts presented in the Fifth China-South Asia Cultural Forum (Chengdu, December 14-16, 2015) on the topic "Exploring Cooperation across the Himalayas", synthesize those attitudes using a Q Method approach and suggests a SWOT Analysis to categorise the main cooperation issues and strategies. Five types of attitudes are named and described: i) Regional Cooperation for Peace and Development; ii) Effective Cooperation on Research and Education; iii) Effective Sectoral Cooperation; iv) Cooperation on Poverty Reduction; and v) Cooperation on Corridors. Two different strategies are discussed: a) a passive strategy that assumes that the economic dynamism between nearby countries can be threatened by terrorism fuelled by inequality, poverty, water shortages and energy instability; and b) an active strategy that explores the cooperation opportunities associated with globalization, exploring academic and research capabilities, designing sustainable water agreements, promoting energy and touristic resources or implementing Trans-Himalayan corridors.

AbstractThis paper tries to understand urban unsustainability. The main argument is that the story of unsustainable cities is characterized by a 'tragedy of the commons' phenomenon not only in the deployment of urban infrastructure but also in the overuse of the natural capital that sustain the city. We show that, looking at the story of unsustainable cities from the perspective of a simple general equilibrium urban model, open access to urban land leads to high concentrations of population, huge deployment of urban infrastructure and irreversible degradation of the natural capital creating a 'tragedy of urban infrastructure' that undermines the sustainability of cities creating preannounced urban ruins.Resumen. Este artículo intenta entender la insostenibilidad urbana. El argumento principal es que la historia de las ciudades insostenibles está caracterizada por el fenómeno de la "tragedia de los comunes" no solo en el despliegue de infraestructura urbana sino también en la sobreexplotación del capital natural que sostiene la ciudad. Mostramos que, observando la historia de ciudades insostenibles desde la perspectiva de un modelo urbano de equilibrio general simple, el acceso libre al suelo urbano causa concentraciones de población elevadas, un despliegue masivo de infraestructura urbana y una degradación irreversible del capital natural, que crean una 'tragedia de la infraestructura urbana' que socava la sostenibilidad de las ciudades con el preaviso de la aparición de ruinas urbanas.

Noscritériosdedistribuiçãodefundospelasautarquias locais estão sempre presentes a área, corrigida ou não por factores orográficos, e a população, aperfeiçoada porventura pelos fluxos turísticos. No entanto os limites das circunscrições territoriais e a variabilidade da densidade populacional introduzem distorções na afectação dos fundos e nem mesmo a ponderação entre a área e a população conduzem a distribuições compatíveis com as diversas atribuições e competências municipais. O objectivo do artigo é propor dois novos critérios de distribuição de verbas pelas autarquias locais: o potencial demográfico que atenua os efeitos dos limites das circunscrições territoriais; e a área de pressão urbana, calculada com base na área e na população, que reduz o efeito da variabilidade da densidade populacional. O teste destes dois indicadores face aos alternativos é feito com base nas contas dos municípios dos Açores. Conclui-se que os critérios Área com Pressão Urbana e Potencial Demográfico respondem bem aos problemas que resultam da utilização directa e aditiva da área e da população sendo igualmente fáceis de calcular. Por outro lado as questões de equidade podem ser em grande parte explicitadas através da manipulação do parâmetro do atrito à distância que faz parte do indicador do Potencial Demográfico para obter distribuições mais ou menos concentradas.

Huambo has central capacities able to compete and complement other major towns in Africa such as Johannesburg and Nairobi. Nevertheless, Huambo, the second city of Angola, was at war from 1975 till 2002 and continued to be relatively isolated from 2002 till 2006, because it took some time to rebuilt former roads. Furthermore the destruction of the export based activities during the war reduced the capacity of the city to regain the development path experienced in the sixties and early seventies. Under these circumstances the design of a Director Plan is necessarily a strategic plan of a city that has lost its export base and has obvious difficulties in getting its role in Africa. The Provincial Government asked for a Plan which design should be participated. The first question is to know who the stakeholders are and what are their expectations? The second issue is to design a participative and consistent strategy. In this paper we report the first phase of the Plan which includes not only the characterization and diagnosis of the region but also the design of a participatory strategy. We used Q Methods to interact with the stakeholders and a Spatial Interaction Model with Land Use to create consistent scenarios that arise from the political and entrepreneurial options related to the location of a new modern airport, the new export base of the town, the solution in terms of urban densities, the structure of the transport network and the design of land use planning measures.

This book develops spatial interaction models for the analysis of human interaction within space, in terms of both accessibility and land use. Presenting case studies on the Azores and Morocco, it covers applications in various regions of Europe and Africa. The respective models simulate land use, employment, households, commuting and shopping movements and land values, employment distribution for basic activities, changes in accessibility, and changes in land suitability due to climate change. This book will appeal to scholars and students of regional and spatial science, ecological economics, and agricultural economics, as well as to spatial planners and practitioners dealing with issues of spatial planning to address such problems as unsustainable land use, adaptation to climate change, desertification of rural areas heavily dependent on land use, and the impacts of external shocks on land and property values.

The expert contributors illustrate that sources of regional competitiveness are strongly linked with spatially observable yet increasingly flexible realities, and include building advanced and efficient transport, communications and energy networks, changing urban and rural landscapes, and creating strategic and forward-looking competitiveness policies. They investigate long-term interactions between regional competitiveness and urban mobility, as well as the connections that link global sustainability with local technological and institutional innovations, and the intrinsic diversity of spatially rooted innovation processes. A prospective analysis on networks and innovation infrastructure is presented, global environmental issues such as climate change and energy are explored, and new policy perspectives, relevant world-wide, are prescribed.

This timely book investigates the challenges that emerge for local economies when faced with the new globalization trends that characterize today's world economy. In this instance, globalization is interpreted as a process of internationalization of production and markets which can take various forms – such as increasing international trade or increasing foreign direct investments – all of which give rise to the growing integration and interdependency of European economies with regard to the other main world economies. The expert contributors use a fresh perspective in their analysis of globalization trends, emphasizing recent changes and providing an up-to-date picture of current developments in both foreign investments and the consequent migration of human capital. Qualitative rather than quantitative trends in human capital and financial capital flows are taken into account, with a particular focus on their impacts on regional growth perspectives. Highlighting the European economy's strengths and weaknesses in facing the challenges of the new globalization trends, this book will provide a stimulating read for a wide-ranging audience encompassing scholars of regional science, regional economics, economic and regional geography, international economics and international business.