Burglary and robbery rates in St. Louis, Missouri, are investigated as functions of census unemployment levels taken in 1970 and 1980 for twelve yearly cross sections of crime rates, with all rates aggregated to the level of census tracts for analyses. The relationship of burglary and robbery rates to unemployment is found to be positive, and the interactive (logged) model is found to be the one most consistent with theory as well as the best predictive model. The magnitude of unemployment effects is large, and the policy implication is that urban areas fighting crime would benefit substantially from successfully targeted employment programs.
In: TATuP - Zeitschrift für Technikfolgenabschätzung in Theorie und Praxis / Journal for Technology Assessment in Theory and Practice, Band 30, Heft 1, S. 70-73
In: Die Natur der Gesellschaft: Verhandlungen des 33. Kongresses der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Soziologie in Kassel 2006. Teilbd. 1 u. 2, S. 2961-2967
Das Thema der DGS-Sektionssitzung der Stadt- und Regionalsoziologie "Naturalisierung des Städtischen" zielt auf eine Auseinandersetzung mit aktuellen Deutungen städtischer Visionen, Konflikte, Krisen und Katastrophen, insofern diese bestimmte Naturalisierungsstrategien implizieren. Die Thematik wird dabei unter drei Perspektiven erschlossen: (1) die Verländlichung der Stadt durch Reagrarisierung, (2) die soziale Konstruktion von Naturereignissen als Katastrophe und (3) die Körperbasierung des Städtischen. (ICI2)
Mit den "Regimen urbaner Resilienz" wird eine empirische Forschungsperspektive vorgestellt, die die Auswirkungen verschiedener sozialräumlicher Krisen in belasteten Stadtbezirken untersucht und sie als relationale, vielschichtige und flüchtige Formen der Dominanz beschreibbar macht. Als Fallbeispiel dient in diesem Beitrag der Berliner Bezirk Marzahn-Hellersdorf.
Sandercock, L. K. 1975: Cities for sale: property, politics and urban planning in Australia.McMaster, J. C. and Webb, G. R., editors, 1976: Australian urban economics: a reader.Webb, G. R. and McMaster, J. C., editors, 1975: Australian transport economics: a reader.
Urban regime theory has shaped the urban politics research agenda in the United States for the past two decades. The article argues that urban regime theory draws on public and corporate behavior and strategies that were typical to the industrial era in the United States. As a result, the theory is insensitive to changes in institutional hierarchies, economic globalization, and the emergence of new types of actors and issues in urban politics. Urban governance theory conceptualizes agency more generically that allows the theory to travel better than urban regime theory in time and space.
In: Discussion Papers / Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung, Forschungsschwerpunkt Bildung, Arbeit und Lebenschancen, Abteilung Ungleichheit und soziale Integration, Band 2009-202
"This paper discusses how widespread poverty and exclusion are in urban China during the period of transition from central planning to a market economy. Two poverty lines have been employed to measure poverty rates in urban areas: a diagnostic poverty line calculated by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) experts and a benefit poverty line used in the Minimum Living Allowance Program of the Chinese government. Both sets of estimates show marked variations by province. According to the former standard, the poverty headcount of China in 1998 was estimated as 14.8 million, with a poverty rate of 4.7 percent. According to the later standard, the poverty headcount for 2007 is estimated as 22.7 million, amounting to a poverty rate of 3.9 percent. Poor people are generally not living in absolute poverty, as their basic needs in food, clothing and shelter can largely be met. However, they have low incomes and restricted consumption potential. Economic constraints also entail adverse consequences like poor health, poor education and limited social contacts. Two groups of people are here considered as the new poor: unemployed or laid-off workers and labor migrants. This means that China now has two new forms of urban poverty which are caused by different factors and are combined with different forms of deprivation. Therefore, policy programs designed to eradicate poverty in urban areas have to be tailored carefully to the poor people's special needs. Job creation and a comprehensive social protection system are here proposed as two effective instruments in the fight against urban poverty." (author's abstract)
An "urban" definition of public policy problems raises great difficulties for the policy maker. If we emphasize implementation as a primary factor in evaluating public policy, we have good grounds for questioning the wisdom of an urban perspective. But urban questions have been and still are major areas of concern in public policy formulation. The ALP federal platform contains a long section on urban policies, reiterating what the Department of Urban and Regional Development (DURD) was striving to achieve under the Whitlam Government. At state level, urban problems have been tackled with varying degrees of success and seriousness, although at this level overall urban perspectives tend to be ignored, for reasons we shall indicate. However urban planning authorities have been tried in most capital cities, and metropolitan plans have been drawn up for all of them. They have concentrated mainly on land use and urban form. By the 1970s a common criticism of such planning was that it left aside many social and economic aspects of urban growth. For example, one (admittedly partisan) government source—the N.S.W. Department of Decentralization and Development—noted "a massive and increasing trend towards socio‐economic segregation":…the remoteness of central city facilities …the cost of commuter transport and the inadequacy of community facilities in low‐income outer suburbs are operating to perpetuate economic under‐privilege.
Urban policy is unlikely to be a major concern of the Bush administration in the near future. Some of the reasons for this outlook are offered in this article, including the nature of Bush's electoral support and the benefits those constituencies receive from the allegedly natural workings of the "invisible hand" and the "invisible foot." Some countervailing tendencies are noted. A broader view of urban concerns is called for, a view that would lead toward a domestic policy with an urban consciousness.