What makes a region entrepreneurial? Evidence from Britain

There is a great deal of variation in the levels of entrepreneurship, or rates of self-employment, across the regions of Britain. Over the period 1983–1995, average self-employment in the North, Scotland, and the West Midlands was respectively 25%, 15%, and 15% lower than the national average, whereas in the South West, East Anglia, and Wales it was respectively 28%, 23%, and 21% higher. We develop a theoretical model of regional self-employment, and estimate the roles of labour market conditions, labour force characteristics, industry composition, and region-specific factors such as entrepreneurial human capital. Our results suggest that all of these factors are important, and that regional heterogeneity and regionally correlated disturbances must be accounted for when estimating regional self-employment relationships. Received: November 1998 / Accepted: July 1999     

What drives the high health care costs of the homeless?

Existing research demonstrates that mean health care costs incurred by those experiencing homelessness are high. However, high mean health care costs mask the fact that a sizeable number of people experiencing homelessness incur low costs and that very high costs are driven by a minority of the homeless population. This paper examines health care costs estimated from two Australian surveys of those experiencing homelessness undertaken by the authors. It demonstrates three important findings. First, higher health care costs are most strongly associated with diagnosed mental health disorders, followed by long-term physical health conditions. Second, having a current drug or alcohol dependency, but no diagnosed mental health disorder or long-term physical health issue, is not associated with higher level health care costs. Finally, higher health care costs are incurred by those with long periods of rough sleeping. The findings of this research provide a significant economic argument for government intervention to break the cycle of homelessness as they reveal significant potential savings to effective interventions for homeless people with diagnosed mental health disorders and long-term rough sleeping.     

Should we care about neutrality in the city?

Neutrality in political philosophy is a contested idea. The paper argues that there are valid moral reasons to incorporate neutrality in spatial organization considerations, by appealing to universal reasons rather than sectarian reasons. This is a view that defends ‘justificatory neutrality’. The paper responds to previous concerns regarding the applicability of neutrality in the spatial sphere, arguing that the conception of justificatory neutrality successfully addresses these concerns. Yet, the paper raises doubts whether the arguments that persist in the current political philosophy literature can or should, at the end of the day, be applied to the spatial sphere.     

What makes older adults happier? Urban and rural differences in the living arrangements and life satisfaction of older adults

Given the dynamically diverse outcomes of biological, behavioral, and environmental factors, the heterogeneity of the subjective well-being of older adults must be considered in the context of aged societies. This study conducted a joint analysis of older adults’ subjective indicators of satisfaction with living arrangements (SLA) and life satisfaction (LS). The bivariate generalized ordered probit model was employed to study 2045 urban and rural older adults. The findings show that family relationships and depression were critical sources of heterogeneity for SLA and LS when controlled for an older adults’ area of residence (urban or rural). Better family relationships and lack of depression were significant in prompting positive attitudes toward SLA and LS in older adults. In particular, there was significant heterogeneity among urban older adults who self-reported health effects on their cognitive perception of LS, but rural older adults did not show this effect. Simultaneously, urban seniors cared more about their spouses’ health and its effect on their SLA and LS. Moreover, being a widow/widower significantly affected the SLA of rural seniors. This study marks a breakthrough regarding sample heterogeneity in bivariate ordered probit models. It demonstrates that urban and rural older adults have different satisfaction levels, even in the homogeneous areas of residence. The findings of this study reveal subjective cognitive discrepancies between urban and rural older adults’ SLA and LS, thereby highlighting that the heterogeneous outcomes experienced by older adults through environmental interactions should be of greater concern in an aged society.

     

Housing the elderly: segregated in senior cities or integrated in urban society?

Ageing is driving the demand for housing for seniors in the Netherlands. The current urban planning ??cluster policy?? is mainly conducive to the construction of luxury inner-city apartments for seniors. Much less attention is given to the demand for dwellings for seniors outside the cities and for low- and middle-income households. Should the government accommodate this demand by constructing accessible dwellings? And would a ??senior city?? be a suitable framework for this purpose? The issue is whether senior citizens actually want to live together in a district, village or city. Would they want to move there if these senior cities were some distance away from other (age) groups, family, friends and services such as shops and care? We question whether the demand for senior cities is sufficiently strong to warrant abandoning the European planning principle of clustering. Doing so would lead to fragmentation of the landscape and less support for services in urbanized areas. The impetus for this study came from the major shortage of accessible housing in the Netherlands and a recent initiative to build a senior city of 1,500 dwellings in the province of Flevoland.     

What are the costs and benefits of biodiversity recovery in a highly polluted estuary?

Biodiversity recovery measures have often been ignored when dealing with the restoration of degraded aquatic systems. Furthermore, biological valuation methods have been applied only spatially in previous studies, and not jointly on a temporal and spatial scale. The intense monitoring efforts carried out in a highly polluted estuary, in northern Spain (Nervión estuary), allowed for the economic valuation of the costs and the biological valuation of the benefits associated with a 21 years sewage scheme application. The analysis show that the total amount of money invested into the sewage scheme has contributed to the estuary’s improvement of both environmental and biological features, as well as to an increase in the uses and services provided by the estuary. However, the inner and outer parts of the estuary showed different responses. An understanding of the costs and trajectories of the environmental recovery of degraded aquatic systems is increasingly necessary to allow policy makers and regulators to formulate robust, cost-efficient and feasible management decisions.     

What is a City?

On the 75th anniversary of Lewis Mumford's rhetorical essay ‘What is a City?’, Austin Williams asks whether we risk defining cities out of existence. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

What’s in a Name? the use of Tusk Tenons and Face-Pegged Through Tenons in England

From the seventeenth century to the nineteenth, carpenters’ and builders’ manuals have defined tusks as shoulders above or below tenons. In recent decades, especially in English archaeological literature, the term ‘tusk tenon’ has come to be applied in a variety of ways to what are more generally known on the Continent as ‘through tenons with face pegs’. To meet the demands imposed by a growing typology, it is suggested below that ‘tusk tenon’ should be applied only in the sense defined in early manuals and that ‘through tenons’ with or without ‘face pegs’ would, as a result, be better understood as a discrete and separate group of carpentered joints. The latter have been found in Romano-British and Anglo-Saxon contexts, as well as on the medieval waterfront in London. In contrast with the Continental evidence, there was a decline in their use in English medieval buildings, followed by a resurgence in the seventeenth century.     

What makes livable cities of today alike? Revisiting the criterion of singularity through two case studies

This paper revisits the concept of singularity, focusing on the kinetic perception of visual aspects. Following a review of the relevant literature that explores the elements that can create unique forms based on Western paradigms, we analyse empirically the conceptual framework of singularity through a comparison between two Egyptian cases. The comparison between these cases will be made using an interview schedule among professional practitioners followed by a questionnaire. Based on the data, we rank the elements that our informants regarded as important in generating urban singularity. Furthermore, we analyse the space syntax in these cases to show the effects of items that have been ranked and the consequences of spatial configuration on the singularity. Analyses of the connectivity, choice, integration, intelligibility and synergy outline the differences between the two cases. The results show five sets of findings related to the way of thinking, the design ideas, the roles of stakeholders, learning the history and the design-oriented approach. Revisiting the criterion of singularity merges between multiple paradigms of cities as products and artworks. We figure out in the main conclusion that our replicable framework can potentially be used in other cities in terms of urban policies that explain the authorities' roles and areas of specialisation.     

What Is a Forecast for?

Abstract

Problem, research strategy, and findings: The forecasts transit agencies submit in support of applications for federal New Starts funding have historically overestimated ridership, as have ridership forecasts for rail projects in several countries and contexts. Forecast accuracy for New Starts projects has improved over time. Understanding the motivations of forecasters to produce accurate or biased forecasts can help forecast users determine whether to trust new forecasts. For this study I interviewed 13 transit professionals who have helped prepare or evaluate applications for federal New Starts funds. This sample includes interviewees who have had varying levels of involvement in all 82 New Starts projects that opened between 1976 and 2016. I recruited interviewees through a snowball sampling method; my interviews focus on the interviewees’ perspectives on how New Starts project evaluation and ridership forecasting has changed over time. Interview results suggest that ridership forecasters’ motivations to produce accurate forecasts may have increased with increased transparency, increased influence on local decision making, and decreased influence on external (federal) funding.

Takeaway for practice: Planners can evaluate the likely trustworthiness of forecasts based on transparency, internal influence, and external influence. If forecast users cannot easily determine a forecast’s key inputs and assumptions, if the forecaster has been tasked with producing a forecast to justify a predetermined action, and if an unfavorable forecast would circumvent decisions by the forecaster’s immediate client, forecasts should viewed with skepticism. Planners should seek to alter conditions that may create these conflicts of interest. Forecasters seem to be willing and able to improve forecast accuracy when the demand for accurate forecasts increases.     

Migration patterns and migration motives among the elderly—Swedish data in a comparative perspective

Migration patterns and migration motives among elderly people are often analysed in relation to a life course perspective and to theories about the decision‐making processes that precede moving. The development of these theories is mostly based on data from US, and in some cases on data from Canada, Germany, France and the United Kingdom. This article presents data from a register study and a survey among the elderly in Örebro, a middle‐sized Swedish town, and some other Swedish data, showing that migration patterns and motives observed in Swedish context diverge on certain essential points from the findings in other developed countries. Retirement moving, for instance, which has been treated as a transnational phenomenon is not an important type of moving among the elderly in the presented study. The article also presents some contextual circumstances that partly can explain the observed divergences, circumstances that affect the meaning of the aging process and elderly people's decisions regarding staying put or moving.     

What about the people? Micro-foundations of open innovation in megaprojects

Megaprojects require substantial R&D activities involving many different organisations. Megaprojects are therefore an ideal setting for Open Innovation (OI), which favours risk-sharing, enables trustful collaboration, and facilitates the development of breakthrough innovations. OI has been widely studied at the organisational level, however far less attention has been paid at the individual level, including the motivations, costs and benefits perceived by the people involved in the innovation process. This paper aims to address this gap by studying the micro-foundations of OI in megaprojects and focusing on the experiences of people involved in university-industry co-supervised Ph.D. projects. The paper provides two original contributions. Firstly, it contributes to the micro-foundations literature, by analysing the experience of university and industrial supervisors and Ph.D. students involved in megaprojects. Secondly, it expands the OI literature by describing how the interpersonal interactions and the intentional knowledge spillovers promote innovation outside the original boundaries of the Ph.D. project.     

What is the role of tensile cracks in cohesive slopes?

The traditional limit equilibrium method (LEM) is often used to search for the failure surface with a minimum safety factor of slope. In this method, the failure surface is considered as a shear surface, irrespective of its form. However, tensile cracks are frequently found at the outcrops of landslides. In this study, three sets of tests on small-scale landslides with different inclination angles were conducted. The test results demonstrated that tensile cracks could arise in the slope sliding process and the failure surface is composed of both a shear and a tensile fracture surface. Based on the test results, we used the improved LEM, and replaced the traditional shear failure surface by a tensile-shear coupling one, thus new tensile failure modes for slope stability analysis can be established. The safety factors of slope in different failure modes were compared, which show that when considering soil tensile failure and tensile strength less than a certain value (e.g. 15 kPa, 44 kPa and 55 kPa for linear, circular and logarithmic spiral failure surfaces, respectively), the safety factors of slope with three different failure surfaces are less than the one that did not consider the tensile failure. The most critical failure surfaces of the slope may be composed of shear and tensile damages because the tensile strength of the soil cannot be generally greater than its cohesion.     

Invisible city: a Jerusalem in the forest?

The Bielski partisans are perhaps the most famous of the ‘Forest Jews’ of Belarus, Jews who engaged in active resistance to the Germans in the years between 1941 and 1944 from their hide-outs in the forest. When they escaped to ‘partisan country’ Jews had to adjust to an entirely new physical and social environment. Persecuted by one of the most technologically advanced armies in the world, and forced by circumstances to join the Soviet-led, communist, anti-religious partisan movement, the Bielski group faced numerous social and cultural dilemmas in establishing the living conditions that ensured their survival. The extreme cold of the Russian winter made circumstances extremely harsh, ‘living like animals’ according to one partisan, although in time life improved sufficiently for many in the Bielski detachment to believe that their final camp had acquired the status of a small town or shtetl. If, however, such military camps have often recalled more established urban settlements, this question requires clarification in the Bielski case, and is the principal focus of this paper. In its examination of the dwellings and settlements constructed by the Bielski group, and how they evolved over time, the study underlines the minimum dimensions of culture that arise in near-survival conditions.     

What factors influence the abundance and distribution of sacred forests in Odisha,a densely forested state in eastern India?

This is a report on sacred forests of Odisha, a large and densely forested state in eastern India. Using district-level data from government agencies on geographical area, demographics, forest cover, and sacred forest sizes and numbers, we test what factors influence the observed distributions and abundance of sacred forests. Results show that at the district level, population size of scheduled tribes was unrelated to total population size. Forest area was greater in larger districts, and where tribal populations were greater, but per cent forest cover declined with overall population density. There are 2166 documented sacred forests in the state of Odisha, with most being small (median = 0.2 ha). Multiple regression analyses show that the number of sacred forests is unrelated to total forest area but is significantly positively associated with Tribal population size. Sacred forests have survived decline during recent deforestation, and indigenous cultural practices appear to promote the persistence of natural vegetation.     

What belongs to architecture?' Avant-garde ideas in the modern movement

The Modern Movement is often given the role of the avant-garde in architecture. Recent theoretical developments, however, argue for a differentiation in meaning between 'avant-garde' and 'modernism'. It is claimed that the avant-garde was a radical and disruptive phenomenon, which aimed at a total unification between art and life and which resisted the divide between high art and mass culture. The avant-garde is thus theoretically distinguished from modernism, which is seen as a calmer and less revolutionary movement of aesthetic renovation. This article points out how this differentiation in meaning can elucidate some important divergences in the discourse of the Modern Movement. It focuses on some early writings of Sigfried Giedion and on Walter Benjamin's interpretation thereof, in order to highlight their fundamental questioning of architecture's role vis-a-vis society. This questioning means that, in the considered texts, both authors are closer to an avant-gardist sensibility than to a modernist one.     

Housing assets to the elderly in urban China: to fund or to hedge?

Housing has become the most important asset held by a large proportion of China’s older citizens. Therefore, the role of housing wealth in the consumption decisions of the elderly is a central topic of research and gains insights into the saving, investment and consumption decisions made throughout household life to meet later pension needs. In this paper, using data drawn from a household survey conducted between 2002 and 2009, we estimate the influence of housing wealth on the non-housing consumption of the elderly, and identify the mechanisms underlying this relationship. We find that on average, changes in housing wealth have limited effects on elderly consumption. However, we also find that the role of housing in consumption differs according to the income, health status, and living arrangements of the elderly. The paper draws attention to the influence of housing and its links with social and health-care systems on the lives of older people, with important policy implications.     

What’s in a cover image? How to depict planning history

A book’s cover is frequently the first visual element of a book that a reader encounters in a library, bookshop, or—most likely now—on the Internet. Combining the publisher’s usually predetermined logo, typography and layout with an image provided by the volume editor or author, the cover aims to convey multiple meanings. These meanings are particularly important in a field such as planning history, where visuals of the associated disciplines play an important role. Spatial planning and urban design convey multi-faceted ideas through masterplans that are often illustrated with memorable images. Planning history explores these images as part of its approach and needs to pay attention to the ways in which images convey meaning. Taking the example of the selection of the cover image for the Routledge Handbook of Planning History, the article presents how five different types of images addressed specific approaches of the handbook by showcasing cross-cultural exchange, identifying key words and terms of planning history, and using comic strips, games or art work as a means of translating the multiple themes of the book. This short reflective analysis concludes by asking for more investigation of the role of images as part of the changing role of planning in society and the built environment.     

What is achieved and lost in living in a mixed-income neighborhood? Findings from South Korea

The concept of social mix is perceived as an attempt to minimize social exclusion by enhancing individual social capital. Related policies have been implemented in many countries to prevent isolation of certain groups and achieve social integration. However, few studies have examined their impacts on various income groups. This study uses data from the National Social Capital Survey in South Korea to empirically investigate the impact of the social mix policy on trust, networks, and norms, which are the three types of social capital that promote social integration. Multiple regression models present that the income mix is negatively associated with neighborly trust and networks, while being positively associated with norms. These models also suggest that mixing of income groups improves the norms of low-income groups but reduces the trust of high-income groups. Thus, this study argues for the need to establish specific goals and targets when promoting a social mix policy and understanding the side effects of introducing such a policy.