Urban Residents' Perceptions of Environmental Impacts

This article examines urban residents' perceptions of environmental impacts in the city of Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. The study vies to contribute to knowledge concerning how citizens in Tennessee view tourism and its impact on the environment. A mail survey was administered to 400 registered voters. Factor analysis, Cramer's V statistical measures of association, chi-square tests, and Spearman correlation coefficients were employed for the analysis and interpretation of the data. Tests and associations support three hypotheses; residents' perceptions of the impact of tourism are influenced by employment status and short-term residency. Greater lengths of residency, age, and annual income do not influence residents' perceptions.     

A longitudinal ethnographic study of night‐freight pilots

This paper records the lived reality of night‐freight operations at a UK‐registered airline. Observations were made over an 18‐month period. The paper answers calls for more research into the working and living conditions of night‐freight pilots. Pilots perceived numerous issues. These included cultural cleavage, terms and conditions, roster instability and the impact of night flying on physical and psychological health. Some issues (volatile rosters and deep first nights, for example) had the potential to increase operational risk. Two sub‐cultures were identified within the airline: the quality‐of‐working‐life sub‐culture and competitiveness and corporate survival sub‐culture. A ‘paradox of control’ was observed. While pilots controlled the aircraft in flight, their patterns and conditions of work were decided by roster managers, crewing officers and other office‐based technocrats. Technocrats’ directive power was resented by some pilots. Some claimed that technocrats did not understand the lived reality of the line, resulting in ‘uninformed’ decisions that augmented operational risk. The study involved a single airline. No claims are made for the generalisability of the findings. More studies are required.     

Regional productivity variation and the impact of public capital stock: an analysis with spatial interaction,with reference to Spain

In this article, we examine whether variations in the level of public capital across Spain's Provinces affected productivity levels over the period 1996 to 2005. The analysis is motivated by contemporary urban economics theory, involving a production function for the competitive sector of the economy (‘industry’) which includes the level of composite services derived from ‘service’ firms under monopolistic competition. The outcome is potentially increasing returns to scale resulting from pecuniary externalities deriving from internal increasing returns in the monopolistic competition sector. We extend the production function by also making (log) labour efficiency a function of (log) total public capital stock and (log) human capital stock, leading to a simple and empirically tractable reduced form linking productivity level to density of employment, human capital and public capital stock. The model is further extended to include technological externalities or spillovers across provinces. Using panel data methodology, we find significant elasticities for total capital stock and for human capital stock, and a significant impact for employment density. The finding that the effect of public capital is significantly different from zero, indicating that it has a direct effect even after controlling for employment density, is contrary to some of the earlier research findings which leave the question of the impact of public capital unresolved.     

Social mobility and inequality in urban China: understanding the role of intergenerational transmission of education

China’s rapid economic growth since the late 1980s has been accompanied by great economic and social transformations, which have resulted in a sharp increase in income inequality. This article contributes to the literature of social mobility in China by examining the impact of parental education on the education of their children. Using the 1990 and 2000 Chinese Population Censuses, we employ nonparametric estimation strategies to provide a systematic investigation of intergenerational transmission of education in urban China. We find evidence of increasing parents–children educational correlations. Our results raise concerns regarding economic inequality in urban China as high intergenerational persistence of education is expected to be a barrier to equal opportunities in children’s education attainments and their future labour market outcomes.     

The changing employment situation in some cities with living wage ordinances

More than 120 municipalities (cities, towns, and counties) have introduced living wage ordinances. These laws mandate that certain employers in their jurisdiction pay their workers wages that are above federal and state minimum levels. The opponents of these laws argue that these ordinances have adverse impacts on local labor markets. This study considers rates of growth of employment and unemployment trends in a sample of these cities before and after they introduced their living wage ordinances. It finds that while a few cities have had negative labor market experiences after introducing their living wage law these cities represent the exception rather than the rule.     

以城乡互动推进就地就近城镇化发展分析

“伪城镇化”、“半城镇化”现象的背后是中国城乡二元经济“一元化”过程中的“农民进城”与城市吸融功能不足的矛盾、“小城镇化浪潮”与农村城镇化的发展潜力不足的矛盾。结合中国国情的高质量城镇化发展模式在于守地式的就近就地城镇化发展,而守地式发展的关键在于农村产业发展,农村产业的发展又依赖于城乡市场与产业的互动。这需要发展立足农村的“产供销一体化”大型商贸企业,破解农村市场劳动力流转、土地流转、融资与技术及管理水平低下问题,构建城乡产业互动的交换利益基础,优化城乡产业体系配套和互补的对接方式,提升城乡产业合作的分工层次。     

中心镇推进城乡一体化的时空演进模式研究:理论与实证

重点发展大城市和农村剩余劳动力向城市转移的传统城市化道路越来越受到内外发展环境的制约而困难重重,改革与发展中心镇日益成为破除城乡二元结构和推进城乡一体化的重要路径.在充分阐述中心镇作为城乡一体化战略节点的内涵及其战略意义的基础上,文章理论和实证地研究了中心镇推进城乡一体化的阶段性特征和空间模式化特征.研究发现,中心镇推进城乡一体化主要经历了初始阶段、成长阶段及成熟阶段三个发展时期,在不同的发展阶段,中心镇自身的产业结构、基础设施发展水平以及政府政策重点与导向等各不相同,中心镇推进城乡一体化发展具有十分明显的阶段性特征.同时,从生产力空间布局形态来看,推进城乡一体化的中心镇空间模式主要包括了产业平台集散驱动型和城镇功能优化带动型两种.最后,提出了分阶段分层次的中心镇改革发展政策建议.     

城市居民游憩行为时空特征调查研究——以南京为例

满足市民利用闲暇时间放松身心的游憩需求,不仅仅是市民个人的问题,更关系到城市发展问题。从南京市民角度看,参与游憩的欲望与程度取决于市民个体的身体及收入状况、游憩地类型、距离因素等;从时空特征角度看,市民游憩时间与闲暇时间呈正相关,而在空间上则表现出距离衰减规律;从游憩地条件看,游憩设施吸引力有限、消费太高、服务有待完善、交通不够便捷等问题已成为市民参与游憩的障碍。政府部门应加强对市民游憩观念的引导,更应加大投入力度,强化基础设施及游憩功能建设,着力解决诸如公共交通、环境保护等问题,推进游憩资源整合,不断完善游憩服务与产品,提升公共服务能力。     

Retail stores as brands: performances,theatre and space

The scholars of Consumer Culture Theory studies as well as practitioners have recognised the potential power of spatial design in stores in constructing and communicating retail brands. Retail space and the aesthetic structuring of a range of expressive artefacts have become the stage on which shop attendants perform. This paper focuses on how management and shop attendants of Dutch menswear fashion house Oger communicate and construct the Oger brand, with a special focus on the spatial settings of the retail store. This study shows how the management carefully combines elements generally found in Italian ateliers, English gentlemen's clubs and boardrooms. The symbolic message behind the spatial design of the Oger flagship store is that of human quest for wealth and fame removed from the everyday life. In addition to this earlier observed interplay between design, display and consumption processes, this study indicates the important role of shop attendants in constructing and communicating retail brands. By forging links with organisation studies, we show how retail management carefully designed, managed and orchestrated retail space, objects and shop attendants’ roles to construct and communicate the Oger brand. The selling of products through performances in designed theatres connects organisation and economic and aesthetic realms. Finally, the paper introduces “internal design proxemics” as an extra analytical concept of spatial settings.     

Three poems on markets and consumption

This account reflects an effort to address the crisis of representation emerging from some of my recent fieldwork on pilgrimage in the postmodern era. Bracketed by the relatively dispassionate field note and the reasonably narcissistic journal entry, each of these particular poems is a liminal playground for the contest between introspection and exteroception. In these poems, I exploit the coincidence of the ethnographic and lyric moment to examine an anthropologist’s engagement with his craft. They address the experience of researcher ambivalence – in this case, the uncomfortable unwillingness to suspend the voice of judgment – occasioned by prolonged immersion in spectacular venues. Neither autoethnographic nor reflexive in any formal sense, these poems invite the reader to participate in the mixed emotions of a persona locked in the embrace of consumer culture, where to resist is to accommodate, and to accommodate, resist. The sites represented in the poems are, respectively, the flagship brand store American Girl Place, the Caribbean port of call Costa Maya, and the temporary autonomous zone of the Burning Man festival.