Does the spatial representation affect criteria weights in environmental decision-making? Insights from a behavioral experiment

The need and interest to consider cognitive and motivational biases has been recognized in different disciplines (e.g. economics, decision theory, risk analysis) and has recently reached environmental decision-making. Within this domain, the intrinsic presence of a spatial dimension of both alternatives and criteria calls for the use of maps throughout the decision-making process to properly represent the spatial distribution of the features under analysis. This makes spatial Multi Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) a particularly interesting domain to explore new dimensions of cognitive biases. This study proposes a behavioral experiment aimed at discovering to what extent the spatial visualization (i.e. maps) of criteria versus the non-spatial one (i.e. tables) can bias the weight elicitation phase of a spatial MCDA process. The experiment simulates a very common analysis in environmental and land use planning: land suitability analysis. Our findings show that there are significant consequences on how important we perceive a certain criterion to be, depending on whether it is represented as a map or as a table among a mix of maps and tables. Indeed, the map representation of the same criterion leads to higher weights attributed to that criterion compared to the table representation. Visualizing the same information as a map or as a table, although technically equivalent, is thus not psychologically equivalent for Decision Makers. The results of this experiment are expected to have implications for spatial decision-making processes, by generating better awareness on the impacts of map-mediated land suitability analysis.     

The Familiar Face of the State: Affect,Emotion and Citizen Entitlements in Dehradun,India

Municipal Councillors (MCs) are the ‘familiar face of the state’ in Dehradun, India: the first port of call for citizens seeking to claim entitlements from the state. The way MCs respond to the requests of their constituents is a major factor in the uneven distribution of government welfare and services. This article seeks to contribute to understandings of citizen entitlements by drawing attention to the role of affect and emotion in shaping the interactions between MCs and voters. I examine the ways citizens consciously or unconsciously engender emotions and affective responses, and the effect these have in mobilizing MCs. Attention to the, at times, involuntary nature of these responses suggests a need to go beyond the instrumental and calculating motivations of municipal councillors, to consider the way they are compelled and animated to meet the demands of some citizens, but not of others. The capacity to affect, and the ways one is affected, are tied to the social identities and self-making projects of both the MC and the voter, resulting in an uneven (mal)distribution of state resources. A focus on affective configurations in urban governance thereby reveals heretofore overlooked determinants of unequal access to urban resources and services.     

Legal evolution of the concept of ‘home base’ for the purpose of determining labour and social security law applicable to European aircrew members

This paper has a dual aim: (1) to outline the legal evolution of the ‘home base’ concept and (2) to map the role of this concept in determining the law applicable (both employment law and social security law) to employment contracts of European aircrew members. An in-depth analysis of the relevant portions of (1) Reg. (EEC) No 3922/91, (2) Reg. (EU) No 465/2012, (3) Reg. (EU) No 83/2014, (4) EASA's 2014 Certification Specifications, and (5) the European Court of Justice's preliminary ruling on joined cases C-168/16 and C-169/16 is conducted.What emerges is that (1) the ‘home base’ definition, due to its subjectivity, has traditionally been susceptible to multiple interpretations and (2) due to regulatory ambiguity, the use of ‘home base’ to identify the labour laws applicable to airline workers has for a long time been inconsistent, ranging from one extreme (being considered a key element for this purpose) to the other (being assigned a secondary role). It was only in the last few years that some improvements were made, with Reg. (EU) No 465/2012 first and the European Court of Justice's 2017 preliminary ruling then, clarifying that the ‘home base’ concept must be assigned a central role in the determination of the law (both social security law and employment law) applicable to employment contracts in the aviation industry.     

城市供水的二次污染原因及治理

自来水经过一定的处理工艺,然后经过配送管网输送至各户。水在配送管网中流动的过程中,往往会受到管网、供水管道及附属设备的影响,造成二次污染。因此,要切实做好城市供水二次污染的防治工作,提高人们的生活质量。基于此,本文提出了城市供水二次污染的几点原因和一般性的治理对策。     

Placing the Urban Village: A Spatial Perspective on the Development Process of Urban Villages in Contemporary China

The rapid urbanization of China since the mid‐1980s has led to the development of a new spatial category, the urban village (chengzhongcun). The dominant neoliberal urban development regime approaches urban villages as a social, spatial, economic and political problem, and as targets for aggressive redevelopment and eradication policies. In this article, I propose a spatial perspective that makes use of several theoretical ‘anchors' to analyze the influence of urban village spatiality on its development process and to explore alternatives to the dominant redevelopment model. I begin by examining the spatial conceptualization of the urban village as a non‐place, arguing that this spatial reading undergirds the redevelopment‐by‐demolition model and tends to obscure alternative conceptualizations. I then move on to propose three alternative readings of urban village space, examining it as an everyday space, a liminal space and a neighborhood. Combining these three readings with the ‘non‐place' conceptualization provides a nuanced understanding of urban villages' unique spatial attributes and social roles, by evoking spatial and social processes that take place in most urban villages across China. Taken together, these spatial readings challenge the social and spatial rigidity of dominant representations of urban villages and supply a much‐needed spatially based conceptual framework that can be used to develop new urban planning models.     

国内学界“全球公域”研究综述

随着全球化的纵深发展,全球公域开始成为学界新的研究热点。美国是新一轮全球公域研究的源地,而我国的全球公域研究仍处于起步阶段,但已经在环境和法律维度及战略和安全维度取得不少有益的成果。本文着重对国内学术界在全球公域问题的研究进行回顾和梳理,在此基础上总结已有研究的特点,提出简要评价和展望,以期推动该领域研究的深化和不断发展。     

“教育论文”不能逾越的三条边界

论文的标准有很多,但至少要有完整的题录和文后参考文献,及正文的结构三条边界。中小学教师要掌握这三条边界。从辅导学生写论文的角度,更要掌握它们了。     

党员干部腐败的文化原因探析

腐败作为一种社会现象已经上升为导致亡党亡国的重要问题。党员队伍不断地被侵蚀直至灭亡已经不再是危言耸听。然而,腐败作为社会现象,同样也是文化的集中反映。故文章通过从文化角度中的"一把手"封建文化、官本位文化、官系圈文化以及党员思想建设文化四个方面分析了党员干部腐败原因,以便更好地针对党员干部腐败问题采取措施,防患于未然。     

Urban Warfare Ecology: A Study of Water Supply in Basrah

This article assesses the impact of armed conflict on the drinking water service of Basrah from 1978 to 2013 through an ‘urban warfare ecology’ lens in order to draw out the implications for relief programming and relevance to urban studies. It interprets an extensive range of unpublished literature through a frame that incorporates the accumulation of direct and indirect impacts upon the hardware, consumables and people upon which urban services rely. The analysis attributes a step‐wise decline in service quality to the lack of water treatment chemicals, lack of spare parts, and, primarily, an extended ‘brain‐drain’ of qualified water service staff. The service is found to have been vulnerable to dependence upon foreign parts and people, ‘vicious cycles’ of impact, and the politics of aid and of reconstruction. It follows that practitioners and donors eschew ideas of relief–rehabilitation–development (RRD) for an appreciation of the needs particular to complex urban warfare biospheres, where armed conflict and sanctions permeate all aspects of service provision through altered biological and social processes. The urban warfare ecology lens is found to be a useful complement to ‘infrastructural warfare’ research, suggesting the study of protracted armed conflict upon all aspects of urban life be both deepened technically and broadened to other cases.