Search

There are good reasons to expect that attributes of local public finance may impact urban land use and, specifically, sprawl. A detailed and novel investigation of U.S. metropolitan areas published in 20061 provides substantial insights into the causes of sprawl, but it overlooks the main characteristics of local public finance (taxes and user charges). Using a subset of the data matched to city public finance data, a parallel analysis gives insight into the impacts of local public finance on sprawl. There is evidence that greater reliance on local property taxes reduces sprawl. The evidence that user charges (primarily for water, sewerage and solid waste services) could have a similar effect is weak but suggestive. The combined effects of a high reliance on property taxes and user charges (compared to typical levels) might reduce sprawl by as much as one-third. For Calgary and Edmonton, this means that the current heavy reliance on property taxes in both cities reduces sprawl and that the adoption of alternative local taxes--that reduce reliance on property taxes--is expected to increase sprawl. Further analysis of the impacts of local public finance on urban sprawl is warranted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of autonomous vehicles on the spatial size of cities remains ambiguous, as the future is highly uncertain. This paper uses counterfactual analysis techniques to examine the effects of autonomous vehicles on urban expansion for metropolitan areas in the United States if autonomous vehicles had been introduced before. We argue that distance cost and congestion cost, which are the two components of transportation cost with different effects on urban expansion, should be addressed in autonomous vehicle research. By coupling historical data with hypothetical scenarios of introducing autonomous vehicles to cities, we find that urban expansion, rather than urban densification, would have been the dominant effect if autonomous vehicles had been introduced into cities. The finding indicates that if autonomous vehicles are widely adopted in the future, they are likely to have similar, or even larger, effects on future urban expansion than in the counterfactual past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have written descriptively about the relationship between suburbanization and central city decline. However, research has not produced systematic, quantitative estimates of the relationships between the components of suburbanization and vacancy—generally or amid urban decline. Such estimates are required to design effective policies that could protect against the social inequalities associated with such development patterns. This paper applies an economic framework of suburbanization and vacancy to 99 urbanized areas in the United States to estimate the impact on central city residential vacancy from 2013 to 2019. The results support the central hypothesis, that regional over‐building contributes to central city vacancy, and that this impact is significantly magnified by the context of decline. Results show regional over‐building causes central city vacancy in Shrinking Cities at 9.6 times the effect observed in other Principal Cities. Ameliorating factors vary between Shrinking and Non‐Shrinking contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article takes the concept of gated communities to represent a special form of securitised housing, developed in the United States in the 20th century and popularised around the world in later years, and examines it as such. The neo-liberal society is an especially fertile ground for the development of this concept due to the unequal distribution of wealth, growing social stratification, poverty and segregation. Often, the surrounding roads are privatised and access to public areas is restricted for the purposes of these settlements, which leaves entire complexes within cities inaccessible to the majority of citizens. All these processes are in conflict with the democratic concept of the open city and the model of mixed housing, nurtured in the welfare state. The segregation of citizens, and their marginalisation and displacement (gentrification), along with the endangerment and privatisation of public spaces significantly reduce the democratic capacity of urban communities. The main concern of this research is the examination of the reasons which contribute to the expansion of gated communities, and the effects they have on the spirit of the urban community (alienation) and the democratic capacities of cities. The aim of the paper is to examine the notion of gated communities on a sample of cities in the Anglosphere (USA, Canada, New Zealand), and to analyse their specific effects. The analysis of the existing research and case studies concerning gated communities in the world often consists of the use of statistical methods, regulatory change analyses, and the interviews and surveys of tenants, managers, politicians and officials. The comparative method, used in this paper, focuses on the similarities and differences of gated communities in different countries, which enabled us to draw conclusions on better housing and urban development policies (synthesis). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Count data occur widely in many bio-surveillance and healthcare applications, e.g. the numbers of new patients of different types of infectious diseases from different cities/counties/states repeatedly over time, say, daily/weekly/monthly. For this type of count data, one important task is the quick detection and localization of hot-spots in terms of unusual infectious rates so that we can respond appropriately. In this paper, we develop a method called Poisson assisted Smooth Sparse Tensor Decomposition (PoSSTenD), which not only detect when hot-spots occur but also localize where hot-spots occur. The main idea of our proposed PoSSTenD method is articulated as follows. First, we represent the observed count data as a three-dimensional tensor including (1) a spatial dimension for location patterns, e.g. different cities/countries/states; (2) a temporal domain for time patterns, e.g. daily/weekly/monthly; (3) a categorical dimension for different types of data sources, e.g. different types of diseases. Second, we fit this tensor into a Poisson regression model, and then we further decompose the infectious rate into two components: smooth global trend and local hot-spots. Third, we detect when hot-spots occur by building a cumulative sum (CUSUM) control chart and localize where hot-spots occur by their LASSO-type sparse estimation. The usefulness of our proposed methodology is validated through numerical simulation studies and a real-world dataset, which records the annual number of 10 different infectious diseases from 1993 to 2018 for 49 mainland states in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historic Sanborn fire insurance maps of cities in the United States are utilized extensively for comprehending past built environments and evaluating potential environmental risks. While previous research in the spatial humanities has explored diverse contemporary applications for these maps, there has been limited attention devoted to the evolution of Sanborn fire insurance maps over their nearly century-long production history. This study delves into the components of fire insurance maps produced by the Sanborn Map Company, shedding light on their varying formats, scales, and annotations, discussing how they have changed over time. The paper also examines the map correction process and identifies potential alternative sources for accessing fire insurance maps. Additionally, the diverse nature of these maps as source materials is contemplated, emphasizing the valuable insights that can be gained by critically analyzing the construction of Sanborn fire insurance maps. Given the significant reliance of numerous spatial humanities projects on these historic maps, particularly those focused on urban areas, this paper provides important contextualization of this source of geospatial information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A longstanding line of research in urban studies explores how cities can be understood through their appearance. However, what remains unclear is to what extent urban dwellers' everyday life can be explained by the visual clues of the urban environment. In this paper, we address this question by applying a computer vision model to 27 million street view images across 80 counties in the United States. Then, we use the spatial distribution of notable urban features identified through the street view images, such as street furniture, sidewalks, building façades, and vegetation, to predict the socioeconomic profiles of their immediate neighborhood. Our results show that these urban features alone can account for up to 83% of the variance in people's travel behavior, 62% in poverty status, 64% in crime, and 68% in health behaviors. The results outperform models based on points of interest (POI), population, and other demographic data alone. Moreover, incorporating urban features captured from street view images can improve the explanatory power of these other methods by 5% to 25%. We propose "urban visual intelligence" as a process to uncover hidden city profiles, infer, and synthesize urban information with computer vision and street view images. This study serves as a foundation for future urban research interested in this process and understanding the role of visual aspects of the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Arts-based community development practices have received newfound prominence over the past decade under the auspices of "creative placemaking." In 2010, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) published a white paper titled "Creative Placemaking" and launched a new granting program focused on this practice called Our Town. Today, creative placemaking is burgeoning yet its precise definition remains fuzzy. This article uses content analysis to systematically analyze the 569 Our Town grants awarded by the NEA since the program's inception to inductively define creative placemaking based on the values embedded into project proposals, comparing these values with the NEA's stated Our Town goals. I find that creative placemaking, at least as funded in the U.S. through Our Town, can be defined as public or community-based art that includes values of place-specificity, collaboration, and participation, and which results in three forms of community development outcomes: economic development, bolstering social capital and participation, and improved cultural infrastructure. As creative placemaking evolves, equity is increasingly a concern, shifting focus toward the latter two outcomes as more measurable and desirable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we investigate and analyze the elevation of localized practices of migrant belonging, social inclusion and refuge in U.S. cities during the COVID-19 pandemic using the lens of citizenship rights and evolution as proposed by T.H. Marshall. While Marshall's focus was national, we argue that this framework can be adjusted to analyze practices of substantive urban citizenship. Our study draws on interviews conducted during 2021 with local government officials as well as leaders of local immigrant-serving NGOs in 16 U.S. cities. We analyze the successes and failures of local governments as well as civil society organizations in treating migrants within their jurisdictions as 'citizens' who belong regardless of their legal status. We pay particular attention to the inter- and multiscalar practices of local, state, and national politics and policies in responding to the immediate needs of non-citizen migrants. The study concludes that Marshall's model has merit but the order he proposed is switched, so that social citizenship is prioritized. The study also emphasizes the importance of strengthening institutional coalitions, especially with migrant organizations in cities. These diverse and expanded partnerships underscore the expansion of citizenship-like practices in many jurisdictions for migrants during the pandemic. • Covid-19 cities enhanced substantive citizenship among vulnerable populations of immigrants and refugees during COVID-19. • Coalitions between civil society and local governments assisted denizens not covered by federal stimulus funds. • In a reserval of Marshall's model of citizenship rights, we found that social citizenship was prioritized during COVID-19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to analyze how the associations of built environment and usage of urban space changed due to the social restrictions during COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. A total of 57,185 census block groups (CBGs) in 459 cities were analyzed. Built environment elements including road network, green space, and land use associated with usage of urban space (measured by over two billion mobile phone data) before/during COVID-19 were evaluated at both CBG and city level. Our results showed drastic decreases of urban space usage, ranging from 0.25 % to 76.35 %, among cities during COVID-19 social restriction. Specifically, CBG-level road length-node ratio, road intersection index and land use densities contributed less to usage of urban space during COVID-19. Meanwhile, the heterogeneity of city-level road network, commercial, public places, as well as hospitals and health cares exhibited stronger relationship with usage of urban space. The heterogeneity of green space at both CBG and city level showed less associations with usage of urban space during COVID-19. The discrepancies of the built environment effects on usage of urban space between CBG and city level suggest the importance of varying-scale analysis. Future interventions should consider space usages and health inequality from a space-varying perspective for post-pandemic period. • The changing associations of built environment with usage of urban space during COVID-19 were investigated • The changing associations were evaluated based on the census-block-group (CBG) level and city level in 459 U.S. cities • CBG-level road complexity and urban facility density contributed less on the usage of urban space during social restriction • City-level built environment exhibited stronger relationship with usage of urban space during social restriction [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the United States, industrial compounds are routinely transported by rail in pressurized vessels, often near urban areas. A rupture of a vessel, for example due to a derailment, can result in the rapid release of a liquid-aerosol-gas mixture. The health consequences of such a release, especially close to population centers, are not well understood. To address this question, a series of controlled experimental releases of pressurized chlorine (Cl 2) was conducted at the Dugway Proving Ground (Dugway, Utah). Each trial consisted of the sudden breach of a tank containing at least 4,500 kg (kg) of pressurized liquid Cl 2. In this paper, we report on measured Cl 2 concentrations in three test structures downwind of the release. Based on these data, we estimate the indoor-outdoor exchange, transport through a multi-room structure, and the first-order loss rate due to reaction or sorption. This loss rate is particularly important for consequence assessment. For example, in a mobile office with a ventilation rate of about three air changes per hour, the reaction loss rate was approximately 2.5 h−1. This accounts for a nearly 20 percent reduction in toxic load to indoor occupants. Finally, the paper discusses the modeling and analysis of a typical urban hazard assessment. • In 2015 and 2016, a series of controlled release experiments of pressurized chlorine (Cl 2) was conducted. • An experiment consisted of the sudden breaching of a tank containing greater than 4,500 kg (kg) of pressurized liquid Cl 2. • The measurement of the Cl 2 plume's transport through an array of downwind structures. • This paper reports the results of an experiment that is unlikely to be conducted often. • The reaction between the gas and indoor surfaces is important for hazard and consequence assessment. • The current study found that total Cl 2 gas loss was faster than the trailer's air change rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transportation and mobility landscape has changed at exponential rates in recent years. This is particularly evident in the spread and use of micromobility, primarily via e-scooters, in the United States. It is widely agreed that municipalities need to regulate the deployment of this new form of mobility to capture some of the benefits that these devices provide but also mitigate the impact and risks associated with their use. This paper evaluates commercial scooter deployment within municipalities in the United States, and seeks to identify policy trends for regulating e-scooters. As many communities do not have policies in place, the study seeks to benchmark and develop a policy dialogue addressing e-scooter use and deployment. The study focuses on three specific policy strategies cities are implementing: the use of pilot programs; vendor limits or caps; and the inclusion of equity policy. The study finds that tension between these policies has the potential to constrain or accelerate the market adoption of scooters and that very few communities are designing and adopting environment strategies to regulate scooter use. These policy dialogues are worth exploration as cities accelerate trends toward micromobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the cultural mediation of short-term rental (STR) platforms in US cities. While many STR advocates emphasize 'authentic' cultural experiences and the support of local economies, less obvious are the ways that STRs like Airbnb can erode communities by transforming homes into hotels and neighbours into strangers. STR platforms have significantly disrupted many communities through increased gentrification, resident displacement, racial discrimination, and reduced city tax bases for the provision of services. As with all technological systems, STR platforms embody a politics that shapes human activities and relations. The platforms, in other words, present a set of scripts for the organization of practices and the configuration of space, tending, by design, toward impersonal commercial exchange and conceptions of neighbourhoods as resources for such exchange. I argue that as public infrastructures are absorbed into and recoded as platforms, the emerging ensemble normalizes market- over rights-based orientations to city spaces and services. The process supports the formation of platform cultures that cast precarious gig-economy relations as necessary and enabling while obscuring the social inequalities and human suffering engendered by those arrangements. In attending to the mediation of STRs by communities and to contestations over platform meanings, politics and power relations become visible, allowing for the problematization of destructive platform configurations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Post-earthquake fire (PEF) ignition events constitute a secondary consequence of an earthquake and may result in the loss of life and substantial property damage, especially in urban areas where the potential for fire spread and conflagration exists. These secondary hazards can cause severe structural and non-structural damage, potentially more significant damage than the direct damage caused by the initial earthquake, and can lead to catastrophic structural failures, devastating economic losses, and casualties. To manage the impact of PEF in urban areas, it is important to identify the potential ignition sources and quantify the vulnerabilities of these ignition sources as a result of earthquake-induced structural damage. The results of such analyses can be used to offer resiliency improvement investments and mitigation strategies in urban areas located in seismically active regions. Most of the previous PEF studies are data-driven, utilizing ignitions reported following recent earthquakes. However, in areas for which historical PEF data are not available, such as the Midwestern United States, a different methodology for developing a PEF model is needed. This paper describes an analytical model for quantifying the vulnerabilities of residential buildings to PEF by estimating the failure of ignition sources upon a probable seismic event. The underlying concept in developing the method is that (1) ignition sources in residential buildings remain unchanged before and after an earthquake, and (2) the total probability of PEF occurrence can be estimated by adjusting the probabilistic fire occurrence data for normal conditions (everyday operation of ignition sources) to account for the effect of the earthquake. This paper's contribution to state of the art is in developing a new framework for estimating the probability of PEF for areas in which historical PEF data is unavailable. The developed framework uses the likelihood of ignition occurrence during normal condition as a baseline; this baseline is then adjusted using certain key parameters to capture spatial characteristics, ignitability, and potential seismic intensity of the study area to estimate the probability of PEF as a function of projected earthquake characteristics. The model was tested for St. Louis City as a populated area with potential future earthquake hazard because of its proximity to the New Madrid Fault zone. Using the National Fire Incident Reporting System dataset, the frequency of normal condition ignitions was determined as 1.97E−03 ignition per unit per year. Using the proposed PEF model considering PEFs caused by damage to drift and acceleration sensitive equipment and human actions, the projected frequency of PEF was estimated between 2.79E−06 and 2.81E−06 ignitions per household per year. Using this model, and the average number of households between 2010 to 2015, 175,854 households, it was estimated that in the next 50 years, approximately 25 households would experience fires related to probable earthquake events in St. Louis City. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the focus on urban design projects for key urban areas, this paper reviews the evolution and practice of urban design in the United States, and analyzes two different development paths of urban design in China. By comparing specific urban design projects, it expounds similarities and differences between detailed control planning and urban design, hence putting forward recommendations for urban design implementation in terms of statutory status, implementation rules, and team building. The paper intends to clarify the stratified relationship between urban and rural planning and urban design, so as to avoid needless repetition and overlap of design, thereby enhancing the healthy development of the urban design discipline in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on China’s latest national railway network planning proposal, the connectivity and accessibility indices of China’s high-speed railway network (CHSRN) in different time periods are computed to evaluate the implications of high-speed rail (HSR) for Chinese cities. An overall index for measuring the connectivity-accessibility of cities on the HSR network is proposed based on three indicators: (a) the Beta index, to reflect the connectivity of the HSR, (b) the number of reachable counties by HSR within the 500-km domain of a city, to reflect the location-based accessibility of the HSR, and (c) the population of the reachable places by HSR within the 500-km domain of a city, to reflect the potential-based accessibility of the HSR. Finally, the differences in the normalized connectivity-accessibility levels of different categories of cities are qualified to measure the impact of China’s future national HSR network on the potential development of cities. It is found that “Mid-to-Long-Term Railway Network Plan (Revised in 2016)”, if fully realized, would profoundly change the HSR connectivity/accessibility of different cities. Most notably, cities in the Yangtze River Delta would suffer the most whereas cities of the central and western regions would gain the most. This could potentially contribute to, or bring about new changes in, the socioeconomic landscapes in China. The methodological contribution of this paper is twofold. Firstly, an overall index to evaluate the comprehensive connectivity and accessibility levels of the HSR network is designed. Secondly, this paper investigates how to qualify the impact of the future HSR network on different tiers of cities in different time periods according to the change of the overall connectivity/accessibility index. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Entrepreneurship is often seen as the cure-all solution for poverty reduction. Proponents argue that it leads to job creation, higher incomes and lower poverty rates in the cities in which it occurs. Others argue that many entrepreneurs are actually creating low-productivity firms serving local markets. Yet, despite this debate, little research has considered the impact of entrepreneurship on poverty in cities. This paper addresses this gap using a panel of US cities for the period between 2005 and 2015. We hypothesize that the impact of entrepreneurship will depend on whether it is in tradeable sectors, so likely to have positive local multiplier effects, or non-tradeable sectors, which may saturate local markets. We find that entrepreneurship in tradeables reduces poverty and increases incomes for non-entrepreneurs, a result we confirm using an instrumental variable approach, taking the inheritance of entrepreneurial traits as the instruments. In contrast, while there are some economic benefits from non-tradeable entrepreneurship, we find these are not large enough to reduce poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how stories of everyday experiences in urban settings from around the world foster and sustain a community that seemingly transcends national borders. Given that both urban and online experiences are increasingly prevalent in modern life, surprisingly little attention is paid to how these experiences might foster a sense of community in an online setting. We use Facebook's Humans of New York (HONY) site, analyzing over 130,000 text comments, to explore this question. We apply content analysis and text mining techniques, using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) software and multidimensional scaling (MDS) to visualize their latent patterns. Integrating Chayko's theoretical model of "portable communities," we find evidence suggesting the existence of a shared social context, of positive interaction, empathy, and support, irrespective of national boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various institutional and cultural settings have shaped spatial planning systems with comparable features; however, such systems have been adapted to specific cultural, normative and spatial conditions. In line with the growing demand for international knowledge exchange in urban and regional planning, planning cultures have recently come into sharper focus. Moreover, it has become widely acknowledged that many cities in Europe and the USA have to deal with challenges posed by long-term demographic and economic changes. This also holds true for Japan. The objective of the research presented here is to comparatively investigate changes in planning cultures in view of shrinking cities in the USA, Germany and Japan. The findings will allow us to detect interdependencies between changes in planning cultures and societal changes in the wake of shrinkage, and finally to derive hypotheses for both the future-oriented development of shrinking cities, and the development of planning cultures based on the comparison of cultural settings. In this respect the paper concludes with the hypothesis that there might be planning cultures that are not framed by geographic entities (nations, regions, cities), but rather by topics along shrinking cities. This could offer insight into a new research sphere of 'topical planning cultures'. While lasting effects and successes of policies and strategies applied in shrinking cities remain to be seen, their influence on a broader knowledge exchange, contextualisation and innovation in the sphere of planning cultures is evident. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Food insecurity is associated with toxic stress and adverse long-term physical and mental health outcomes. It can be experienced chronically and also triggered or exacerbated by natural and human-made hazards that destabilize the food system. The Baltimore Food System Resilience Advisory Report was created to strengthen the resilience of the city's food system and improve short- and long-term food security. Recognizing food insecurity as a form of trauma, the report was developed using the principles of trauma-informed social policy. In the present paper, we examine how the report applied trauma-informed principles to policy development, discuss the challenges and benefits of using a trauma-informed approach, and provide recommendations for others seeking to create trauma-informed food policy.Design: Report recommendations were developed based on: semi-structured interviews with food system stakeholders; input from community members at outreach events; a literature review; Geographic Information System mapping; and other analyses. The present paper explores findings from the stakeholder interviews.Setting: Baltimore, Maryland, USA.Subjects: Baltimore food system stakeholders stratified by two informant categories: organizations focused on promoting food access (n 13) and community leaders (n 12).Results: Stakeholder interviews informed the recommendations included in the report and supported the idea that chronic and acute food insecurity are experienced as trauma in the Baltimore community.Conclusions: Applying a trauma-informed approach to the development of the Baltimore Food System Resilience Advisory Report contributed to policy recommendations that were community-informed and designed to lessen the traumatic impact of food insecurity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

“Shrinking cities” is a well-established term in academic discourse, describing cities in distress. Using the notion of spatial or territorial stigma (Wacquant, Slater, & Pereira, 2014), this paper raises the question of whether the term “shrinking cities” may be unbefitting to the policy discourse of planning and community development, at least in the American context. The necessity of considering this question is due not only to the traumatic legacy of American planned urban shrinkage and urban renewal in poor, minority communities, but also to the potential ramifications that the social construction of spatial stigma by journalists, politicians, planners and academics may have on these communities in the era of austerity urbanism. The vast symbolic power, due to the symbolic capital that specialists in symbolic production wield, gives reason to ponder whether ‘shrinking cities’ ‘urban shrinkage’ and cognate terms contribute to territorial stigmatization, since in the naming of social groups, cities, or regions to reveal a socio-spatial reality, such reality "begins to exist as such, for those who belong to it as well as for the others" (Bourdieu 1989: 23). Examining images and web content tagged to Detroit, this paper also explores the digital production of territorial stigma through the Internet's social imaginary and aims to raise awareness of the potential ramifications of shrinking city scholarship “for” or “against” austerity urbanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes an in-depth study of a grid-like American city using traditional and recent space syntax analytical methods. The case study is Lubbock, located in west Texas, and is characterized by its ‘almost’ ideal grid layout ‒ one that is perhaps prototypical of American conditions west of the Mississippi River. After extensively describing the city, it is examined by using topological, angular and metric radii of space syntax analysis. From these, comments are made on factors influencing its layout and functional distribution, their relationships to syntactic understandings and some recent development trends. Through this process, the paper addresses the debate regarding the appropriateness of space syntax in investigating grid conditions, and responds to an emerging syntax theorem: local structure is metric and global structure is topo-geometric. In addition, the historical development of grid-like cities in the US is described, an implicit comparison of three syntax methods is provided, and a renewed case of syntax applicability to grid-like cities is made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship between income inequality and property crime using Census block group data from three US cities: Nashville, TN, Portland, OR and Tucson, AZ. This paper is one of very few to examine this relationship at such a fine geographic level, which is typically less than one square mile in size. We find that income inequality across block groups plays a key role in determining the level of property crime. As the income gap with one’s poorest neighbouring block group widens, the level of property crime in the richer block group increases. Also, the poorest block group in an area tends to experience less property crime, holding all else constant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gender, although gaining attention, remains under‐researched in disaster risk reduction protocols and response and recovery efforts. This study examines women's experiences of two disasters in small towns in the United States, utilising qualitative interviews with residents of Granbury and West, Texas, during the first year of disaster recovery. Granbury was struck by an EF‐4 tornado on 15 May 2013, whereas an explosion occurred at a local fertiliser facility in West on 17 April 2013. The paper explores how women's experiences of inter‐gender power dynamics in decision‐making, the prioritisation of childcare, and women's participation in the community affect their post‐disaster recovery. Previous research highlights different forms of human response and recovery vis‐à‐vis 'natural' and technological disasters, with less attention paid to gender differences. The results point to the persistent, and similar, effect of gender stratification on women's experiences across different types of disasters in the US and the continued importance of gender‐sensitive disaster policies and programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Olympic boosters have increasingly encountered opposition among city residents about the idea of hosting the Games. Among factors leading cities to question the advisability of hosting the Olympics is the issue of cost, which has critically shaped public opinion in bid cities. Considerable attention has been given to public opinion among local residents in host Olympic cities in both the bid phase and the preparation phase. In contrast, this paper uses microdata from Game-time public opinion surveys and post-Games surveys gathered 1 year and 4 years after the Games in both Vancouver and London using models that control for the demographic characteristics of respondents in order to understand how local residents perceive the economic value and economic outcomes of hosting the Games. Experiencing the Games leads to attitudinal shifts about value but does not resolve the question of whether hosting the Olympics is an appropriate urban priority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on spatial mismatch often focuses on a mismatch within cities or local labour markets. This paper looks at the spatial mismatch between local labour markets. Using US data, we study the evolution of inter-regional mismatch between 1980 and 2010 and how this evolution varies across skill levels. Since we expect the spatial structure of supply and demand in the labour market to play a central role at this geographical level, we develop an extension of the spatial mismatch index, as the standard version does not take this spatial structure into account. Our results indicate that spatial mismatch has been increasing over the past decades, an increase that is largely attributable to spatial structure effects. The inter-regional spatial mismatch mainly affects low-skilled jobs and workers: our findings suggest that the degree of the spatial mismatch for low-skilled, relative to high-skilled workers, increased from a ratio of two in 1980 to almost four in 2010. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among Tibetan Buddhist tantric practitioners, including in the U.S., visualisation and incorporation of mandala deities imparts a parallel world against which conventional reality is considered impermanent and afflicted. Tantric adepts aspire through meditation, visualisation, and mind-training to dissolve normal selfhood and simultaneously embrace both 'conventional' and 'ultimate' reality. Ethics of compassion encourage efficient reengagement with conventional world dynamics rather than escaping them: the transcendental 'non-self' is perceived to inform effective and compassionate waking consciousness. Transformation of subjective ontology in tantric self-possession resonates with Foucault's late exploration of ethical self-relationship in alternative technologies of subjectivation and with Luhrmann's notion of transcendent spiritual absorption through skilled learning and internalisation. Incorporating recent developments in American Tibetan Buddhism, this paper draws upon information derived from a range of scholarly visits to rural and urban areas of the Himalayas, teachings by and practices with contemporary Tibetan lamas, including in the U.S., and historical and philosophical Buddhist literature and commentaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is urbanization good for the environment? This paper establishes a simple core–periphery model with monocentric cities, which comprises key forces that shape the structure and interrelation of cities to study the impact of the urban evolution on the environment. We focus on global warming and the potential of unfettered market forces to economize on emissions. The model parameters are chosen to match the dichotomy between average "large" and "small" cities in the urban geography of the United States, and the sectoral greenhouse gas emissions recorded for the United States. Based on numerical analyzes we find that a forced switch to a system with equally sized cities reduces total emissions. Second, any city driver which pronounces the asymmetry between the core and the periphery drives up emissions in the total city system, too, and the endogenous adjustment of the urban system accounts for the bulk of the change in emissions. Third, none of the city drivers gives rise to an urban environmental Kuznets curve according to our numerical simulations. Finally, the welfare‐maximizing allocation tends to involve dispersion of cities and the more so the higher is the marginal damage from pollution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: The aim of this paper to elaborate a cost-benefit analysis to estimate the convenience of investing in a new prison within San Pedro Cholula, a municipality located in the Method: We use a methodology proposed by Canavagh P. David and Mark A.R. Kleinman (1990) who develop a cost-benefit analysis of building a prison in the United States considering four concerning participants: government, families, enterprises and society. Results: Based on an Internal Rate of Return of 48% and a cost-benefit relation of 1.77, it turns out that the construction of a new facility is convenient and recommendable under the present tenets. Conclusion: Overpopulation and precarious conditions prevail in most Mexican prisons nowadays. Corruption, violence and permanent violations of human rights are business as usual and the Cholula prison is not the exception. That is why, a new facility, away from the urban area is not only necessary but urgent, in order to improve the general conditions of the local population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]