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The geographer's contribution to the study of religious phenomena is of special importance under circumstances in which scholars representing various disciplines tend to make generalizations based on a few, possibly nonrepresentative examples. The understanding of contemporary Western European pilgrimage is currently clouded by lack of generally available data on continental shrines and a tendency toward overreliance on Irish cases without adequate consideration of the highly atypical nature of the Irish pilgrimage tradition. This paper, grounded in data on 5,130 currently active Roman Catholic shrines in Western Europe, provides a cultural-historical explanation for the uniqueness of Irish pilgrimage and analyzes the major structural differences between Irish pilgrimage traditions and those found elsewhere in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most cities are influenced by those cultures which they serve and represent. At the same time, the cultures are influenced by their respective cities. This mutual relationship among cities and cultures constitutes a complex of processes of functional interrelationships. The geographic approach to these processes leads to the delimitation of twelve major world-regions and several sub-regions that are characterized by the areally varying processes associating cities and cultures. A system of world-regions of this nature is proposed in the present paper. The proposed system places every city of the world into a hierarchy of functional regions, far beyond the city's own hinterland. Every city is then visualized as a molder and reflector of its cultural environment. In addition, the following implications of such a regional system on the field of urban geography are discussed. First, the urban geographer is able to contribute to regional studies by considering the influence the cities have upon a given region. Secondly, the urban geographer adds another aspect to the research on any city by purposely studying the city as the expression of the surrounding cultural realm. Thirdly, the proposed regions are a tool for systematic and comparative study on the regional variation of cities from one culture-region to another.

Few studies have undertaken rigorous comparative analyses of levels of ethnic residential segregation across two or more countries. Using data for the latest available censuses (2000–2001) and a bespoke methodology for such comparative work, this article analyzes levels of segregation across the urban systems of five major immigrant-receiving, English-speaking countries: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America. After describing the levels of segregation in each, the article tests a model based on generic factors that should influence segregation levels in all five countries and then evaluates—for the urban population as a whole, for the “charter group” in each society, and for various ethnic minority groups—whether there are also significant country-specific variations in segregation levels. The findings show common factors influencing segregation levels in all five countries: notably the size of the group being considered as a percentage of the urban total, but also urban size and urban ethnic diversity, plus country-specific variations that cannot be attributed to these generic factors. In general there is less segregation in Australia and New Zealand than in the other three countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]