Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space

Since the late 1980s there has been considerable interest in the intrametropolitan location of economic activity. A growing number of studies examine in detail the spatial structure of particular metropolitan areas, or present comparisons at a relatively aggregated spatial and sectoral level. From these studies, certain authors have deduced a general pattern of metropolitan spatial development—one involving the suburbanisation of economic activity and the weakening of the central business district. The scarcity of comparable data covering different cities renders these generalisations somewhat tentative, however. In this paper we use a unique database to compare the spatial structures, and their evolution over time, for the four largest Canadian metropolitan areas: Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, and Ottawa – Hull. These data allow highly disaggregated spatial (census-tract level) and sectoral (thirty economic sectors) analyses. The results, which illustrate the existence of three distinct patterns of development amongst these four metropolitan areas, call into question the existence of a single model. In doing so they also raise a series of questions regarding possible explanations for these differences.

The debate over the changing role and nature of the national state during the current period of volatile economic globalisation has increasingly centred on the extent to which the nation-state can control the forces of economic globalisation through domestic regulation and internationalising its activities while at the same time experiencing increasing challenges to its authority from the rise of various localised forms of state power. In general these debates have taken place within the context of states that are dominantly market economies and are highly integrated into the international system. In this paper we examine the issues of resistance to globalisation and the decomposition of the central state in the context of Vietnam. It is argued that here, as in the PRC (Peoples Republic of China), the development of elements of the market economy and integration into the global system are taking place under the auspices of a still centrally planned, single-party state, which continues to affirm its commitment to state control over the economy. It is proposed that although this has enabled a considerable measure of control to be exerted over the forces of economic globalisation, the processes of reform and related economic growth and participation in the global economy are undermining the authority of the central state. This is increasingly reducing the effectiveness of the central Vietnamese state as power shifts to more local structures.

Marriage and marriage migration are often downplayed in the migration literature. The role of location in the decisionmaking underlying marriage migration, and the relations between marriage and labor migration, are little understood. Research that focuses on international marriages and on Western or capitalist economies has highlighted marriage as a strategy, but little attention is given to domestic marriage migration and to socialist and transitional economies. In this paper, through a field study of two villages in western Guangdong, China, and analysis of quantitative and qualitative data from that study, we wish to advance two arguments. First, we argue that changes in the spatial economy have reinforced the importance of location in the matching and trade-off processes that lead to marriage migration. Evidence of spatial hypergamy across long distance supports the notion that marriage is a means for peasant women to move to more favorable locations. Second, we show that increased opportunities for labor migration—a product of economic transition—have enlarged peasants' marriage market and at the same time promoted division of labor within marriage. The findings underscore household and individual strategies in response to macrolevel constraints and opportunities, the centrality of marriage for understanding migration, and the relations between marriage and labor migration.

Multiobjective site-search problems are a class of decision problems that have geographical components and multiple, often conflicting, objectives; this kind of problem is often encountered and is technically difficult to solve. In this paper we describe an evolutionary algorithm (EA) based approach that can be used to address such problems. We first describe the general design of EAs that can be used to generate alternatives that are optimal or close to optimal with respect to multiple criteria. Then we define the problem addressed in this research and discuss how the EA was designed to solve it. In this procedure, called MOEA/Site, a solution (that is, a site) is encoded by using a graph representation that is operated on by a set of specifically designed evolutionary operations. This approach is applied to five different types of cost surfaces and the results are compared with 10 000 randomly generated solutions. The results demonstrate the robustness and effectiveness of this EA-based approach to geographical analysis and multiobjective decisionmaking. Critical issues regarding the representation of spatial solutions and associated evolutionary operations are also discussed.

The aim of this paper is to examine the evolution of Italy's territorial inequalities from 1952 to 1996 and to consider what the Italian record tells us about the utility of theories of convergence and divergence. After outlining the scale and nature of contemporary development gaps in Italy, the author explores the way these inequalities have changed, showing that convergence in the 1960s and early 1970s gave way to divergence, and identifying the respective roles of productivity, employment, and demographic growth in shaping the overall trend in inequality. To examine what underlay the aggregate trends attention is paid to the comparative evolution of twenty Italian regions, indicating clearly the changing relative fortunes of the metropolitan northwest, the Mezzogiorno, the Third Italy, and the Adriatic coastal regions. In the final sections several decompositions are employed to identify the contribution of productivity and employment growth across a range of sectors to the comparative performance of Italy's regional economies.

Many studies in the USA have noted inequities with regard to the socioeconomic status or racial character of communities and their relative exposure to environmental disamenities. In this paper the authors focus particularly on the environmental equity of air pollution in the English city of Birmingham. Using statistical methodologies they examine the pattern of exposure to two key air pollutants: carbon monoxide (CO) and nitrogen dioxide (NO²) across certain population groups in the city. Estimated emission levels of CO and NO² were mapped by using modelled associations between vehicle densities and measured emissions at existing monitoring stations. These data were input to a geographical information system (GIS) for subsequent comparisons with population maps. Three types of variables were considered to distinguish possibly disadvantaged populations: age profile, ethnic make-up, and poverty indicators. From the 1991 Census, relevant statistics were derived for each enumeration district in the city. No relationship could be established on the age variable (that is, neither children nor pensioners appear to differ from the general population in their likely exposure patterns). However, there was a striking relationship between modelled emissions and poverty indicators and ethnicity. The effects are difficult to separate out but there is strong evidence to suggest that the two factors (poverty and ethnicity) operate in an independent manner. The implications of these findings, with regard to the causes of the disparities and the likely impacts of possible efforts to improve air quality in Birmingham, are discussed.

Although considerable reliance has been placed on the concept of agglomeration economies in the analysis of industrial location, it tends to be ill-defined, and the term has come to assume a variety of connotations. A system of classification for agglomeration economies is outlined, which differs in several respects from previous ones, both in terms of definition and coverage. Certain aspects of this classification are explored, and attention is then given to a number of issues surrounding the concept of agglomeration economies that do not appear to have been adequately considered. These include the extent of agglomeration economies, the possible absence of agglomeration economies at a given agglomeration, and the spatial context of agglomeration economies.

Geographically weighted regression (GWR) has been proposed as a technique to explore spatial parametric nonstationarity. The method has been developed mainly along the lines of local regression and smoothing techniques, a strategy that has led to a number of difficult questions about the regularity conditions of the likelihood function, the effective number of degrees of freedom, and in general the relevance of extending the method to derive inference and model specification tests. In this paper we argue that placing GWR within a different statistical context, as a spatial model of error variance heterogeneity, or what might be termed locational heterogeneity, solves these difficulties. A maximum-likelihood-based framework for estimation and inference of a general geographically weighted regression model is presented that leads to a method to estimate location-specific kernel bandwidths. Moreover, a test for locational heterogeneity is derived and its use exemplified with a case study.