Urban growth in China: past, prospect, and its impacts

Rapid growth and globalization of the domestic economy have dramatically accelerated urbanization in China, resulting in significant environmental impacts and challenges for sustainable development. Using a multistate model accounting for distributional aspects of age, sex, education, and migration in rural and urban regions, we estimate the magnitude of urbanization in China through 2030 and examine some major associated sustainability issues. Results indicate that: (1) for a range of assumptions, China’s urban population will nearly double from 2000 to 2030; (2) the labor force will constitute a larger share of total population in urban areas than rural due to internal migration of younger workers—this appears particularly true for the mega-urban metropolises of Beijing and Shanghai; (3) rural populations will experience more aging than urban; and (4) level of education among China’s rural labor force will remain low, which could pressure China’s industrial structural transition from an agricultural to a service-based economy.     

Quality of Life Perceptions and Directions for Urban Regeneration in Hong Kong

Urban regeneration can be an effective tool to promote sustainability and enhance macro-level quality of life if the principles of encouraging participation, building community character, advancing equity, improving environment and enlivening the economy are observed. Through the assessment of various quality of life indicators related to these five basic principles for sustainable urban regeneration by the public, private and community sectors, this paper finds that Hong Kong falls far short of realizing these fundamental principles. There are also considerable discrepancies between the public and non-public (private and NGOs) sectors in terms of evaluating existing quality of life issues and perceiving their relative priorities. The private and community sectors tend to have lower rating of existing situation and consequently a longer priority list. On the contrary, the public sector seems to be more complacent with the existing quality of life situations and has a much shorter priority list. The public sector’s more relaxed attitude coupled with a top-down executive-led polity mean that Hong Kong will probably have a long way to go toward sustainable urban regeneration.     

Quality of Life in Hong Kong: Past Accomplishments And Future Prospects

Following several decades of rapid economic expansion, development in Hong Kong has arrived at a new crossroads. The pace of economic growth is no longer as rapid as during earlier decades, competition with other East Asian societies has grown more acute and many of the territory’s recurrent, sometimes hidden, social problems appear to be undermining selected aspects of Hong Kong’s quality of life. And Hong Kong’s political tensions with the central government in Beijing have become more confrontational since its return in 1997 to Chinese political sovereignty. This article: (1) summarizes the current state of social development in Hong Kong; (2) identifies the major social, political and economic challenges that confront Hong Kong at the beginning of a new development decade; (3) compares selected aspects of Hong Kong’s social development with that of other East Asian societies; and (4) suggests a variety of policy options that are available to leaders in Hong Kong’s for promoting a more balanced approach to social and economic development. The article also illustrates the use of social reports and social reporting in advancing development assessment and planning.     

The Ex-Ante Evaluation of Achieving Sustainable Development Goals

This paper describes the methodology and main results from an overall assessment on future achievement of sustainable development goals. The proposed approach consists of a model-based, looking forward composite sustainable development index—FEEM sustainability index—projected to the future. It represents a first experiment to reproduce the future dynamics of sustainable development indicators over time and worldwide and to assess future sustainability under different scenarios. The assessment presented here is relevant under different viewpoints. First, it has a very broad nature in terms of both geographical coverage and meaningfulness: it considers the multi-dimensional structure of sustainable development by combining relevant indicators belonging to economic, social and environmental pillars for the whole world. Second, the modelling framework to compute future trends of indicators relies upon a recursive-dynamic computable general equilibrium model. This is an ideal tool to look simultaneously at the development of many indicators, their potential interactions and trade-offs, and more in general to the consequences of economic development and/or policies aiming to increase performance in one or more indicators; it allows measuring the overall sustainability under alternative scenarios, across countries and over time. Finally, regarding the construction of the composite indicator, the application of fuzzy measures and Choquet integral increases substantially the model capability allowing taking into account the interactions that exist among the three main pillars of sustainability and the considered indicators.     

Measuring Progress and Well-Being: A Comparative Review of Indicators

We provide a new database sampling well-being and progress indicators implemented since the 1970s at all geographic scales. Starting from an empirical assessment, we describe and quantify trends in the institutional basis, methodology, and content of indicators which are intended to capture the broadest conceptions of human social progress. We pay special attention to the roles of sustainability and subjective well-being in these efforts, and find that certain types of indicators are more successful in terms of transparency, accountability, as well as longevity. Our taxonomy encompasses money-denominated accounts of “progress”, unaggregated collections of indicators, indices, and measures oriented around subjective well-being. We find that a most promising innovation is the indices whose weights are accountable to empirical data, in particular through models of subjective well-being. We conclude by amplifying others’ advocacy for the appropriate separation of current well-being from environmental indicators, and for the avoidance of aggregation except where it is meaningful.     

Rape culture,misogyny, and urban anxiety in NH10 and Pink

One of the most pervasive aspects of Delhi’s post-liberalization psychopathology has been everyday violence against women. The city’s rape culture was given an exceptionally sharp global focus after the horrific gang rape of Jyoti Singh on December 16, 2012. Recent Hindi cinema has begun to engage with some aspects of the capital’s misogynist urban ethos. In this paper, I look at how the Delhi subgenre of the “multiplex film” has engaged with rape culture, misogyny, and urban anxiety through a close textual and discursive analysis of two recent films—NH10 (Navdeep Singh, 2015) and Pink (Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury, 2016). Specifically, I identify how the December 16 “trigger event” and Delhi’s notorious misogyny are finding newer modes of representation through the interplay of genre and exhibition space. In what ways do these films position and imagine the “multiplex viewer”? New engagements with the figure of the consuming middle-class woman and the public discourses that surround her sexual safety and navigation of space have taken a central position in understanding the present urban psychosis of the capital. I suggest that these films and the forms of spectatorial identification that they privilege are intricately linked to the gendered spatial politics of the multiplex.     

Gender,democracy, development,and overshoot: a cross-national analysis

The crux of sustainability concerns hinges on humanity’s overshoot of our global carrying capacity, which we currently exceed by about 50 %. Overshoot of the earth’s natural resource bases militates against our current and future prospects for sustainability. Despite the theoretical and practical impetus to examine these dynamics, there is a dearth of empirical sociological research that analyzes overshoot. The paper fills this gap by offering a structural equation model of each nation’s relative contributions to overshoot. The model tests key theorizations in the environmental sociology, development, and global political-economy literatures, and adds to them by theorizing and empirically testing ecofeminist positions that the status of women affects and is affected by environmental conditions. Findings support ecofeminist interpretations that resource degradation yields adverse impacts on women and that their representation in government bodes well for the environment. The theoretical, empirical, and policy-based conclusions and implications are treated, as well as future areas of research.     

The Perception of Anti-corruption Efficacy in China: An Empirical Analysis

As corruption affects people in all walks of life, public reactions to corruption and citizens’ views of the government’s anti-corruption effort are critically important. Any government seeking to make effective policy against corruption must obtain public trust and support, which provides the much-needed legitimacy for policy enforcement. In this study, we drew on a survey of 1,604 randomly selected residents in Shanghai in 2008 to examine the perceptions and attitudes of Chinese citizens towards the government’s anti-corruption effort. Specifically, we focussed on the “sense of anticorruption efficacy,” defined as people’s expectation for positive anti-corruption outcomes. We addressed two questions. To what extent the public was confident in the government’s anti-corruption efficacy? What factors explained the variation in people’s perceptions of anti-corruption efficacy? Results indicated that two salient factors could affect an individual’s sense of anti-corruption efficacy. First, as corruption contributed to social disparity, the perceived unfairness of income distribution exacerbated people’s expectation for anti-corruption efficacy. Secondly, an accepting attitude towards power intrusion into income distribution diluted the positive impact of the perception of unfair distribution on people’s expectation for anti-corruption efficacy. We take from the results that to what extent people expect the government to make effective effort to control corruption is determined by both economic and political factors. People develop high expectation for anti-corruption reform when they are unhappy not only with the lack of fairness in income distribution but also with the intrusion of political power into economic affairs which, if unconstrained, often gives rise to corruption.     

Never Waste a Good Crisis: Towards Social Sustainable Development

The report by the Stiglitz Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress highlighted the idea that sustainability in essence is about quality of life. This paper discusses and elaborates this notion. It argues that sustainable development should be seen as a process which does not focus on economic development alone, but which also includes well-balanced ecological and social development. Social aspects of sustainability deserve attention because of their instrumental and intrinsic relevance. A society needs a sense of community and commitment. The presence of social capital is very important for the liveability of a society. It is argued that the amount of social capital may fluctuate over time. This means that in the long term, future societies may be better in a social respect (more trust, more participation, less inequality) than today’s. Ensuring social sustainability is thus not only a matter of ensuring that present social cohesion is preserved, but also ensuring that this cohesion will increase or improve. The paper ends by addressing lines of research on social sustainability. The following research themes are mentioned: (1) Quality of life, social capital and social cohesion in a longitudinal perspective. (2) ‘Sustainability of what, why and for whom?’ Sustainability as an issue of choice: trade-offs. (3) Civil society and governance aspects of sustainability. (4) Public perceptions, values and opinions with regard to sustainability issues and (5) Fairness and inequality in relation to sustainability policy, both nationally and internationally.     

儿童照料与二孩生育意愿 ——来自上海的证据

本文围绕一项针对上海市育龄女性的生育意愿调查,分别使用二分和有序Logit方法分析儿童照顾对上海市育龄女性的二孩生育意愿的影响。研究发现当育龄女性能够从家庭内和社会中获得更多孩子照料的时间支持时,她们有更高的二孩生育意愿,也会伴有更明确的二孩生育规划;双独家庭能够从父辈获得更多的经济、时间上的帮助,因此他们要比单独家庭和双非家庭更愿意再生一个孩子;居住于上海市城区的女性从某种程度上更易获得孩子的照料资源,有更多的优质教育资源可供选择,因此她们的二孩生育意愿高于居住于郊区的女性。此外,本文通过是否采用了避孕措施对二孩生育的意愿程度做了进一步区分,结果发现当第一个孩子主要是由孩子父母承担照料工作的时候,女性存在二孩生育意愿的程度是最低的,祖辈照料对二孩生育意愿程度的积极影响也明显低于社会性照料,此现象在上海市户籍的女性中体现尤为明显。最后为纠正自选择偏差问题,本文使用倾向值匹配方法(PSM)进一步验证了与首孩性别相比,首孩的抚养成本与接受照料情况显然对二孩生育意愿的影响程度更大。因此,本文认为加大公共托育服务的供给、为育龄女性提供高质量的0-3岁婴幼儿社会照料支持是提高二孩生育意愿的最有效政策。     

The temporal and spatial dynamics of city-size distributions in China

Under the communist regime, the Chinese government has developed policies both to limit the growth of large cities and to promote spatial equity in population distribution. The literature provides only very general and inconclusive results regarding the impact of these policies. This paper aims at evaluating the effectiveness of China's urban policies by investigating the temporal and spatial dynamics of the size distribution of China's cities during the period 1922–82. The research framework — which is based on a function relating population size to rank —is used to test for trends of deconcentration (where smaller cities grow faster than larger cities) and spatial decentralization (with a more even spatial distribution) of population over the study period. More formally, the ‘expansion methodology’ is used to investigate the dynamics of the rank-size function in both temporal and spatial dimensions. The findings show that from 1953 to 1970 there was significant population deconcentration, which appeared to be reversed subsequently. However, policies of spatial decentralization were not found to be successful. Among the reasons suggested for the apparent failure are political upheavals and shifts in policies, the inertia within the urban system, the harsh physical environment in the interior, and current trends in economic policies that focus on the coastal areas. In spite of recent criticisms of studies on city-size distributions (which this paper also discusses), the research framework proposed and utilized here is able to portray the dynamics of a national urban system, and the framework can be used to evaluate national urban policies.     

Quality of Life Perceptions and Directions for Urban Regeneration in Hong Kong

Urban regeneration can be an effective tool to promote sustainability and enhance macro-level quality of life if the principles of encouraging participation, building community character, advancing equity, improving environment and enlivening the economy are observed. Through the assessment of various quality of life indicators related to these five basic principles for sustainable urban regeneration by the public, private and community sectors, this paper finds that Hong Kong falls far short of realizing these fundamental principles. There are also considerable discrepancies between the public and non-public (private and NGOs) sectors in terms of evaluating existing quality of life issues and perceiving their relative priorities. The private and community sectors tend to have lower rating of existing situation and consequently a longer priority list. On the contrary, the public sector seems to be more complacent with the existing quality of life situations and has a much shorter priority list. The public sectors more relaxed attitude coupled with a top-down executive-led polity mean that Hong Kong will probably have a long way to go toward sustainable urban regeneration.     

Socio-Economic Disparities in the Development of the Romania’s Border Areas

The Romanian border areas include 898 Local Administrative Units 2 (LAU2), of which 88 are urban and 810 rural. Romania has borderline with the following countries: Bulgaria, Republic of Moldova, Serbia, Ukraine, Hungary, of which 63.5 % is Non-European Union boundary. According to the population structure, 51.6 % of the total population is urban and the rest of 48.4 % is rural. In order to assess the socio-economic territorial disparities in the development of the urban space of Romanian border areas, several research stages were carried out: selecting 22 relevant statistical indicators, analyzing territorial disparities, standardizing the absolute values of the indicators, grouping the elementary indicators by 7 multiple indicator clusters (secondary indexes) in order to reflect the main socio-economic development aspects: (1) housing, (2) public utilities infrastructure and green areas, (3) health, (4) labour market, (5) demography, (6) education and (7) local economy. Finally, the authors were able to compute secondary indexes and the Index of Socio-Economic Development as Hull Score with a mean of 50 and a standard deviation of 14, revealing the levels of socio-economic development (high, average and low). Generally, the outcomes of the current study are in line with Romania’s complex socio-economic disparities, rooted in the historic background of the country. Spatially, the economic development follows a West–East direction, the less developed areas being concentrated in the Eastern and Southern part of the country.     

Shared journeys,linked lives: a relational-biographical approach to mobility practices

This paper innovatively extends existing practice-theoretical mobility research by examining biographical aspects of people’s everyday mobility that capture and reflect their social relations. Drawing on nine qualitative interviews with couples who live in/near Vienna without a private car, the paper demonstrates the promising potential of retrospective forms of social research for uncovering the dynamics of mobility practices across the life course. It conceptualises individuals as inherently social and mutually interconnected mobility practitioners whose complex and dynamic interactions with others make up more or less mobile households and families. The paper thus treats social relations as a major connector between the constitutive social and material elements of (mobility) practices, making an explicitly relational contribution to current practice-theoretical debates in mobility research.     

Urban Growth and Housing Quality in Iran

Rapid urban population growth and the lack of effective policies in order to desired population settlement, has encountered Iran’s major cities with multiple social, economic and environment problems. Physical expansion of cities in order to settlement the increasing population, causes the formation of new textures surrounding old urban textures. In the new textures, urban housing is formed with the modern approach and least logical connection with common practice in the old textures. Therefore, the main objective of this paper is to evaluate the housing quality and identify strengths and weaknesses in old and new urban textures to improve the quality of urban housing in Iran. Household survey were conducted to collect the needed data in the old and new textures in Khorramabad city. Results showed that the satisfaction level of housing quality in new texture is far more than old ones. The highest satisfaction level in both textures are related to housing basic facilities domain. However, satisfaction level of this domain in new texture is much greater compared to the old texture. The lowest level of satisfaction is related to the quality of neighborhood domain in old texture and to the access to public services domain in the new one. Results from the factor analysis to identify the dimensions of housing quality in old and new textures illustrated that housing quality is a multidimensional concept, studying of which requires considering all dimensions and aspects.     

重视城市化过程中的人口分布变化——以上海市为例

上海几十万、上百万户籍人口从内环线以内迁到内环线以外 ,这给迁出地、迁入地的社会、经济、教育、卫生、治安等各方面带来一系列新的变化和问题 ,是一个带有全局性影响的大问题。这种数公里数十公里范围内的人口分布变化 ,必将影响上海整个城市形态、城市结构 ,有利于新型的城乡结合型的新城的建成。上海有六千多平方公里冲积平原 ,有广阔的发展空间 ,应不断扩大城市化地域范围 ,与其国际经济中心城市之一相匹配。     

Cyberbullying,conflict management or just messing? Teenage girls’ understandings and experiences of gender,friendship, and conflict on Facebook in an Irish second-level school

In recent years, there have been growing concerns worldwide about young people’s safety online, much of which focuses on social media sites such as Facebook and Instagram. Moral panics about sexting and cyberbullying have constructed public discourses about social media as dangerous to adolescents’ safety and relationships. In the academic literature, there are conflicting perspectives on the nature of online relationships, behaviour, and risks, and on the causes and nature of cyberbullying. Less attention is paid—in both public and academic debates—to the role played by gender in online aggression, in spite of the fact that existing scholarship demonstrates that it is an important factor in the dynamics of young people’s online friendships and conflicts. This article presents the findings of an empirical, qualitative and quantitative study of teenage girls’ experiences and understandings of online friendship, conflict, and bullying in an Irish, single-sex secondary school. Questionnaires (n=116), individual in-depth interviews with students (n=26), and a focus group with teachers were used. Our study indicates that significant communicative phenomena within girls’ everyday lives remain unreported and frequently misunderstood.     

What Defines Quality of Life? The Gap Between Public Policies and Locally Defined Indicators Among Residents of Kodagu, Karnataka (India)

Improving quality of life (QoL) is one of the main goals of many public policies. A useful tool to measure QoL needs to get a good balance between indicators guided by theories (top-down approach) and indicators defined by local people (bottom-up approach). However, QoL measurement tools often neglect to include elements that define the standard of living at local level. In this paper, we analyse the correspondence between human development index, as an indicator adopted by governments to assess QoL, and the elements defined by local people as important in their QoL, called here local means. Using a free-listing technique, we collected information from 114 individuals from Kodagu, Kartanataka (India), to capture local means defining QoL. We then compared local means with the indicators used by Human development report (HDR) of Karnataka, the main measurement tool of QoL in Kodagu. The list of local means included access to basic facilities and many issues related to agriculture and natural resources management as elements locally defining QoL. We also found that HDR does not capture the means defined by people as indicators of QoL. Our findings suggest an important gap between current QoL’s indicators considered by public policies and the means of QoL defined by people. Our study provides insights for a set of plausible local indicators useful to achieve a balance between top-down and bottom-up approaches for the local public policies.     

Satisfaction Ratings of QOLPAV: Psychometric Properties Based on the Graded Response Model

A scale measuring quality of life (QOL) is important in adolescent research. Using the graded response model (GRM), this study evaluates the psychometric properties of the satisfaction ratings of the Quality of Life Profile Adolescent Version (QOLPAV). Data for 1,392 adolescents were used to check IRT assumptions such as unidimensionality and local item dependence (LID). The goodness of fit of the GRM to the data and the item characteristic curves were evaluated. The reliability and validity analyses included item/test information, Cronbach’s α, and convergent and discriminant validity. Differential item functioning (DIF) procedures were also performed to detect item bias. The results provide evidence that the items sufficiently measured one single dimension. Few pairs of questions were flagged as LID due to content or wording similarity. Five items did not fit the GRM, and 4 were low in item discrimination. The findings also suggest that the assessment had appropriate reliability and validity. The DIF impact on the assessment score was considered minor. Because QOLPAV includes a respondent’s perceived importance of various life aspects, a short form that only considers important life aspects in the overall QOL estimation for each respondent becomes feasible within the framework of IRT. Future studies focusing on the development of a QOL overall index using the items from QOLPAV are recommended.