Wildlife conservation in urban greenways of the mid-southeastern United States

Goals related to wildlife conservation are stated or implied in many urban greenway plans, but the actual wildlife conservation value of urban greenways is unclear. We surveyed 72 km. of greenway consisting of 38 different greenway segments in six cities in the mid-southeastern United States to determine the presence or absence of red fox (Vulpes vulpes), grey fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus), and white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus), and to assess characteristics of the greenways and adjacent lands that might promote or limit the presence of these species in each greenway. We focused on fox and deer because these mammals, while habitat generalists, require diverse habitats within close proximity, and are more sensitive to human disturbance and have larger territories than the majority of urban wildlife in this region. Thus, they can serve as indicator species for these habitat values in urban greenways in the southeastern United States. Field observations and scent station inventories revealed that only 18 of the 38 greenway segments had either fox or deer, 12 had only fox, 6 had fox and deer, and none had deer alone. Greenway segments with more forest cover, wider corridors, greater amounts of adjacent natural or seminatural habitat, and forest connectivity between greenways and nonadjacent natural areas were more likely to have fox or deer present. Characteristics associated with fox and deer presence were not independent of each other. Because greenways with such characteristics tend to be surrounded by less urban areas, adjacent land use is a good predictor of fox and deer presence in the surveyed greenways. Whether greenways that are beneficial to fox and deer can be developed in urban settings is strongly site specific, because the greenway variables that appear most essential to these species are often dictated by the preexisting urban form and the vegetation in the vicinity of the greenway. Because the wildlife conservation value of urban greenways depends greatly on factors external to the greenway, greenways that have fox and deer present today may be particularly vulnerable to future changes in surrounding land use.     

Challenging accounts: Public relations and a tale of two revolutions

This article provides a brief account of public relations, and of those who use its practices, in the Zionist revolution that led to the formation of the state of Israel. In relating that narrative to aspects of the American Revolution, it explores similarities and differences with a threefold aim: (1) to describe the distinctiveness of Israeli public relations development, informed by, but not determined by, U.S. accounts; (2) to clarify how different national origins continue to impact on the contemporary profession; and (3) to encourage others to put forward their accounts of their specific histories, and their specific historical actors. In Kuhn's [Kuhn, T. S. (1962). The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press] classic account of paradigm revolutions in science, the impetus frequently comes from activities on the margins that conflict with core assumptions. The article's specific account of the formation of Israel, and its intertwining with public relations, adds to the recent growing movement to construct accounts of other national public relations histories. In contributing to this movement, it also points to how the American experience can be reconfigured as part, albeit a massive part, of a profession that is developing differently in different parts of the world.     

The twenty-first century revolutions and internationalism: a world historical perspective

ABSTRACT

In his essay, ‘It is imperative to reconstruct the Internationale of workers and peoples’, Samir Amin (2018) suggested that in order to ‘deconstruct the extreme centralization of wealth and the power that is associated with the system’, we should seriously study ‘the experience of the worker Internationales […], even if they belong to the past. This should be done, not in order to “choose” a model among them, but to invent the most suitable form for contemporary conditions’. In this paper, I will follow Amin's suggestion and provide a brief examination of the past experiences of first Internationales in the nineteenth century, and conditions that produced them, with an eye to the present moment. By comparing the political climate of the early twenty-first century to analogous comparable periods in world history, I will argue that today we need two distinct forms of global political organizations. First one should serve as a horizontal ‘movement of movements’ that reflects the spontaneous and creative energy of mass movements from below; the second one should serve as a hierarchically organized international party which points out, brings to front and represents the global and long-term interests of the movements against their local/short-term interests.     

The revolutions of 1989: Socialism,capitalism, and democracy

Many journalists and scholars will look for the correlation of that chain of spectacular transformations that changed, as if at one blow, the fates of tens of millions of individuals and the hitherto firm bipolar picture of the modern world ... Today, many people are talking and writing about the role of the intellectuals, students, and the theatre, or the influence of the Soviets' perestroika, and economic difficulties. They're right. I myself as a playwright would also add the influence of humour and honesty, and perhaps even something beyond us, something maybe even unearthly.Vaclav Havel, Preface to Gwyn Prins (editor),Spring in Winter: The 1989 Revolutions.     

Symbolic revolutions. Mobilizing a neglected Bourdieusian concept for historical sociology

Theory and Society - The article builds on a recent literature that has sought to underscore the relevance of Bourdieu’s field theory for historical-sociological analysis. It draws attention...     

Pierre Bourdieu on social transformation,with particular reference to political and symbolic revolutions

This article challenges what is now the orthodoxy concerning the heritage of Bourdieu (1930–2002): namely, the judgement that his distinctive sociological innovation has been his theory of social reproduction, and that he has failed to provide a necessary theory of social change. Yet Bourdieu consistently claimed to offer a theory of social transformation as well as accounting for continuities of power. Indeed, he provides two substantive keys for an understanding of historical transformation—first, a theory of prophets (religious or secular) as the authors of heresies or “symbolic revolutions” that dispel current doxa; second, a theory of the “corporatism of the universal”: the role of intellectuals or other educated professionals in pursuit of social justice and other universalistic goals. Moreover, Bourdieu fuses his theories of “symbolic revolutions” with a materialist analysis of their social preconditions, including a fresh account of social crises. Crises—war, famine, recession, and especially the intensified precarity of the educated—have, for him, a profound impact, both within differentiated fields and across fields. Conflicts that become effectively synchronized across fields acquire great resonance within the wider field of power, particularly due to hysteresis or “maladjusted habitus.” Indeed, the appearance of crises, together with new prophetic heresies, leads the subordinate classes to question the taken-for-granted order of things and to orchestrate their resistance. Alongside his corpus of published writings, this article draws widely on Bourdieu’s posthumously published lectures. These cast a distinctive new light on how his well-known conceptual instruments can aid us in the study of historical change. They also expand on how social science itself might be used to facilitate progressive social movements.

     

Patch or mosaic: bat activity responds to fine-scale urban heterogeneity in a medium-sized city in the United States

Many recent studies have suggested that cities are spatially heterogeneous. Only limited research has investigated whether urban heterogeneity influences the distribution of bats in a city. Between 2010 and 2012, we acoustically surveyed bats in Waco, Texas, a medium-sized city in the United States. Seven species were detected, five in adequate quantity for analyses. Three distinct distribution patterns were evident (Mexican free-tailed bats; red bats and evening bats; big brown bats and cave myotis), reflecting the distinct functional guilds of these species. Bayesian conditional autoregressive models indicated that tree-dwelling red bats and evening bats were influenced by variables describing heterogeneity of urban vegetation. Big brown bats and cave myotis were associated with variables related to water sources. Mexican free-tailed bat distribution could be explained well by variables related to urban buildings and other constructions. Our modeling also suggested that urban socioeconomic heterogeneity influenced bat distributions. Distributions of tree-dwelling bats corresponded to income level. Distributions of Mexican free-tailed bats, big brown bats, and cave myotis related to human density. These results support the idea that a city comprises a mosaic of habitats as perceived by various species of bats and likely by other species of wildlife in urban settings.     

浅谈城市文化与城市规划的关系

英国社会学家、诺贝尔奖获得者弗里德曼1986年按照“世界城市”的标准对全球一些主要城市进行了划分，他把纽约、芝加哥、洛杉矶、伦敦、巴黎、东京列为第一等级的核心城市。作为世界级城市．它们的竞争力不仅体现在经济上．更体现在社会、文化等领域的综合竞争力上。我国当代著名学者任继愈先生以其渊博的学识和前瞻性的眼光指出．随着改革开放后我国经济实力的快速增长．在不久的将来．一个中华民族文化复兴的时代必将到来。     

Positioning urban rivers within urban ecology

Rivers are important components of many urban systems, and research into urban rivers is increasing internationally, both in scope and intensity. As an introduction to a special section on urban rivers, this short article briefly highlights some key trends in urban river research based on a survey of published articles from Web of Knowledge, before summarising the contributions made by the special section papers. In particular, there has been a general increase in work on urban rivers since the 1990s, with a more dramatic increase from 2001. Most published research has concentrated on water quality and its wider environmental implications; ecologically, many studies have focused on autecology, community ecology or river restoration/rehabilitation, with the main emphasis on macroinvertebrates or fish. Geographically, most studies have taken place in North America (mainly the US) and Asia (mainly China). In the large majority of cases research has been on relatively small rivers within urbanised catchments rather than large, heavily urbanised systems within major towns or cities. Given the wide range of topics and studies relating to urban river research, a detailed meta-analysis of the urban river ecology literature would be a useful endeavour. The six papers included in the special section of this issue provide a sample of some of key and emerging themes within recent urban river research, and originate from a session on the understanding and management of urban rivers held at the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) Annual Meeting in 2010, at Imperial College London.     

改革开放＆城市规划

新中国的城市规划事业是从20世纪50年代兴起的。经历了1949年～1952年的国民经济恢复时期．1953年进入了第一个五年计划阶段．为配合第一个五年计划重点建设项目的顺利进行．1953年9月．中央要求“加强城市规划涉及工作”．到1957年国家建委先后批准了兰州、太原、西安、洛阳等15个城市的总体规划．并建立了相应的城市规划机构，从此．我国城市规划事业不断发展壮大起来。     

Community and urban movements

Empirically and theoretically, this paper considers the link between the urban community, as a social base, and the emergence of urban movements. It examines whether different urban communities lead to different urban movements, specifically whether cohesive communities lead to powerful movements. Using an Australian case study, the first part of the paper tests this relationship empirically. The findings given raise doubts about whether cohesiveness is a necessary pre-condition for widespread mobilisation, as well as questioning the theoretical validity of ‘urban community’and ‘community’as sociological concepts. There is an apparent need to discard these concepts when referring to contemporary Western societies and a concomitant need to develop concepts which more appropriately identify the social organisation of urban households and residential areas. The second part of the paper discusses these theoretical issues. It presents an argument on the way household and residential organisations change as the city changes and how they differ if urbanisation differs between regions and between nations. This argument provides a more appropriate framework for examining the nature of the relationship between social bases and urban movements and it contributes a more useful explanation for the case study.     

城市文化对城市化和城市现代化的作用研究--以三个城市街区为个案

一、研究主题和研究方法 城市是人类生活的高级形态,自从出现了城市,人类社会的各个方面都呈现加速发展的态势.城市文化是城市社会的重要构成要素,是城市区别于乡村的重要方面,城市文化对城市化和城市现代化有着重要的推动作用.研究城市文化的这种推动作用,有助于正在加速城市化的中国更好地解决城市化和城市现代化中遇到的问题.     

城市经济体制改革与经营城市的几个理论问题

一、城市公共经济中“市场失灵”与按照市场方式经营管理的问题社会主义市场经济体制的建立，要求把城市公共经济纳入市场经济运行的轨道，按照市场方式经营管理。在这里首先遇到的问题，就是城市公共经济与“市场失灵”的问题，或者说在“市场失灵”的领域能否引入市场机制，能否按照市场方式和市场机制实施经营管理？这是城市经济体制改革和经营城市需要研究的一个重大的理论问题和实践问题。城市公共经济部门与城市公共产品，即城市基础设施和市政设施等，是城市重要的经济部门。由于这些部门具有经济外部性、非排他性和非竞争性，因此，…