HIV/AIDS and Urbanization

It is well known that levels of HIV prevalence tend to be appreciably higher inurban areas. This article considers the reasons for this and shows that within world regions that are relatively homogeneous with respect to their experience of HIV/AIDS, variation in the level of urbanization corresponds to about one‐third of variation in estimated HIV prevalence. Furthermore, for populations in the world's worst‐affected area—eastern and southern Africa—there are signs that, partly by differentially raising urban death rates and depressing urban birth rates, HIV/AIDS is slowing the pace of urbanization. Finally, in countries with very high levels of HIV infection and relatively low birth rates, such as in South Africa, the urban sector will soon constitute a “demographic sink”—with death rates exceeding birth rates.     

Public Assistance,Economic Prospect,and Happiness in Urban China

Social Indicators Research - This article investigates the association between urban China’s primary public assistance program—the Minimum Livelihood Guarantee (MLG, or Dibao)—and...     

Rural–Urban Child Height for Age Trajectories and Their Heterogeneous Determinants in Four Developing Countries

The large literature on health differentials between rural and urban areas relies almost exclusively on cross-sectional data. Bringing together the demographic literature on area-level health inequalities with the bio-physiological literature on children’s catch-up growth over time, this paper uses panel data to investigate the stability and origins of rural–urban health differentials. Using data from the Young Lives longitudinal study of child poverty, I present evidence of large level differences but similar trends in rural versus urban children’s height for age in four developing countries. Further, observable characteristics of children’s environment such as their household wealth, mother’s education, and epidemiological environment explain these differentials in most contexts. In Peru, where they do not, children’s birthweight and mothers’ health and other characteristics suggest that initial endowments—even before birth—may play an important role in explaining "residual" rural–urban child height inequalities. These latter results imply that prioritizing maternal nutrition and health is essential—particularly where rural–urban height inequalities are large. Interventions to reduce area-level health inequalities should begin even before birth.     

Indicators for the measurement of the quality of urban life

In the wealth of studies on measuring the quality of life, an autonomous ’urban’ trend has been progressively distinguishing itself, namely the extension of urban conditions of life to an ever higher percentage of the world's population. From the concept of city understood as a negation of environmental values, we have passed, thanks to a long multidisciplinary evolution, to the concept of the urban ecosystem and to that of the ecological city. What type of indicators may be used for the measurement of the quality of life in the urban environment? And what is their most appropriate ambit of application? An Italian experience in environmental planning (the Ten-Year Plan for the Environment — DECAMB, and the Territorial Frame of Reference — QUADROTER, for the Ministry of the Environment) may offer starting points for a research programme. Concepts such as land supply and demand; territorial loading; equilibrium and spill-over of urban systems; critical population mass, are used to introduce and initial experimental set of (objective and subjective) indicators of the quality of life orientated towards planning, both as regards the provision of services, and for participatory and symbolic aspects. But if a place is meaningless without a subject, so too a person removed from his own place is a man of uncertain identity.     

Networks Versus Need: Drivers of Urban Out-Migration in the Brazilian Amazon

As urbanization rates rise globally, it becomes increasingly important to understand the factors associated with urban out-migration. In this paper, we examine the drivers of urban out-migration among young adults in two medium-sized cities in the Brazilian Amazon—Altamira and Santarém—focusing on the roles of social capital, human capital, and socioeconomic deprivation. Using household survey data from 1,293 individuals in the two cities, we employ an event history model to assess factors associated with migration and a binary logit model to understand factors associated with remitting behavior. We find that in Altamira, migration tends to be an individual-level opportunistic strategy fostered by extra-local family networks, while in Santarém, migration tends to be a household-level strategy driven by socioeconomic deprivation and accompanied by remittances. These results indicate that urban out-migration in Brazil is a diverse social process, and that the relative roles of extra-local networks versus economic need can function quite differently between geographically proximate but historically and socioeconomically distinct cities.     

Undercounting Urban Residents in Bolivia: A Small-Area Study of Census-Driven Migration

Employing a small-area study approach in a single urban area in Bolivia, a country with high rates of internal circular migration, we describe how, in the months before the November 2012 census, local leaders and neighbors, concerned with maximizing the per capita resources their residential districts and rural communities could claim from central government, threatened to employ sanctions against absent individuals whom they judged to be regular residents. We use three types of data—a two-wave household survey, data from vehicle toll booths, and photographic logs of a minibus station—to show how these threats generated substantial movement out of the urban area, leading to an urban undercount of roughly 20 % of prime-age adults and 50 % of those aged at least 50. More generally, we argue that these data highlight how local leaders’ increasingly sophisticated attempts to shape data extend beyond the well-known examples from autocratic states. This is driven by a combination of intensive urban–rural connections, leaders’ greater democratic accountability to local voters, increasing fiscal transparency at the national level, increasing fiscal accountability of governments to transnational neoliberal institutions pushing “transparency” and “evidence-based” policy, and more overt talk about “resource sharing” that is rooted in an evidence-based planning paradigm. Since these structural conditions exist in many other developing countries, the possibility of equivalent urban undercounts in forthcoming censuses needs to be anticipated and avoided.     

Amongst the Ruins

Through the reflections of interviewees from New York, Montreal, and Sydney, this article investigates the affective qualities of urban ruins and the role they have played in gay male experience and identity construction from 1970 to 2000. Along with other places on the margins of regulated space, urban ruins operate as points of transition—passages from reason to myth at the interstices of ordered urban space. The article argues that the sensual feelings and memories conjured by these ruins enable alternative modes of being for gay men that stand in contrast to the more regimented modes of everyday life.     

基于人口迁移的中国城市体系演化预测研究

从中国城市化的本质———人口迁移网络出发,考虑所有城市空间单元以及城市间人口迁移联系在内,开展人口迁移和城市体系的综合性研究,探讨中国城市体系演化机理,将新经济地理学理论拓展到多区域,引入地理空间异质性,构建空间参考明确、全域均衡、空间单元之间存在明确人口迁移机理的城市体系模型。通过实证检验,该模型的模拟结果较为接近实际情况,模型拟合精度较高,可以用于城市体系演化预测。根据目前中国实际国情和国家政策导向,本文在三种大的城市化情景下根据中国各城市间人口迁移来预测中国未来城市体系的演化,即把整个城市体系视作一个通过人口迁移相互联系的网络整体来预测城市人口变化情况,从而为国家新型城镇化规划的流动人口管理、公共服务改进和城市等级体系规划等方面的政策制定提供现实依据。     

Urbanization as a Global Historical Process: Theory and Evidence from sub‐Saharan Africa

Urbanization has traditionally been understood as a byproduct of economic development, but this explanatory framework fails to account for the phenomenon of “urbanization without growth” observed in sub‐Saharan Africa throughout the 1980s and 1990s. In light of this apparent anomaly, I argue that urbanization is better understood as a global historical process driven by population dynamics associated with technological and institutional innovations that have substantially improved disease control and food security in urban settlements across the globe. These innovations first emerged in Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and were subsequently diffused through colonialism, trade, and international development assistance. A range of qualitative and quantitative evidence is presented to demonstrate that this historically grounded theory of urbanization offers a more convincing explanation for the stylized facts of Africa's urban transition—and hence the process of world urbanization more broadly—than the traditional economic account.     

居住空间、邻里交往与社会距离--基于CSS2011的城镇居民与农民社会距离的影响因素研究

利用CSS2011调查数据,探讨了当前我国城镇居民与农村居民社会距离的影响因素。研究发现：个人经济地位越高,与农民的社会距离越近,家庭经济地位与个人文化地位越高,与农民的社会距离越远;居住空间条件越好,与农民的社会距离越远;与邻居互惠性交往程度越高,与农民的社会距离越近。研究认为,在城镇现实的体制和制度环境下,以下两个方面的努力可以缩减城镇居民与农民的社会距离,提升他们对农民的心理接纳程度：一是通过制定各种政策措施,遏制并缩小目前城镇内部和城乡之间的住房不平等程度;二是创造理想的社会交往环境,促进城镇居民与包括邻居在内的社区其他居民和进城农民之间的互惠性交往。     

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.     

China's New Demographic Reality: Learning from the 2010 Census

China conducted its sixth modern census in 2010, recording a total of 1.34 billion people. This article presents an overview of the early census results. The data are of reasonable quality but contain some apparent defects where adjustments may be required. The census confirms that China has entered the era of demographic modernity and depicts the vast transformation of the country's rural‐urban distribution. Life expectancy has risen by 3–4 years in the decade since the last census, while fertility remains well below replacement—probably as low as 1.5 births per woman—and the sex ratio at birth is still significantly elevated. Low fertility and falling old‐age mortality are leading to continued and rapid population aging. Several coastal provinces grew by as much as 40 percent in the last decade, while a number of inland provinces have recorded population decline. China has reached an overall urban proportion of 50 percent.     

Making Space for the Maid

Chinese television dramas over the past decades have seen the rise and decline of various narratives, but no other narratives speak to the emerging urban middle class's fear and anxiety more palpably than the stories of the maid. However, despite the growing popularity of the maid stories among urban viewers, most of these stories do not resonate with domestic workers themselves. How do we make sense of the growing popularity of the maid stories among urban viewers? And how do we account for the differentiated capacity to resonate and identify with the characters among viewers? These are important questions to consider if one is to understand the new cultural politics of power and social formations in post-Mao China. In this paper, I explore some of the crucial ways in which a controlling gaze is facilitated and naturalised by the visualisation of place and space in these dramas. Then, through both critical analyses and engaged ethnography, I demonstrate how two sets of controlling gaze—everyday and televisual—reinforce and justify each other. Finally, I advance the concept of “peripheral vision,” which, I show, denies the modernist “master” narrative of the city and, instead, empowers the subaltern figure with an epistemological position of “eye-witness” and anthropologist of the city.     

“Population Invasion” versus Urban Exclusion in the Tibetan Areas of Western China

This article examines the confluence of local population transitions (demographic transition and urbanization) with non‐local in‐migration in the Tibetan areas of western China. The objective is to assess the validity of Tibetan perceptions of “population invasion” by Han Chinese and Chinese Muslims. The article argues that migration to Tibet from other regions in China has been concentrated in urban areas and has been counterbalanced by more rapid rates of natural increase in the Tibetan rural areas—among the highest rates in China. Overall, it is not clear whether there is any risk of population invasion in the Tibetan areas. However, given that non‐Tibetan migration to Tibet has been concentrated in urban areas, Tibetans have probably become a minority in many of their strategic cities and towns, and non‐Tibetan migrants definitely dominate urban employment. Therefore, while the Tibetan notion of population invasion may be a misperception, it reflects a legitimate concern that in‐migration may be exacerbating the economic exclusion of Tibetan locals in the context of rapid urban‐centered development.     

Seasonal and weather-related behavioral effects among urban Aboriginal, urban non-Aboriginal, and remote Aboriginal participants in Canada

The influence of seasonal change and weather on mood, social activity, weight, food consumption, and sleep length was compared across urban Aboriginals (n = 43), urban non-Aboriginals (n = 49), and remote Aboriginals (n = 39) in Ontario, Canada. Such research is important since climate change may differentially shape the well-being of social groups. Behavioral items—including mood, social activity, weight, sleep, and food consumption—were measured using the Seasonal Pattern Assessment Questionnaire, and associations between these items and meteorological data were examined with bivariate and multivariate approaches. Weather variables had consistent, significant associations with behavior except within the remote Aboriginal group despite living in a more extreme climate. Lifestyle and adaptation may contribute to an increased weather tolerance among remote Aboriginal people, intriguing findings as cultures grapple with the implications of future climate change.     

Individual Income Inequality and Its Drivers in Indonesia: A Theil Decomposition Reassessment

This article employs a Theil decomposition analysis to examine various dimensions of income inequality, using the 2007 Indonesian Family Life Survey. The empirical strategy is based on the individual-level income data—instead of group means as in the existing literature—and thus accounts for within-group dispersion of individual incomes. The decomposition exercise reveals that income inequality across education levels constitutes about 13 % of total income inequality. The urban–rural and interprovincial dimensions individually explain 6.0–6.5 %, but the contribution of income inequality by genders appears to be negligible. The findings highlight educational reform as an effective redistributive policy.     

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.     

The socioeconomic dimensions of brownfield cleanup in the Detroit region

Although the goal of brownfield development is to clean up and redevelop abandoned or underutilized properties in distressed urban neighborhoods, the racial and socioeconomic disparities of brownfield cleanups have not been adequately examined. This study combines the locations of brownfields with 1990 and 2000 US Census data in the Detroit region. Results reveal that brownfields located near socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods tend to be cleaned up first. Brownfields located far from major roads also tend to receive priority. However, results also suggest that the amount of land devoted to industrial and/or commercial uses adjacent to brownfield sites is not significantly associated with the probability of brownfield sites being cleaned up. These findings indicate that the initial step of brownfield development—cleaning up environmentally contaminated properties—is heading in the right direction.     

Living on the Edge: Neighborhood Boundaries and the Spatial Dynamics of Violent Crime

Neighborhood boundaries are a defining aspect of highly segregated urban areas. Yet, few studies examine the particular challenges and spatial processes that occur at the bordering region between two neighborhoods. Extending the growing literature on spatial interdependence, this article argues that neighborhood boundaries—defined as sharp changes in the racial or socioeconomic composition of neighborhoods—are a salient feature of the spatial structure with implications for violent crime and other outcomes. Boundaries lack the social control and cohesion of adjacent homogeneous areas, are contested between groups provoking intergroup conflict, and create opportunities for criminal behavior. This article presents evidence linking racial neighborhood boundaries to increased violent crime. The findings illustrate the importance of neighborhood boundaries for our understanding of spatial dimensions of population dynamics above and beyond the characteristics of neighborhoods.     

“Nobody Don’t Really Know What That Mean”: Understandings of “Queer” among Urban LGBTQ Young People of Color

ABSTRACT

Drawing from in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 40 urban LGBTQ young people of color, I explore their uses, understandings, and meanings of “queer.” With several notable exceptions—those who at least occasionally self-identified as queer—most of the young people avoided using the term altogether. Although the majority expressed confusion about what “queer” meant, many understood it to be somehow related to sexuality or being gay, but considered it potentially insulting. I discuss the relevance of these findings for work in queer fields, where research participants may not explicitly identify as queer or make use of the word.