Understanding and Planning for Freight Movement in Cities: Practices and Challenges

ABSTRACT

Planning for freight presents a perpetual challenge for governments. Understanding freight flows has attracted increasing research attention, though such knowledge can be difficult to translate to address problems in planning practice. This paper critically assesses the challenges of understanding and planning for urban freight movement, especially with reference to achieving more sustainable outcomes. In doing so, we elucidate guidance for broader analytical and policy approaches suited to meeting diverse public interest objectives. We review the literature with specific reference to the nature of policy problems, while collating existing conceptual knowledge for broad urban land use types.     

Differential Privacy and the Accuracy of County-Level Net Migration Estimates

Population Research and Policy Review - Each decade since the 1950s, demographers have generated high-quality net migration estimates by age, sex, and race for US counties using decennial census...     

Race,Language, or Length of Residency? Explaining Unequal Uptake of Government Pensions in Canada

Canada’s old age security (OAS), a flat-benefit public pension, is internationally lauded as an accessible and effective safety net for seniors. This paper explores discrepancies in OAS uptake using Canadian Census data from 1996 to 2011. Our findings demonstrate disparities in OAS uptake based on immigration status, language proficiency, and visible minority status, disputing claims of “universal” OAS provision. Multivariate analyses confirm a strong “immigrant effect,” with being in Canada for 20 years or less leading to lower rates of OAS utilization. They also confirm that those not proficient in Canada’s official languages are less likely to receive OAS benefits. However, the influence of racialized minority status is found to be spurious; after controlling for immigration status and official language proficiency, many racialized minority senior groups have higher odds of receiving OAS than White Canadians. We conclude with a brief discussion of the tradeoffs involved in considering a potential removal of OAS eligibility barriers for immigrants in Canada.     

The Missing Memory of Canadian Sociology: Reflexive Government and “the Social Science”

The modest literature on the history of Canadian Sociology takes the appearance of a named academic discipline as its object. Canadian Sociology is held to have had some precursors in the 1880s, but really to appear only in the 1920s. It is described as a foreign import and as an activity first of intellectual speculation and moral reform. Observational and analytic practice are absent before 1880. The activities of state agents and government departments in the social field are not discussed. This article offers a richer account through an examination of the larger field from which Sociology was extracted, “the social science,” which was practiced actively in colonial Canada from the early nineteenth century. The social science shaped and was itself shaped by colonial conditions. The article outlines three interrelated moments in social science to carry its claims: inventory‐making, the emergence of “population‐thinking,” and “reflexive government.” Attending to the social science underlines the complex and convoluted relations of sociology with state power. Les rares oeuvrages académiques portant sur l'histoire de la sociologie canadienne prend pour objet l'apparition du terme <sociologie> dans le contexte universitaire. Dans cet optique, ils signalent certains précurseurs de la sociologie canadienne dès les années 1880, mais en fait ils affirment que cette discipline n'apparaît que dans les années 1920. Cette discipline est présentée comme une importation académique et, d'abord et avant tout, comme de la spéculation intellectuelle et comme un projet de réforme morale. D'après cette vision, les pratiques d'observation et d'analyse sociales ne semblent pas exister avant 1880, et les acteurs politiques et administratifs sont absents du terrain. Notre article propose un examen plus riche du vaste champ duquel la sociologie académique fut arrachée: <la science sociale> activement pratiquée au Canada à l'époque coloniale dès le début du XIXe siècle. La science sociale forma et fut formée par les conditions sociales et politiques existant dans la colonie. Notre article expose trois moments pertinents et inter‐reliés de la science sociale: la fabrication d'inventaires sociaux; l'émergence du <penser population>, et l'exercice du <gouvernement réflexif>. La réintégration de l'histoire de la sociologie canadienne dans la science sociale accentue la relation complexe et incontournable entre sociologie et pouvoir étatique.     

Adding the Organizational Perspective: How Organizations Shape Service Work Abroad

International volunteering is an increasingly popular form of service work, but the scholarship on international volunteering has done little to unpack the assertion that organizations shape the international volunteering experience. We demonstrate the utility of taking an organizational perspective by reporting on an ethnographic investigation of an international voluntary service episode in Southern India. In doing so, we attend to all of the parties common to international volunteering—the coordinating international volunteer service organization, the host NGOs, and the volunteers—and pay particular attention to the organizational dynamics that influence the service rendered. We find that the different actors in the service relationship understood successful international development efforts in different ways, which frustrated the productivity of the relationships in question. These mismatched goals were partly the legacy of a partnership-formation process that followed a cultural–historical logic rather than an instrumental one. The consequences were dissatisfaction on the part of volunteers and mixed benefits for the organizations with which they were matched. We suggest that these findings have relevance to other international volunteering sites.     

The effects of monetized food aid on reproductive behavior in rural Honduras

This article presents research findings on the question of whether the monetization of non-emergency food aid has adversely influenced national family planning program efforts in Honduras. Women receiving food aid in the form of cash coupons are compared in the study with women receiving food rations and a third group of women with similar characteristics who were not food aid recipients on three types of outcomes: recent fertility, fertility preferences, and contraceptive use. The health facilities where study subjects received health/family planning services and food aid benefits were also compared to assess possible adverse cross-program effects on family planning service delivery. A sample selection model was used in the analysis to control for unobserved differences between comparison groups. No compelling evidence for adverse demand- or supply-side effects of monetized food aid on family planning efforts was observed. The most striking study finding was the extremely high level of unmet need for family planning.     

Appropriate methods for analyzing the effect of method choice on contraceptive discontinuation

The contraceptive method chosen is an important determinant of contraceptive discontinuation. However, method choice is endogenous to contraceptive discontinuation. Using data from the 1997 Indonesia Demographic and Health Survey, we apply a multilevel multi-process model to examine the impact of method choice on three types of contraceptive discontinuation. We confirm that method choice is endogenous to the processes of contraceptive abandonment and method switching, but not failure. Ignoring the endogeneity of contraceptive choice leads to various biases in the magnitude of estimated effects of method choice on abandonment and method switching, but the general conclusions are robust to these biases.     

Birth interval and family effects on postneonatal mortality in Brazil

In this paper random-effects logistic models are used to analyze the effects of the preceding birth interval on postneonatal mortality in Brazil, controlling for the correlation of survival outcomes between siblings. The results are compared to those obtained by using ordinary logistic regression. Family effects are found to be highly significant in the random-effects model, but the substantive conclusions of the ordinary logistic model are preserved. In particular, birth interval effects remain highly significant.     

‘How come I don’t get asked no questions?’ Researching ‘hard to reach’ children and teenagers

This article discusses two related areas of research practice with children and young people that have received less attention in the literature than they might. The first is working with children and teenagers for whom the traditional, discursive nature of interview‐based research is less accessible. The second is the disinclination of researchers to report on difficulties in the research process. As researchers, we scanned the literature for assistance for some of the problems we encountered, with little reward. In describing everyday problems (and some of our – still developing – solutions) we hope to encourage more dialogue on the uncomfortable realities of the research process, and how we might improve research practice, making it a more fruitful exercise for researchers, and a more enjoyable one for children and teenagers.     

User Beware: Concerning Findings from the Post 2011–2012 U.S. Internal Revenue Service Migration Data

Population Research and Policy Review - The U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) makes publicly and freely available period migration data at the state and county levels. Among their uses, these...