Modeling urbanism: Economic,social and environmental stress in cities

The time has come for urban social indicator research to converge with the basic substantive efforts of urban researchers. Such a convergence may propel both basic and applied researchers toward more fruitful outcomes. This paper argues that the traditional model of urbanism provides the medium for the convergence. When urbanism is conceptualized to be multidimensional, seemingly discreet indicators of demographic, economic, social, and environmental conditions in cities may be incorporated into a more general model of urban structure and change. Specifically, using social indicators for 195 cities from ZPG's Children's Stress Index and the 1990 U.S. Census, we show empirically: (1) Urbanism is a complex factor with four distinct dimensions: demographic scale, economic stress, social stress, and environmental stress. (2) These four dimensions of urbanism may be reliably measured with standard composite variables used in today's social indicator research. (3) Within the Urbanism factor there are causal connections among the separate dimensions, the most basic of which is that asserted by arguments from the traditional theory of urbanism; specifically, that population size, density, and social heterogeneity are causally linked to stress in economic, social, and environmental systems of the city.     

World population beyond six billion

This world report reviews population growth pre-1900, population change during 1900-50 and 1950-2000, causes and effects of population change and projections to 2050. World population grew from 2 billion in 1900 to almost 6 billion in 2000. Population showed more rapid growth in the 17th and 18th centuries. Better hygiene and public sanitation in the 19th century led to expanded life expectancies and quicker growth, primarily in developed countries. Demographic transition in the 19th and 20th centuries was the result of shifts from high to low mortality and fertility. The pace of change varies with culture, level of economic development, and other factors. Not all countries follow the same path of change. The reproductive revolution in the mid-20th century and modern contraception led to greater individual control of fertility and the potential for rapid fertility decline. Political and cultural barriers that limit access affect the pace of decline. Population change is also affected by migration. Migration has the largest effect on the distribution of population. Bongaarts explains differences in fertility by the proportion in unions, contraceptive prevalence, infertility, and abortion. Educational status has a strong impact on adoption of family planning. Poverty is associated with multiple risks. In 2050, population could reach 10.7 billion or remain low at 7.3 billion.     

Stochastic Templates for Aquaculture Images and a Parallel Pattern Detector

A general statistical approach is presented for the identification of objects in digital images, motivated by an application in aquaculture involving underwater images of fish. Using Procrustes analysis, a point distribution model is fitted on a set of training images and used as a prior distribution for the shape of a deformable template. The likelihood of a proposed template is calculated in terms of the response from a feature detector along the boundary of the template. The posterior distribution of template variables is examined by using Markov chain Monte Carlo analysis. A key challenge in the aquaculture application is the variable nature of edges arising from the surface curvature of fish and the low contrast between the foreground and background. Conventional gradient-based edge detection proves inadequate, but a parallel pattern detector copes much better. Results are presented for a fully automated analysis of the database. The strengths and weaknesses of this approach are discussed and future developments are outlined.     

Social and Economic Distress in Large Cities, 1970–1990: A Test of the Urban Crisis Thesis

This paper is a test of the urban crisis thesis, which argues that the social and economic conditions of large cities have continued to deteriorate since 1970. In addition, we examine the factors that account for differences in social distress among the cities. Finally, we investigate the regional location effect on urban social distress. In general the findings show both cross-sectionally and longitudinally that (1) the urban crisis has become worse over the years; (2) differences in social distress among cities are largely a function of economic distress, urban scale, and regional location; and (3) levels of distress have converged among cities in the old industrial North (the Rustbelt) and the South and West (the Sunbelt). In fact, the most distressed cities in the country are in the Sunbelt.     

An application of social choice theory to U.S.D.A. forest service decision making

To meet the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, the U.S.D.A. Forest Service has changed the way forest plans are developed. The focus of this paper is to address the group-decision problem using social choice theory, specifically the voting models of Condorcet and Borda. The elements of a social choice problem are voters, alternatives, preferences, and aggregation. A case study from the Shoshone National Forest is used to demonstrate the use of the voting models from social choice theory. The solutions derived from the analysis are strategy and coalitional strategy proof implying that behaviors intended to influence the outcome, such as vote trading, would be unsuccessful.     

World society and the natural environment

We review the world society approach to explaining macrohistorical change generally and as it relates to the natural environment specifically. Our review includes work describing the rise of the environmental world society as well as empirical evidence of the consequences of national ties to world society for policy adoption, practices, and individual attitudes at the national level. Additionally, we suggest the application of world society theory to state and substate structures. Throughout the review, we situate the world society literature in relationship to work in the fields of cross‐national comparative and environmental sociology from a variety of other perspectives. We take a forward‐looking approach to our review of theoretical and empirical work in the field and consider the implications for normative change and resistance to prevailing world cultural norms. We conclude with a discussion of the resurgence of nationalism especially as it relates to antienvironmentalism.     

Ritualistic sacrifice in crisis communication: A case for eliminating scapegoating from the crisis/apologia lexicon

The crisis strategy of scapegoating has been part of the crisis and image restoration lexicon for more than four decades. And yet, the practice of scapegoating is a well-known unethical practice that simply deflects deserved blame from one party to a sacrificial other. This essay critiques the “Primary Crisis Response” strategy of scapegoating, conducting an historical and ethical critique of the crisis strategy, and concludes that scapegoating should be removed from the public relations crisis and image restoration lexicon.     

Strategy restoration

Discussions of strategic change generally assume that managers strive to break free from the constraints of their organization's past so that they can forge ahead into the future. However, some organizations instead opt to reinterpret and reenact abandoned strategies drawn from their own history. Such actions are largely unaccounted for in the literature on strategic change. Accordingly, we propose here a conceptualization of a distinct type of strategic change that we call “strategy restoration.” We first outline how strategy restoration fills a gap in current understandings of strategic change. We then elaborate conditions that motivate and enable organizations to pursue strategy restoration rather than other types of strategic change. Two components of the framework—organizational traditionality and memory—characterize the organization itself, and two—nostalgia and perceptions of the organization's authenticity—characterize the market in which the organization operates. The proposed conceptualization of strategy restoration and discussion of its underlying mechanisms carry implications for researchers and managers.