Spatial configurations of urban forest in different landscape and socio-political contexts: identifying patterns for green infrastructure planning

Rapid urbanisation and climate change have motivated the development of urban green infrastructure (UGI) as a planning strategy to support the wellbeing of urban people and ecosystems while parallel adapting cities to climate change. Forest (tree-covered areas >0.5 ha) is a key UGI component that afford a wider range of ecosystem services and mitigate urban heat islands more effectively than non-wooded green spaces. However, understanding of spatial configurations (variation in patch size and frequency) of forests across the gradient of urbanisation and between cities is limited to case studies. This represents a considerable knowledge gap for identification of general patterns that can inform integration of forest resources in UGI planning that have value beyond the individual city level. In this study we used Geographic Information Systems to explore the spatial configuration of forests across cities located within landscapes characterised by different levels of anthropogenic modification (degree of forest cover) and socio-political contexts, i.e. all Danish and Swedish cities >10,000 inhabitants (n = 176). We applied general linear modelling to investigate the relationship between forest cover, patch size and frequency with 1) regional landscape type, 2) demographic trends 1960–2010, and 3) the gradient of urbanisation (measured in three zones: urban core (0.2 km from city boundary), urban fringe (0.2–2 km), and urban periphery (2–5 km)). Regardless of demographic trends, forest cover was lowest in cities settled in large-scale agricultural regions, higher in regions with mosaics of forest and farming, and highest in forest-dominated regions. However, in all cities forest cover was lowest in the urban zone and peaked on the urban fringe rather than on the urban periphery. Furthermore, pocket woods (0.5–2 ha) accounted for over 50 % of patches in all three urban zones, irrespective of regional landscape type. We conclude by discussing how these general patterns could inform strategies for integration of urban forests in UGI planning.     

Turning Points, Bottlenecks, and the Fallacies of Counterfactual History

Arguments for historical turning points are sometimes put forward as a principled argument against causal determinism of the course of world history; sometimes as clever curiosities and flights of imagination. I will attempt to show that the logic of turning-point arguments does not disprove historical causality but, on the contrary, depends on belief in causality. Sometimes, this is only an implicit belief in the clichés of folk historiography; occasionally, a serious sociology is explicitly invoked. In either case, there is a tendency to misperceive how historical causality works through broadly-based processes that are not easily stopped or drastically diverted by particular events.     

The effects of multiracial identification on students’ perceptions of racism

This paper compares the differing perceptions of racism reported by White (n = 222), Black (n = 99), and White–Black multiracial (n = 45) students at an urban campus of a Southern university. Using one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), we examine the differences between the racial groups in three campus contexts—campus in general, with instructors, and with other students. Items chosen for analysis included behaviors or actions experienced by at least 4% of the respondents. In nearly all areas, the multiracial student group reported the most experience with prejudice. We employ standpoint theory to discuss these findings.     

Growth in family income inequality, 1970–1990: Industrial restructuring and demographic change

Industrial restructuring and changing population composition frequently have been treated as competing explanations of growing U.S. income inequality. Using the Gini coefficient, we employ a model of conditional change to explore the relative effects of each on changes of family income distribution between 1970 and 1990, across 784 metropolitan areas and public use microdata areas (PUMAs). Changes in both industrial structure and population characteristics are found to have significant and opposite effects on family income distribution, although there are sharp differences by decade in the dynamics that underlie increasing inequality. Our central conclusion is that it is too soon to eliminate deindustrialization as a significant cause of increased earnings inequality.     

You can go home again: Evidence from longitudinal data

In this paper we analyze the economic and demographic factors that influence return migration, focusing on generation 1.5 immigrants. Using longitudinal data from the 1979 youth cohort of the National Longitudinal Surveys (NLSY79), we track residential histories of young immigrants to the United States and analyze the covariates associated with return migration to their home country. Overall, return migration appears to respond to economic incentives, as well as to cultural and linguistic ties to the United States and the home country. We find no role for welfare magnets in the decision to return, but we learn that welfare participation leads to lower probability of return migration. Finally, we see no evidence of a skill bias in return migration, where skill is measured by performance on the Armed Forces Qualifying Test.     

Reassessing the Insurance Effect: A Qualitative Analysis of Fertility Behavior in Senegal and Zimbabwe

A number of prominent demographers have recently reiterated the argument that a lasting mortality decline is a key determinant of the fertility transition. Of the main hypothesized pathways linking fertility to mortality, the one least studied is the insurance hypothesis: the notion that, in high‐mortality contexts, people decide to have more children in order to anticipate possible future child deaths and lessen the risks of having too few surviving offspring. In‐depth interviews and focus groups from Zimbabwe and Senegal are used to examine this hypothesis and to extend it into a broader theory of reproductive decision making under uncertainty. Whereas insurance strategies are frequent in Zimbabwe and occur in urban Senegal, in the higher‐mortality settings—the rural Senegalese site and the recent past described by respondents in Zimbabwe and urban Senegal—deliberate fertility‐limitation strategies are rare. The data depict fundamental changes in attitudes, strategies, and behaviors concerning family size over time and, in Senegal, over space. Important reproductive goals and risks extend far beyond numbers of children and mortality. Parents seek to have healthy, successful children for many reasons including companionship, descendants, and old‐age support. Diverse investments in child quality (their education, health, etc.) and quantity (numbers of births) are the main means to attain these goals and, less recognized by demographers, are also important ways for parents to manage uncertainty in family‐building outcomes; the “classic” insurance mechanism is only one, often minor, aspect of the quantity option.