Spatial approaches to measure subnational inequality: Implications for Sustainable Development Goals

The United Nations expressed an interest in reducing subnational (i.e., province and state level) inequality. We propose using a spatial decomposition of the Gini coefficient (SDGC) to track changes in subnational inequality. Typically, agencies do not track summary measures of subnational clustering of development indicators. Tracking changes in the SDGC can help measure and reduce regional inequality. To illustrate the use of the SDGC, we first present data for 93 nations to obtain cross‐sectional variation. Next, to illustrate how the SDGC trends over time, changes in the Human Development Index in Mongolia are compared to Russia and China. The SDGC can show improvement, decline and persistent clustering of subnational level inequality. The SDGC is a useful measure for the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals.     

Room for manoeuvre: User participation in water resources management in Burkina Faso

Participation in natural resources management is widely promoted in sub‐Saharan Africa, but faces mounting criticism from social science scholars who rarely engage with it in practice. We use the notion of room for manoeuvre to reflect on a multi‐level participatory approach designed to support the Burkinabè Integrated Water Resources Management policy and propose ways of engaging constructively with local users and policy‐makers. Within an “invited space” of participation, water users’ room for manoeuvre was enhanced through the acquisition of new knowledge on the legal Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) framework. This allowed them to interact with decision‐makers and to extend their networks. Power imbalances were discussed, but this did not lead to modifying existing power structures that hinge on broader societal dynamics.     

Doing gender in the ‘new office’

This paper investigates how gender is performed in the context of an office setting designed to promote intensive, fluid networking. We draw on an ethnographically oriented study of the move of staff into a new office building constructed primarily from glass, and incorporating open plan offices, diverse collective areas and walking routes. Although the designers aimed to invoke changes in the behaviour of all staff, they conceptualized these changes in masculine terms. We therefore analyse the gender norms materialized by the workspaces of the ‘new office’ and how women responded to these. We suggest that the new office encourages an image of the ideal worker which brings together ways of acting and interacting that have been characterized as both masculine and feminine — active movement and spontaneous encounters, but also intensive face‐to‐face interaction and deep relationship‐building. Women are driven into this mode of working in an uncompromising, almost aggressive way, but a straightforward gender‐based dynamic does not emerge in their responses, with conventional gender characteristics being reshuffled and recombined.     

90年代以来甘肃省人力资本水平空间差异探讨

随着知识生产与创造的高素质科技劳动者逐步成为一个地区能否吸引现代经济活动的关键．人力资本在区域经济增长中越来越受到人们的关注。文章从时间和空间两方面入手．探讨了90年代以来甘肃省人力资本水平的空间差异及其变化状况。结果表明：甘肃省区域人力资本水平得到明显提高。人力资本水平的地理空间格局由1990年的中部高、西北和东南部低的“凸”字形分布渐渐转向2000年的中西北部高。而东南部低的倾斜式分布：区域人力资本水平差异仍然较大,其增长幅度的区域差异也十分显著。文章还就人力资本差异的形成机制进行了探讨,并提出了促使区域人力资本可持续发展的相关建议和对策。     

Residential mobility and the spatial dispersion of personal networks: Effects on social support

Using a representative national sample of personal networks, this article explores how the spatial dispersion of networks, residential mobility and social support are linked. Three issues will be addressed here. Firstly, how is the spatial dispersion of personal networks related to individuals’ social characteristics, network composition and residential mobility? Secondly, how do the spatial dispersion of networks, residential mobility and their combined effect influence the number and (thirdly) the structure of emotional support ties? Results showed that the extent of the support was affected neither by the geographical distribution of the networks nor by residential mobility. Living far from one's birthplace, however, exerted two distinct, and opposite effects on the support network structure. On the one hand, mobility led to high spatial dispersion of personal contacts, which in turn favored a sparsely knit network centered around the mobile individual. On the other hand, by controlling for the effect of distance between the contacts, we found that individuals that cited long-distance ties tended to be part of more transitive support networks than those that cited local ties. We interpreted the latter effect as evidence that transitive ties may survive greater spatial distances than intransitive ones. These findings are discussed in view of spatial mobility and social network research.     

城市多元生鲜市场空间格局的演变及其相互关联——以昆明主城区为例

生鲜市场关系到民生、城乡经济联系和就业等问题,孤立地研究某一类型的生鲜市场具有片面性,不利于理解整个城市的生鲜市场功能和全局管理。通过对昆明市主城区各种生鲜市场实地调查和问卷,运用ArcGIS空间叠加分析、核密度分析和统计分析等多种方法描述了该城市多元生鲜市场的空间格局的形成和演变,归纳不同生鲜市场的特征及其多元生鲜市场共存格局的原因,并对未来演变趋势进行分析,提出此消彼长的互动关联性对各主体所隐含的机遇和挑战,由此说明从地域视角开展的研究,能综合把握全局特征,以及各类型之间的彼此关联性,可弥补以往单一类型研究的不足,并对政府的相关决策进行讨论。     

城市空间关系问题研究——以黄冈与武汉城市圈内周边城市空间关系为例

城市化的快速发展使得城市空间关系不断变化,如何准确界定城市空间关系对城市战略选择至关重要。本文在总结前人对城市空间关系研究的基础上,将城市空间关系分为依附型、竞争型、共生型、异质型四种。进而在此基础上以黄冈为案例,研究黄冈与武汉城市圈内周边城市的关系,并提出黄冈的定位和发展战略。     

Understanding the theory behind the Last Planner System using the Language-Action Perspective: two case studies

Since the Last Planner System® (LPS) was devised in the early 90s, a number of studies have pointed out the need to understand the underlying theory in which it is based on. The Language-Action Perspective (LAP) has been suggested as a suitable approach to understand the management of commitments in the LPS. This paper aims to assess the contribution of LAP to understand construction planning and control systems based on LPS. Two case studies were carried out in different construction companies, both highly experienced on the use of LPS. The results reveal the role of LAP for creating explicit representations of commitment flows that can be used to explain the sources of complexity and failures in planning systems, as well as for describing the profile of planning and control meetings.     

Estimation and inference of the joint conditional distribution for multivariate longitudinal data using nonparametric copulas

In this paper we study estimating the joint conditional distributions of multivariate longitudinal outcomes using regression models and copulas. For the estimation of marginal models, we consider a class of time-varying transformation models and combine the two marginal models using nonparametric empirical copulas. Our models and estimation method can be applied in many situations where the conditional mean-based models are not good enough. Empirical copulas combined with time-varying transformation models may allow quite flexible modelling for the joint conditional distributions for multivariate longitudinal data. We derive the asymptotic properties for the copula-based estimators of the joint conditional distribution functions. For illustration we apply our estimation method to an epidemiological study of childhood growth and blood pressure.     

On generalised estimating equations for vector regression

Generalised estimating equations (GEE) for regression problems with vector‐valued responses are examined. When the response vectors are of mixed type (e.g. continuous–binary response pairs), the GEE approach is a semiparametric alternative to full‐likelihood copula methods, and is closely related to Prentice & Zhao's mean‐covariance estimation equations approach. When the response vectors are of the same type (e.g. measurements on left and right eyes), the GEE approach can be viewed as a ‘plug‐in’ to existing methods, such as the vglm function from the state‐of‐the‐art VGAM package in R. In either scenario, the GEE approach offers asymptotically correct inferences on model parameters regardless of whether the working variance–covariance model is correctly or incorrectly specified. The finite‐sample performance of the method is assessed using simulation studies based on a burn injury dataset and a sorbinil eye trial dataset. The method is applied to data analysis examples using the same two datasets, as well as to a trivariate binary dataset on three plant species in the Hunua ranges of Auckland.