THE IMPACT OF URBANIZATION ON MURDER RATES AND ON THE GEOGRAPHY OF HOMICIDE IN ENGLAND AND WALES, 1780–1850

2010 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 671-698 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER KING

ABSTRACTAlthough higher murder rates have traditionally been associated with large cities, this view has recently been challenged by several historians who have argued that ‘homicide rates were negatively correlated with urbanisation and industrialisation’, and this is rapidly becoming the new consensus. By exploring the geography of homicide rates for one area undergoing rapid urbanization and industrialization – England and Wales, 1780–1850 – this article challenges this new view and re-assesses the relationship between recorded homicide rates and both modernization and urbanization. After discussing the methodological problems involved in using homicide statistics, it focuses mainly on the first fifteen years for which detailed county-based data is available – 1834–48 – as well as looking at the more limited late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century evidence. This data raises fundamental questions about the links historians have recently made between urbanization and low homicide rates, since the remote rural parts of England and Wales generally had very low recorded murder rates while industrializing and rapidly urbanizing areas such as Lancashire had very high ones. Potential explanations for these systematic and large variations between urban and rural areas – including the impact of age structures and migration patterns – are then explored.

Author(s):  
Chi Chen ◽  
Dan Li ◽  
Trevor F. Keenan

Abstract Satellite observations show that the surface urban heat island intensity (SUHII) has been increasing over the last two decades. This is often accompanied by an increased urban-rural contrast of vegetation greenness. However, the contribution of uneven vegetation trends in urban and rural areas to the trend of SUHII is unclear, due to the confounding effects of climate change and changes in man-made amenities and anthropogenic heat sources. Here we use a data-model fusion approach to quantify such contributions during the peak growing season. We show that the LAIdif (the urban-rural difference of leaf area index) is increasing (P<0.05) in 189 of the selected 228 global megacities. The increasing trend of LAIdif from 2000 to 2019 accounts for about one quarter of the trend in satellite-derived SUHII, and the impact is particularly evident in places with rapid urbanization and rural cropland intensification. The marginal sensitivity of SUHII to LAIdif is the strongest in hot-humid megacities surrounded by croplands and in hot-dry megacities surrounded by mixed woody and herbaceous vegetation. Our study highlights the role of long-term vegetation trends in modulating the trends of urban-rural temperature differences.


2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 255-265 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Siegel ◽  
Benjamin Solomon ◽  
Anita Knopov ◽  
Emily F. Rothman ◽  
Shea W. Cronin ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-71
Author(s):  
Malsawmdawngzuali Tara ◽  
◽  
Meesala Krishna Murthy ◽  
Guruswami Gurusubramanian

An increase in urbanization and anthropogenic activities has led to a decrease in the area covered by forests which has an impact on the ecosystem and the diversity of flora and fauna. Coleopterans are a group of insects which are known to play an important role to study the impact of urbanization as they act as bioindicators. A study was conducted from September 2018 to October 2019 to determine the effect of urbanization and forest size on the beetle diversity in selected sites representing urban, semi-urban, and rural areas in and around Aizawl, Mizoram. Collection was done by setting up light traps as well as manual collection and other standard methods on a bi-monthly basis. A total of 445 beetles belonging to 15 families were collected. Identification of beetles was carried out only upto family level. Beetles community showed a significant variation in different degrees of urbanization as abundance and species diversity of beetles declined with increasing urbanization in different sites. In terms of the total number of individuals collected, the family Scarabaeidae was the most dominant (21.35%), followed by Cerambycidae (19.77%) and Lucanidae (11.91%) with the highest numbers collected from rural sites. The soil parameters were analyzed which showed a significant correlation with the forest size and this, in turn, affects the beetle diversity. Overall, the diversity of beetles (diversity index, richness, and abundance) is found to be affected in such a way that it is higher in rural sites as compared to urban sites.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (12) ◽  
pp. 1905 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qiang Ren ◽  
Chunyang He ◽  
Qingxu Huang ◽  
Yuyu Zhou

Urbanization can affect the ecological processes, local climate and human health in urban areas by changing the vegetation phenology. In the past 20 years, China has experienced rapid urbanization. Thus, it is imperative to understand the impact of urbanization on vegetation phenology in China. In this study, we quantitatively analyzed the impact of urbanization on vegetation phenology at the national and climate zone scales using remotely sensed data. We found that the start of the growing season (SOS) was advanced by approximately 2.4 days (P < 0.01), and the end of the growing season (EOS) was delayed by approximately 0.7 days (P < 0.01) in the urban areas compared to the rural areas. As a result, the growing season length (GSL) was extended by approximately 3.1 days (P < 0.01). The difference in the SOS and GSL between the urban and rural areas increased from 2001 to 2014, with an annual rate of 0.2 days (R2 = 0.39, P < 0.05) and 0.2 days (R2 = 0.31, P < 0.05), respectively. We also found that the impact of urbanization on vegetation phenology varied among different vegetation types at the national and climate zone levels (P < 0.05). The SOS was negatively correlated with land surface temperature (LST), with a correlation coefficient of −0.24 (P < 0.01), and EOS and GSL were positively correlated with LST, with correlation coefficients of 0.56 and 0.44 (P < 0.01), respectively. The improved understanding of the impact of urbanization on vegetation phenology from this study will be of great help for policy-makers in terms of developing relevant strategies to mitigate the negative environmental effects of urbanization in China.


2021 ◽  
Vol 195 ◽  
pp. 110892
Author(s):  
J.A. López-Bueno ◽  
M.A. Navas-Martín ◽  
C. Linares ◽  
I.J. Mirón ◽  
M.Y. Luna ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Wenyi Yang ◽  
Xueli Wang ◽  
Keke Zhang ◽  
Zikan Ke

In the context of the rapid development of urbanization and increasing population mobility in China, the outbreak of COVID-19 has had a significant impact on China’s economy and society. This article uses China UnionPay transaction data and takes Hubei, the worst-hit region by COVID-19 in China, as an example, to conduct empirical analysis using the generalized method of moments (GMM) of the impact of current urbanization patterns on the spread of the epidemic and economic recovery from the perspectives of time, industry, and regional differences. The study found that during the different stages of COVID-19, including discovery, outbreak, and subsidence, the overall impact of urbanization on the economy in Hubei Province was first positive, then became negative, and finally gradually increased. This process had significant industrial and urban heterogeneity, which was mainly manifested in losses in tourism and catering industries that were significantly greater than those in the audio-visual entertainment and digital office industries. Similarly, the recovery speed of large cities was lower than that of small and medium-sized cities. The main reason for these differences is that the one-sided problem of urbanization is more obvious in areas with higher urbanization rates. COVID-19 has drawn attention to the development of urbanization in the future, that is, the development path of one-sided economic resource agglomeration and scale expansion should be abandoned, with greater attention paid to the improvement of service functions and the development of amenities. This transformation is necessary to enhance urban economic resilience and reduce public health risks.


2020 ◽  
pp. 167-176
Author(s):  
Ahmad El-Atrash

The urban development and rapid urbanization that the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip have recently encountered have adversely affected the quality and availability of open spaces inside the Palestinian urban and rural areas. Public spaces are fundamental in the lives of any community striving to achieve a sustainable and inclusive environment and improve the quality of life of its inhabitants. In that respect, the prevailing planning practices fall short in terms of adequately addressing the provision of public spaces. Laws and regulations are designed to focus on limited physical properties of buildings (e.g. building design, elevation, heights, setbacks, parking, etc.,) with little or no attention to the residual space, inevitably, created between those blocks. Lands are chiefly privately owned, and considered of a very high value due to the artificial land scarcity phenomenon resulted from the geo-political classification of the West Bank Existing public spaces are not welcoming to the general public. Spaces are misplaced and scattered, they offer pre-defined activities and an inflexible environment. Many parts of the society feel alienated to such public spaces, created by a top-down process with minimal integration of their needs and aspirations.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 73-80
Author(s):  
Assefa Ayele ◽  
Kassa Tarekegn

AbstractIn a country like Ethiopia where the vast majority of the populations are employed in agriculture, land is an important economic resource for the development of rural livelihoods. Agricultural land in peri-urban areas is, however, transformed into built-up regions through horizontal urban expansion that has an effect on land use value. In recent years Ethiopia has been experiencing rapid urbanization, which has led to an ever-increasing demand for land in peri-urban areas for housing and other nonagricultural activities that pervades agricultural land. There is a high demand for informal and illegal peri-urban land which has been held by peri-urban farmers, and this plays a vital role in the unauthorized and sub-standard house construction on agricultural land. This urbanization has not been extensively reviewed and documented. In this review an attempt has been made to assess the impacts of rapid urbanization on agricultural activities. Urban expansion has reduced the areas available for agriculture, which has seriously impacted upon peri-urban farmers that are often left with little or no land to cultivate and which has increased their vulnerability. Housing encroachments have been observed to be uncontrolled due to a weak government response to the trend of unplanned city expansion. This has left peri-urban farmers exposed to the negative shocks of urbanization because significant urbanization-related agricultural land loss has a positive correlation with grain production decrease. Appropriate governing bodies should control urban development in order to control the illegal and informal spread of urbanization on agricultural land that threatens food production.


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