A Critique of Localist Political Economy and Urban Agriculture

2012 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 75-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Greg Sharzer
Keyword(s):  
Urban Agriculture ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Spatial Relations ◽  
Land Values ◽  
Community Garden ◽  
Land Uses ◽  
Urban Farm ◽  
Use Values ◽  
Global North ◽  
Mode Of Production

Abstract In the Global North, Urban Agriculture (UA) is being considered as a way to overcome malnutrition and promote local, ethical production. UA can be understood through two phenomena integral to the capitalist mode of production: capital centralisation and rent. Centralisation explains why capitalist agriculture industrialises, while rent provides a theoretical framework for understanding how social and spatial relations structure urban land uses. Urban farming can occupy niches of the capitalist marketplace; however, its prospects for replacing large-scale agriculture and providing similar use-values are limited. Its expansion is bounded by rising land values expressed in rent, as Detroit’s urban farm, Markham’s food belt, Los Angeles’s community garden, and initiatives in other cities demonstrate. The key tasks for political ecologists are two-fold: situating UA within capital’s drive to accumulate and proposing strategic perspectives that challenge these inherent tendencies.

scholarly journals Reframing refugee crisis: A “European crisis of migration” or a “crisis of protection”?

2021 ◽  
pp. 239965442198970
Author(s):  
Maissaa Almustafa
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Global South ◽  
Global Media ◽  
Developing Regions ◽  
International Protection ◽  
High Commissioner ◽  
The Face ◽  
Global North ◽  
Displaced People ◽  
Resettlement Programs

The end of 2015 witnessed a global record in the number of forcibly displaced people fleeing because of wars and persecution. The unprecedented total of 65.3 million displaced individuals, out of which 21.3 million were refugees, was the highest number that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has recorded since its establishment in 1950. During the same year and in the face of this large-scale crisis, only 107,100 refugees were admitted for resettlement through official resettlement programs, whereas 3.2 million people applied for asylum globally. And in spite of the fact that the majority of the world refugees are hosted in ten developing regions, the dominant narrative in the global media was about the “unauthorized” arrival of more than one million asylum seekers in Europe by sea during 2015. This paper argues that the unexpected nature of refugees’ arrivals has proven that refugees were supposed to be contained in their camps in the Global South, deterred from reaching the territories of the Global North, represented here by Europe. Thus, the paper proposes that these arrivals are rather reflections of a crisis of protection that developed in the Global South where containment and deterrence strategies against refugees from the Global South exacerbate their inhumane displacement conditions in home regions. In the same context, the paper discusses how international protection structures have been reconstructed to serve the same goals of containment and deterrence, with the ultimate aim of putting people ‘back in place’ with minimal access to protection and rights.

Screenwriting

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Belodubrovskaya
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Mode Of Production

Throughout the Stalin period cinema experienced a perpetual “scenario crisis,” or a shortage of suitable screenplays. This was due to the lack of professionalization in Soviet screenwriting and to the director-centered mode of production. Studios had no personnel to convert potential stories into solid, censorship-proof scripts, and directors had an outsized role in screenwriting through the practice of the director’s scenarios. Lacking a large contingent of professional screenwriters who could write on order, the industry focused on mobilizing established writers to author high-quality literary screenplays. Writers did not deliver masterpieces, while weakening censorship and making it only more difficult to produce films on a large scale.

Multistep Flow Prediction on Car-Sharing Systems: A Multi-Graph Convolutional Neural Network with Attention Mechanism

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (11n12) ◽  
pp. 1727-1740 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hongming Zhu ◽  
Yi Luo ◽  
Qin Liu ◽  
Hongfei Fan ◽  
Tianyou Song ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Spatial Relations ◽  
Attention Mechanism ◽  
Temporal Relations ◽  
Car Sharing ◽  
Flow Prediction ◽  
Proposed Model ◽  
Decoder Architecture ◽  
Deep Learning Model

Multistep flow prediction is an essential task for the car-sharing systems. An accurate flow prediction model can help system operators to pre-allocate the cars to meet the demand of users. However, this task is challenging due to the complex spatial and temporal relations among stations. Existing works only considered temporal relations (e.g. using LSTM) or spatial relations (e.g. using CNN) independently. In this paper, we propose an attention to multi-graph convolutional sequence-to-sequence model (AMGC-Seq2Seq), which is a novel deep learning model for multistep flow prediction. The proposed model uses the encoder–decoder architecture, wherein the encoder part, spatial and temporal relations are encoded simultaneously. Then the encoded information is passed to the decoder to generate multistep outputs. In this work, specific multiple graphs are constructed to reflect spatial relations from different aspects, and we model them by using the proposed multi-graph convolution. Attention mechanism is also used to capture the important relations from previous information. Experiments on a large-scale real-world car-sharing dataset demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach over state-of-the-art methods.

scholarly journals Visual-Semantic Graph Reasoning for Pedestrian Attribute Recognition

2019 ◽  
Vol 33 ◽  
pp. 8634-8641 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qiaozhe Li ◽  
Xin Zhao ◽  
Ran He ◽  
Kaiqi Huang
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Relational Learning ◽  
Spatial Relations ◽  
Semantic Relations ◽  
Prediction Problem ◽  
Convolutional Network ◽  
Semantic Graph ◽  
Spatial Graph ◽  
Attribute Recognition

Pedestrian attribute recognition in surveillance is a challenging task due to poor image quality, significant appearance variations and diverse spatial distribution of different attributes. This paper treats pedestrian attribute recognition as a sequential attribute prediction problem and proposes a novel visual-semantic graph reasoning framework to address this problem. Our framework contains a spatial graph and a directed semantic graph. By performing reasoning using the Graph Convolutional Network (GCN), one graph captures spatial relations between regions and the other learns potential semantic relations between attributes. An end-to-end architecture is presented to perform mutual embedding between these two graphs to guide the relational learning for each other. We verify the proposed framework on three large scale pedestrian attribute datasets including PETA, RAP, and PA100k. Experiments show superiority of the proposed method over state-of-the-art methods and effectiveness of our joint GCN structures for sequential attribute prediction.

Constructing Cognitive Maps from Partial Information: A Demonstration Study with Congenitally Blind Subjects

1983 ◽  
Vol 77 (5) ◽  
pp. 195-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
James F. Herman ◽  
Therese G. Herman ◽  
Steven P. Chatman
Keyword(s):  
Visually Impaired ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Partial Information ◽  
Cognitive Maps ◽  
Spatial Relations ◽  
Congenitally Blind ◽  
Fair Degree

Congenitally blind subjects (mean age = 17:2) explored haptically a subset of spatial relations among four objects on a table top. They were then asked to walk all the paths connecting the objects in a large-scale environment. Subjects were able to deduce the overall arrangement of locations from any point in the large-scale environment with a fair degree of accuracy. It is argued that tactual maps could be used to introduce visually impaired individuals to the general rather than specific relationships among objects in a large-scale environment.

The economics of soil structural degradation under cropping: some empirical estimates from New Zealand

Soil Research ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 36 (5) ◽  
pp. 831 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. G. Scrimgeour ◽  
T. G. Shepherd
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Contingent Valuation ◽  
Soil Structure ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
Land Values ◽  
Policy Response ◽  
Structural Degradation ◽  
Empirical Estimates ◽  
Use Values

Soil structural degradation is a problem of some arable farms in New Zealand. This paper presents economic estimates of the significance of the loss of soil structure to farmers and the Manawatu region of New Zealand. Contingent valuation surveys of farmers and the wider community were used to estimate both use and non-use values. The results show the significance of compaction on both farm profits and land values, together with the lack of knowledge of the wider community concerning this problem. They reinforce the importance of careful farm practice, further scientific research, and a considered public policy response.

scholarly journals DEMOLITION, REHABILITATION, AND CONSERVATION: HERITAGE IN SHANGHAI’S URBAN REGENERATION, 1990–2015

2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 82-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaohua ZHONG ◽  
Xiangming CHEN
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Population Growth ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Urban Redevelopment ◽  
Land Values ◽  
Heritage Preservation ◽  
Property Development ◽  
Central Cities ◽  
Heritage Sites ◽  
Three Stages

Urban heritage sites in central cities are most difficult to protect during rapid and large scale urban (re)development. Rising land values from property development conflict with and constrain heritage preservation. Compared with many cities in developed and developing countries, large Chinese cities have experienced a stronger redevelopment imperative, faster population growth, and a weaker concern for urban heritages over the last three decades. We use Shanghai to examine the contested evolution of heritage preservation against massive urban redevelopment through three stages from 1990 to the present. Using three heritage projects (Xintiandi, Tianzifang, Bugaoli), we focus on: 1) how each project was implemented and the economic and spatial outcomes each has produced; 2) how the mode of each project’s development interacted with the shifting official policies for heritage preservation; and 3) the implications of the findings, theoretical and practical, for more effective urban preservation.

scholarly journals Analysis of Household Participation in Urban Agriculture: Empirical Evidence from Urban Households in Kogi State, Nigeria

2020 ◽  
pp. 23-31
Author(s):  
M. K. Ibrahim ◽  
M. Haruna ◽  
U. M. Shaibu
Keyword(s):  
Urban Agriculture ◽  
Household Income ◽  
Sampling Technique ◽  
Simple Random Sampling ◽  
Primary Data ◽  
Easy Access ◽  
Farm Income ◽  
Urban Farm ◽  
Household Heads ◽  
Sufficient Food

The study analysed household participation in urban agriculture in Kogi State, Nigeria. It specifically; described the socioeconomic characteristics of the respondents; determined the factors that influence household participation in urban agriculture; and determined the effect of urban agriculture on household income. Simple random sampling technique was used to select 60 respondents each from four purposively selected peri-urban/urban centres in Kogi State: Lokoja (Zone A), Anyigba (Zone B), Okene (Zone C), and Idah (Zone D). Primary data obtained through questionnaire administration were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistical tools. Findings from the study revealed that 61.7% of the respondents were males and a mean age of 43 years was recorded. Married (90%) household heads dominated the respondents with a mean household size of 7 members. Education (β = -0.862), dependent (β = 1.904), marital status (β = 2.544), access to sufficient food (β = -2.495), employment status (β = 1.307) and access to land (β = 0.505) statistically influenced household participation in urban agriculture, while the OLS output indicated that urban farm income (β = 17.539) and non-farm income (β = 848.798) had significant effect on total household income. The study concluded that urban agriculture has the potential of improving the livelihood of urban dwellers. The study therefore recommends the integration of urban agriculture into urban development plan; easy access to land and other production inputs.

scholarly journals The Land Use - Land Degradation Nexus in Mediterranean Landscapes – Drivers of Changes And Key Processes at Selected Natura 2000 Sites of Crete, Greece

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 13-24
Author(s):  
Burghard C. Meyer ◽  
Fabian Kirsten ◽  
Dietmar Sattler ◽  
Jürgen Heinrich
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Land Degradation ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Land Use Changes ◽  
Natura 2000 ◽  
Field Work ◽  
Research Field ◽  
Processes Of Change ◽  
Land Uses ◽  
Mediterranean Landscapes

AbstractThe land use–land degradation nexus in Cretan landscapes in regions with Natura 2000 sites was analyzed by an explorative expert driven study based on literature, field work and photo documentation methods with the aim of determining status, drivers and key processes of change. Drivers of current land use changes have been worked out by (1) general tourism developments and tourism related land uses; (2) irrigated olive yard developments; (3) fenced large-scale goat pastures and (4) large scale greenhouses. Key processes of change have been identified and qualitatively assessed for 5 regions with NATURA 2000 areas based on a non-ranked set of 11 descriptive indicators. The analysis includes the status-description and the importance assessment of land degradation processes in selected NATURA 2000 sites. Threats and pressures taken from the NATURA 2000 documentation and the land use – land degradation nexus and the analysis are a suitable basis for future land management in order to reach land degradation neutrality. The result of our analysis opens a new research field for a better integration of the normally thematically isolated analysis in geography, biology/nature conservation and agricultural policy analysis about the drivers and processes in landscape systems towards a better understanding the trends in land cover change (e.g. vegetation/soil degradation), the trends in productivity or functioning changes caused by land uses and as well for the trends in carbon stock change.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document