630 kilometres by bicycle: observations of English in urban and rural Finland

Author(s):  
Mikko Laitinen

AbstractThis article discusses selected observations of English usage in signage in Finland, a Nordic nation in which the significance of English has become more pronounced in recent decades. The background for this study comes from a large quantitative survey, carried out in 2007, charting the role of English in the Finnish society. One of the topic areas in this survey deals with people's encounters with English and its visibility in their daily life, and this article aims to add a qualitative angle to these results. The observations discussed here were collected in 2009 during a six-day bicycle trip from Helsinki to the regional centre of Oulu. The analysis moves from mere quantitative recording of signs to a more nuanced analysis of interpretations of their situated meanings in public spaces. These observations show that the presence of English in both urban and rural areas of the country is far from a simple phenomenon, and illustrate how charting signs in space provide valuable information on language contact situations.

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.


subsistence production (where in the colonial period mainly extra-economic factors such as forced cultivation or forced labour caused the integration of the peasantry in the market exchange). Socialist development was there-fore strongly identified with modernising through the rapid expansion of the state sector, that is, nationalisation and mechanisation on an ever-increasing scale. The peasantry would be gradually absorbed within this expanding sector, and hence, at first, the role of the peasantry was seen as essentially passive with its transformation mainly centring on social aspects. As such, the policy of communal villages became virtually a habitational concept (and was in actual fact the responsibility of the national directorate of housing): a question of social infrastructures (water supplies, schools, etc.) within a concept of communal life without concerning production and its transformation. This view conflicted heavily with the objective conditions in the rural areas characterised by a deep involvement of the peasantry in market relationships and their dependence on it either as suppliers of labour power or as cash crop producers. This contradiction became more obvious, when the balance of payments became a real constraint (in 1979) and, hence, the question of financing accumulation cropped up more strongly in practice. The peasantry as suppliers of cash crops, of food and of labour power to the state sectors occupied a crucial position in production and accumulation. However, the crucial question then becomes whether the peasantry only performs the role of supplying part of the accumulation fund or whether the peasantry itself is part and parcel of the process of transformation and hence that accumulation embraces as an integral part the transformation of peasant agriculture into more socialised forms of production. In other words, it poses the question whether the strategy is based on a primitive socialist accumulation on the basis of the peasantry (transferring the agrarian surplus to the develop-ment of the state sector), or whether accumulation includes the transformation of peasant agriculture. Clearly, the way this question is posed in practice will influence heavily the nature of the organisation of the exchange between the state sector and the peasantry. The proposition that the state sector can develop under its own steam (with or without the aid of external borrowing) cannot bypass this crucial question since, on the one hand, a considerable part of foreign exchange earnings and of the food supply to the towns depended on peasant production and, on the other, the very conditions of productivity and profitability in the agrarian state sector depended heavily on the organic link that existed.between labour supply and family agriculture. The monetary disequilibrium originating from the state sector has a severe impact on the organisation of the exchange between the state sector and the peasantry. First, the imbalance between the demand for and the supply of consumer commodities affected rural areas differently from urban areas. The reason was that in urban areas the rationing system guaranteed to each family a minimum quantity of basic consumer necessities at official prices. In the rural areas the principal form of rationing remained the queue! Hence, forced savings were distributed differently over urban and rural areas. Furthermore, the concentration of resources on the state sector also implied that the peasants'


2017 ◽  
Vol 2017 ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Huda Farhana Mohamad Muslim ◽  
Tetsuro Hosaka ◽  
Shinya Numata ◽  
Noor Azlin Yahya

Direct experiences with nature in childhood are essential for enhancing psychological and physical development in children. However, researches on childhood nature-related experiences and their effects are largely biased toward more developed Western countries. In this study, we created a questionnaire on childhood experiences with nature and surveyed 357 adults (>20 years old) around Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, to determine whether younger generations had fewer nature-based experiences than older generations and whether people who grew up in urban areas had fewer experiences than those who grew up in rural areas. We found that playing in rivers or waterfalls and collecting and eating tropical fruits were the most common nature-related activities experienced in childhood. There was a minimal decline in nature-related experiences among generations. However, people who grew up in rural areas had more nature-related experiences than those who grew up in urban areas. The loss of nature areas and increase in population density may accelerate the decline in nature-related experiences in urban areas. Therefore, efforts to create urban parks and other public spaces for reconnecting urban children to nature will become increasingly important for urban planning and environmental education in tropical developing countries such as Malaysia.


2014 ◽  
Vol 1044-1045 ◽  
pp. 1533-1537 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jing Chao Wang ◽  
Ning Wang

The urban-rural integration is a new stage of urbanization,which is the process of the development of productive forces and promoting the production of urban and rural residents, is the process that has the characteristics of resources between urban and rural areas of mutual integration, mutual resources, mutual market, mutual service, and which will gradually reach rural coordination between the development process. Rural tourism is derived from the developed countries of advanced concepts, with the tourism planning and designing tools of Laiyuan Huangtuling, we put the native village of the existing land, ancient architecture, historical and cultural resources together. and using the designing tools to make travel, leisure, culture, food , and other node element for redesigning, excavating the existing resources within the village, both to highlight the local characteristics, and good protection of the natural environment, and embodies the essence of the role of urban-rural integration.


2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (8) ◽  
pp. e004993
Author(s):  
Luh Putu Lila Wulandari ◽  
Mishal Khan ◽  
Marco Liverani ◽  
Astri Ferdiana ◽  
Yusuf Ari Mashuri ◽  
...  

IntroductionThe aim of this mixed-method study was to determine the extent and determinants of inappropriate dispensing of antibiotics by licensed private drug retail outlets in Indonesia.MethodsStandardised patients (SPs) made a total of 495 visits to 166 drug outlets (community pharmacies and drug stores) between July and August 2019. The SPs presented three clinical cases to drug outlet staff: parent of a child at home with diarrhoea; an adult with presumptive tuberculosis (TB); and an adult with upper respiratory tract infection (URTI). The primary outcome was the dispensing of an antibiotic without prescription, with or without the client requesting it. We used multivariable random effects logistic regression to assess factors associated with the primary outcome and conducted 31 interviews with drug outlet staff to explore these factors in greater depth.ResultsAntibiotic dispensing without prescription occurred in 69% of SP visits. Dispensing antibiotics without a prescription was more likely in standalone pharmacies and pharmacies attached to clinics compared with drug stores, with an OR of 5.9 (95% CI 3.2 to 10.8) and OR of 2.2 (95% CI 1.2 to 3.9); and more likely for TB and URTI SP-performed cases compared with child diarrhoea cases, with an OR of 5.7 (95% CI 3.1 to 10.8) and OR of 5.2 (95% CI 2.7 to 9.8). Interviews revealed that inappropriate antibiotic dispensing was driven by strong patient demand for antibiotics, unqualified drug sellers dispensing medicines, competition between different types of drug outlets, drug outlet owners pushing their staff to sell medicines, and weak enforcement of regulations.ConclusionThis study shows that inappropriate dispensing of antibiotics by private drug retail outlets is widespread. Interventions will need to address not only the role of drug sellers, but also the demand for antibiotics among clients and the push from drug outlet owners to compete with other outlets.


2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (6) ◽  
pp. 508-514 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iqbal M. Fahs ◽  
Souheil Hallit ◽  
Mohamad K. Rahal ◽  
Diana N. Malaeb

Objective: To assess the role of the pharmacist in modifying risk factors for cardiovascular disease (CVD) among Lebanese adults in urban and rural areas. Methods: In a prospective survey, 865 out of 1,000 participants aged ≥45 years, previously interviewed, agreed to be followed at 1 and 2 years time points. Parameters including blood pressure, lipid profile, blood glucose, average number of risk factors, and atherosclerotic CVD (ASCVD) risk were assessed and evaluated at the beginning of the study, then after 1 and 2 years. Results: During both follow-ups, the mean average body mass index and systolic blood pressure decreased significantly and the lipid profile improved significantly. Further significant improvements in ASCVD risk occurred during the second follow-up. Monitoring parameters revealed significant improvements as well. Conclusion: This study showed that a plan that includes pharmacists, who regularly monitor and follow-up patients, could improve CVD prevention through the reduction of risk factors.


2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 298-302
Author(s):  
Fang Wen ◽  
Zhu Wang ◽  
Yong He

Dinghai district, the central area of Zhoushan, Zhejiang Province, lies on the biggest island of Zhoushan Archipelago. Owing to its marvelous island feature, Zhoushan has been attracting more and more people to Island Tourism, Agricultural Tourism and Culture Tourism. Shuangxiao Road is a transportation line through suburban area connecting the south to the north. However, the vicinity of Shuangxiao Road fails to afford the comprehensive suburban function to coordinate urban areas with rural ones. This paper holds the opinion that Shuangxiao Road should not be treated as a road with only transportation function, but also a composite corridor and should play an important role in integrating urban and rural areas on landscape. Also, the concept "Flow" explains the crucial role of landscape corridor in suburban area. We investigate the situation along Shuangxiao Road and find out the superior resources, environmental problems and landscape potentials. Paying attention to important nodes and interfaces, with nodes renovation, facades reform and interfaces design, this paper tries to regenerate the existing corridor to a novel composite one. The composite landscape corridor not only improves the environmental conditions and conveys landscape features, but also enhances the integration of urban and rural areas.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document