A comparative static analysis of intra-urban business location and land use

It is well-known that theories of urban land use and location, set forth by von Thünen and his followers, explained quite successfully the agricultural and residential locations. Unfortunately, there has been virtually no comparative static analysis performed to probe their underlying properties. The present paper attempts accordingly to take further steps in the direction of generalizing the theory of intra-urban location and land use and to present a general comparative static analysis. It will be shown that, in general, the intra-urban optimum location is a function of the wage rate, the transport rate on the final product, the elasticity of demand, the population of the city and the income (or wealth) of the city. In the process, it is demonstrated that characteristics of production function are crucial in conducting our comparative static analysis.     

The Dialectic of Cross-Cultural Learning:What I Learned from Chinese Fellows

This brief article summarizes my positive impression of the Chinese scholars over the last fourteen years in the Special Program for Urban and Regional Studies(SPURS) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts. In particular, I highlight the fellows' intellectual humility and passion for continuous learning from others. The fellows are, however, very comprehensive in the way they analyze all aspects of design problems and quite bold in their design imagination, compared to United States' graduate students who are more cautious to propose any radical change in urban form. Surprisingly, the Chinese fellows rarely address social equity issues in project design and do not usually worry about project implementation challenges, perhaps because they assume that such issues are to be addressed by policy makers at higher levels. In contrast, the U.S. students frequently raise issues of social equity but are hesitant to propose radical changes because of limited power of public planning institutions in the United States. Such contrasts in design thinking is ideal for comparative and critical analysis which has enriched the SPURS program.     

Towards a new regional landscape

This article examines a recently implemented regional reform in Norway and some ongoing regionalization processes in two of the largest city-regions. The point of departure is the assumption that the framing of the regionalization process influences its outcome, and the principal question is to what degree they were aggregative or integrative decision processes. The national reform failed because it developed into an aggregative zero-sum power game with veto-players, as the government challenged many County Councils without creating a framework that could have made compromise possible. By contrast, the strength of the integrative processes in the two city-regions lies in the fact that they contributed to the development of governance networks with a belief in a shared destiny.     

自动喷水灭火系统喷头基本特征参数对比与选用分析

改善消防喷淋喷头性能及新品种的开发是为自动喷水灭火系统中的研究热点。结合喷头的流量系数、热敏指数（RTI）等各征参数及一些工程实际中的使用情况，对闭式喷头的适用场所及选用时应注意的几个方面进行了比较与说明，为设计应用项特自动喷水灭火系统时喷头的选用提供方便。     

A Qualitative Examination of Jim Kemeny’s Arguments on High Home Ownership,the Retirement Pension and the Dualist Rental System Focusing on Australia

A key aspect of Jim Kemeny’s argument is that in advanced economies that have high levels of home ownership, the age pension is only adequate if you have low accommodation costs. A related argument is that these societies will be dominated by what he calls a dualist rental market. In this rental market regulation is minimal and landlords hold sway. Kemeny’s thesis, was given added support by Castles’ (1998) more extensive comparative analysis. He concluded that his findings were ‘extremely supportive’ of Kemeny’s conclusion. In this paper, I use in-depth interviews to test Kemeny’s thesis. The circumstances of older homeowners and older private renters in Australia are compared. All of the interviewees were dependent solely or primarily on the government age pension. The interviews indicated that almost all of the older homeowners felt that the age pension was adequate. They were able to consume adequately, engage in leisure activities, run a car, go on holiday and they had little anxiety about their financial situation. This was especially so in the case of those interviewees drawing the couples pension. In contrast, most of the older private renters suffered from severe financial stress. Invariably they had to use a large proportion of their income to pay for accommodation, and as a result, they found it difficult to purchase basic items and any unexpected expense precipitated much anxiety. Their limited resources severely impacted on their capacity to sustain social contacts, engage in leisure activities and look after their health. In addition to having limited resources, many had minimal security of occupancy. The interviews strongly substantiated Kemeny’s original thesis. They illustrated that within a dualist rental market the housing tenure and attendant accommodation costs of a person dependent on the government age pension are crucial determinants of their capacity to live a decent life.     

端弯矩作用下钢梁设计公式与评价

根据Salvadori公式,提出一种新的计算H型钢梁在不等端弯矩作用下的侧扭屈曲临界弯矩值的公式,通过有限元ABAQUS和ANSYS两种软件进行模拟并与提出的公式进行对比,对比结果良好,说明该公式建立的正确性。为了进一步验证公式的适用性,文中还将该公式与各国规范公式进行了对比分析,对比结果吻合良好,由此得出该公式对实际的工程有指导作用。     

The role of comparative city policy data in assessing progress toward the urban SDG targets

As part of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, all countries have agreed to “make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”. We argue that there is a critical need for large-scale comparative city policy data that, when linked with outcome data, could be used to identify where policies are working and where they could be improved. In an assessment of the landscape of existing city policy data, based on a comprehensive scoping review, we find that existing databases are insufficient for the purposes of comparative analysis. We then describe what an “ideal” city policy database would look like, where it could be housed, and how it could be developed. Such a database could be a key tool for achieving SDG 11, the urban Sustainable Development Goal.     

Urbanization and spatial planning in an international perspective

This contribution compares Germany, France, and the United Kingdom with the Netherlands on a number of issues. The focus is on (a) processes of urbanization and (b) urban policies (broadly defined in an economic, social, and ecological sense). These issues are seen in relation to national spatial planning. The authors combine the findings of this comparative analysis with the results of previous research by one of the authors. At the end, they draw some conclusions and make recommendations for the next (Fifth) Report on Physical Planning in the Netherlands. Ton Kreukels is professor of Urban and Regional Planning, Faculty of Geographical Sciences at Utrecht University. From 1986 to 1992, he was also a member of the Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy. Then, and especially in this last position, his research was focused on a study of the four big cities and city regions in the Netherlands: Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, and Utrecht. From 1992 up to the present, he has been involved in a comparative study of urban regions in Europe, including those of the Netherlands. Egge-Jan Pollé is a human geographer from Utrecht University. In 1996, while a junior-researcher at Utrecht University, he worked together with the first author on the study about Germany, France, and the United Kingdom that is reported in this article. That study was commissioned by the Netherlands National Spatial Planning Agency.     

The Inventory Approach to Urban Growth Boundaries

In this article, we argue that insights can be gained by analyzing the use of urban growth boundaries (UGBs) for urban growth management as an inventory problem. The analysis provides three useful insights. First, it shows that where UGBs are employed, too much emphasis is placed on whether UGBs contain sufficient land to accommodate 20 years of growth and too little is placed on how frequently, how much, or under what circumstances UGBs should be expanded. Second, it shows that where market factors are used, they have been used inappropriately to increase the size of UGBs immediately after expansion, when they should be used to influence the size of UGBs immediately before expansion. Third, it shows that UGBs are likely to work better if expansions occur not after an arbitrary period of time, but when the supply—or the price—of land reaches some critical threshold. We conclude by asserting that the use of UGBs should not be governed by arbitrary rules of thumb, because such rules do not stand up to critical examination, they preclude adaptation to local situations, and they prevent experimentation.     

浅谈中国建筑企业的文化建设

文章从企业文化的朔源出发,运用比较分析法研究一般企业文化与建筑企业文化的异同。结合建筑企业的运作特点,浅层次的研究建筑企业文化建设的途径和方法,并就其热点问题做初步的探讨。