Barriers and outcomes in the housing searches of new immigrants and refugees: a case study of “Black” Africans in Toronto’s rental market

Toronto is Canada’s main port of entry for new immigrants and refugees as well as the country’s most culturally diverse city. It is also one of the most expensive housing markets in Canada. This study examines the housing experiences of three relatively recent, Portuguese-speaking African immigrant groups—the Angolans, the Mozambicans, and the Cape Verdeans—in Toronto’s rental market, by examining their settlement experiences and housing search processes, as well as the outcomes of those searches. The evidence indicates that most respondents experienced discrimination by landlords in their housing search (this was less of a problem for the Cape Verdeans, who have a lighter skin colour). Both Angolans and Mozambicans encountered significant barriers in locating and securing affordable housing in a suitable neighbourhood. The study also examines their relations with the established white Portuguese community. Clearly, race (the colour of one’s skin) still matters in Toronto’s rental housing market. Racism—whether real or perceived—can result in social exclusion and housing segregation of immigrant groups in low-income neighbourhoods, and thus a slower integration of newcomers into Canadian society. This study points to the need for more comparative studies on visible and non-visible minorities, including newcomers from Africa (whether English-, French-, Spanish-, or Portuguese-speaking), to understand why certain groups are more successful than others in finding affordable housing in a neighbourhood of their choice.     

Does Gibrat’s law for cities hold when location counts?

According to Gibrat’s law, the growth rates of cities are expected to be independent of their sizes. In this study, we hypothesize that growth rates do depend on population size, but that the direction of the relationship depends on location, i.e., in unfavorable loci, growth rates are positively related to size, while the relationship is reversed in favorable loci, i.e., places with several location advantages. The present study examines that possibility, using 1990–2000 population growth data for two levels of geographic resolution—4,667 local administrative units (i.e., municipalities) and 2,189 contiguous urban areas in 40 European countries. According to our findings, when individual localities are considered, ‘proportionate’ growth (expected under Gibrat’s law) emerges at the aggregate (system-wide) level, but ‘dissipates’ when the settlement system is disaggregated into two urban sub-systems, formed by well-positioned localities and poorly positioned ones. Concurrently, for urban areas, a strong positive association between population size and growth emerges both before and after controlling for location attributes. However, this association between population size and growth is not especially strong, if favorably and unfavorably located urban areas are looked at separately.     

The role of the Alaska seafood industry: a social accounting matrix (SAM) model approach to economic base analysis

A social accounting matrix (SAM) model for Alaska is constructed to investigate the role of the state’s seafood processing industry. The SAM model enables incorporation of the unique features of Alaska economy such as (a) the existence of a large nontraditional economic base, (b) a large leakage of labor income, and (c) a very large share of intermediate inputs imported from outside the state. The role of an industry in an economy with these features cannot be examined correctly within an input–output framework, which is the method most often used for examining the importance of an industry to a region. Taking an export base view of the economy, we found seafood processing to be an important industry, generating 4.5% of the state’s total employment. While an important driver of the state’s economy, the industry has the smallest SAM multiplier mainly due to a large leakage of labor earnings and a large share of imported intermediate inputs. We also found that nontraditional economic base components such as (a) federal transfers to state and local governments, and (b) federal transfers, permanent fund dividend (PFD) payments, and other extra-regional income received by households generate about 26% of the state’s total employment and earnings.     

Behavioural responses to neighbourhood reputations

Most research on the effect of neighbourhood reputations focuses on the influence on attitudes and behaviour of non-residents. Much less attention is paid to the possible effects of a poor neighbourhood reputation on behaviour of residents. In order to get a better understanding of the effect of neighbourhoods on its residents (the so-called neighbourhood effects) and the role of neighbourhoods in the urban housing market, it is necessary to fill this gap. The aim of this paper is to review the literature on the reputation of places and to give an overview of possible behavioural responses of residents to negative neighbourhood reputations. The paper develops a model of behavioural responses of residents based on Hirschman’s ‘Exit, Voice and Loyalty’ framework. Three basic responses are central to the discussion of the literature: leaving the neighbourhood, attempting to improve the neighbourhood through neighbourhood participation, and (dis)investing in social contacts within the neighbourhood.     

Producing the Capacity to Govern in Global Sydney: A Multiscaled Account

Abstract Critiques of urban regime theory suggest the need for a more nuanced approach to the tangled scalar geographies that constitute urban governance. This article moves towards such an approach by adopting urban regime theory's focus on urban politics but conducts its analyses through a multiscalar lens. It demonstrates how processes operating across multiple scales intersect in the production of local governance. The article focuses on the social production of urban governance in Sydney, Australia, specifically examining the city's changing scalar context and scale politics. It suggests that scale‐sensitive regime analyses can make important contributions to theoretical development concerning the multiscalar complexities of governance.     

The Challenges of Global Environmental Change for Urban Africa

Cities—especially those with substantial poor populations—will face increasingly severe challenges in tackling the impacts of global environmental change (GEC). As economic dynamos and increasingly important population concentrations, cities both contribute substantially, and often are very vulnerable, to the impacts of GEC. This applies strongly in Africa, one of the world’s poorest regions. The inability of even a relatively wealthy and well-protected city such as New Orleans in the USA to withstand Hurricane Katrina has helped focus attention on the vulnerability of cities that are less protected. Coastal cities and towns from Dakar (which is used as a case study) via Lagos, Cape Town, Maputo and Mombasa to Djibouti contain many low-lying areas, often accommodating concentrations of poor residents, strategic infrastructure and economic production. However, different combinations of challenges will affect many inland urban centres. Tackling GEC successfully will require more than enhanced disaster preparedness. Action to address unsustainable aspects of everyday life and current corporate and institutional activity will be necessary. There can be no simple or universal strategy to reduce urban footprints. Local conditions (biophysical, structural, socio-economic and cultural) produce specific constraints and opportunities in each context.     

Performing the Primitive in the Postcolony: Nyoni’s Kraal in Cape Town

The production of particular spaces for tourist consumption of the “exotic” other involves the performance of particular conceptualizations of people and places that recreates theatrical versions of the primitive. Through analysis of one such space—Nyoni’s Kraal in Cape Town—we contend that both hosts and visitors are complicit in the construction of these spaces and imaginaries. To this end, practices of social and spatial policing as well as performativity and representations of cultural constructs of an “authentic Africa” are deployed in the projection of a specific form of constructed, “benign” multiculturalism. We contend that such practices reproduce a mythical idyll of Africa for consumption that recreates—rather than questions—colonial power structures, and therefore remain imbued with the inequitable and uncertain outcomes of modernity.

Design of buildings for life safety — Part II

This is a continuation of the author’s examination of conventional fire protection practices.     

Development of an optimal design aid system based on building information modeling

This study proposes an optimal building design aid system that integrates computer aided design (CAD), building environmental simulation tools and an optimization algorithm, based on the concept of building information modeling (BIM). BIM is a process of generating and managing data during a building’s life cycle. It can be used to demonstrate the entire building’s life cycle, including its construction and operation. Because the design of a build may vary from an abstract shape to precise details, the building’s database should vary accordingly. To store, manage and utilize the building’s data efficiently, we suggest an evolving database structure for our design aid system. A case study verifies that the system can acquire data from CAD, run a number of simulations and generate Pareto solutions automatically during several design stages.     

Creating places through participatory design: psychological techniques to understand people’s conceptions

Place making is fundamental in creating human settlements. It is now understood that wholesome places cannot be created by professionals without the active participation of people who should be able to transform them as their own. Approaches to place making such as the Pattern Language of Christopher Alexander and Supports of Nabeel Hamdi attempted to engage people in the process in a number of ways. Participatory techniques are central to these practices, but there remain a paucity of appropriate techniques that can be adopted in facilitating people to articulate their perceptions useful to create places. This paper examines two psychological techniques; sorting task and location task and their applicability as practiced in a recent housing project implemented in Sri Lanka. The tasks divulged a number of facets of people’s conceptualizations of their settlements; those related to the present setting, the specific places in the existing settlement, those related to the imagined places and finally the desired geographical features of the imagined places. The paper then interprets and discusses how these conceptualizations have been directed towards articulating the spaces in the designed setting so that they could be transformed by the people to become wholesome places. It demonstrates that when the idea of ‘place’ is the focus of participatory practices and by using the techniques described, meaningful places can be effectively created.     

Determinants of state diesel fuel excise tax rates: the political economy of fuel taxation in the United States

Ever-escalating gasoline and diesel fuel prices in the United States (US) are prompting some states to temporarily suspend the collections of gasoline, and in fewer instances, diesel fuel, taxes. The focus of this paper is on the determinants of US state excise taxes levied specifically on diesel fuel. Among other things, we find the freight trucking industry’s contribution to total state employment is a highly significant determinant of a state’s diesel tax rate, consistently suggesting that the greater this contribution, the lower the tax rate, ceteris paribus. We find little evidence that the degree of freight transportation usage on state highways impacts diesel tax rates. These two findings taken together suggest that state legislators, when determining the diesel tax rate, exhibit behavior consistent with Stigler’s (Bell J Econ Manag Sci 2: 3–21, 1971) economic or positive theory of regulation. Moreover, state law makers appear less concerned over the impact that heavy freight transportation has on highway infrastructure, which appears to be at odds with the public interest or normative theory of regulation as articulated by Posner (Bell J Econ Manag Sci 4: 335–358, 1974).     

Cell phones for the spirits: ancestor worship and ritual economies in vietnam and its diasporas

Religion has been thriving in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam since ??i m?i, the onset of market reforms in the late 1980s. Votive paper offerings, part of spiritual and economic well-being, play a crucial role in performing religious practices in the socialist country as well as among diasporic Vietnamese. In urban Hanoi, material objects made from paper are traded in marketplaces and later burned in the streets, in temples and pagodas, in private yards and other places on special occasions in order to be transmitted to the ancestors. In the past few years, the range of votive paper offerings produced, traded, and sent to the deceased has expanded to include new forms and references to new media. Drawing on recent debates in the role of media in religion and in particular on technologies of mediation, I focus on the use of votive paper offerings in the sociocultural context of the Vietnamese spirit world. I explore how new media and media technologies are embedded in multilayered processes of mediation in Vietnam and its diasporas. Taking religious practices of burning votive paper offerings as an ethnographic example, this essay aims to contribute to ongoing debates on popular religion and the sacred life of material goods in late socialist Vietnam, on its transnational ties, and on the entanglements between religion, media and materiality.     

A ‘Creative Class’ in South Africa’s Arid Karoo Region

There is an increasing number and variety of creative small enterprises in South Africa’s desert Karoo region. The Karoo has come to acquire considerable cachet in recent years and is being rebranded as a desirable tourist destination. It has also attracted many well-qualified and experienced migrants from urban areas. This paper draws on mainstream ‘lifestyle media’ coverage to describe this phenomenon and examines it through a lens informed by Richard Florida’s influential work, The Rise of the Creative Class. The concept of the ‘creative class’ refers to those people who make a living from creative pursuits, including artists, designers and knowledge-based professionals. The paper analyses a sample of entrepreneurs in-migrants to the Karoo, and speculates on what informs the recent re-visioning of the region. It posits the new rural ‘creative class’ as a form of social capital and explores some of the implications of this for the socio-economic upliftment of the Karoo.     

Urbanisation in Swaziland

Swaziland’s growing urban crisis, coupled with high levels of unemployment brings to attention the question, Do women migrate? Research on migration within Swaziland’s national boundaries has emphasised the role of men in the migration process, with the implication that women participate little in migration. The complexity of migration, involving social networks and connections in a number of places, as well as moves of individuals and groups between several places over time, needs to be considered for a more nuanced understanding of the role of women in migration (Trager 1995). Gould (1995:132) points out that migration does not cease in a collapsed economy, it merely takes on different forms, and in some cases the relative importance of urban and long-distance migration may be reduced. Certainly, changes in the political, social and economic structure of Swaziland and of her more powerful neighbour, South Africa, caused the migration of Swazi women to take on different forms at different times — a factor of social change within the fabric of Swazi society and economic restructuring within a Southern African regional economy. In this sense, it could be said that Swazi female migration has acted as a barometer to the continuously changing interrelationships between population movements and the development process which are intricately bound into the changing geographies of Southern African countries.     

儿童友好型城市建设背景下景观设计师的职责和角色转变

More than 20 years have passed since the launch of the Child Friendly Cities Initiative. However, relevant practices in China are still insufficient and laggard. This article concludes two reasons: 1) children participation in the design process is far insufficient and results in the failure of the expression of core users’ demands; and 2) landscape architects less think of the holism of such children spaces at a city scale with considerations on city’s cultural identity and societal backdrops, and also ignore the influence of such places on children’s development. With these problems in mind, this article proposes that landscape architects can draw inspiration from the Ecological Systems Theory and Public Participation Theory, actively expanding their responsibilities in the establishment of Child Friendly City. Following that, three international case studies, namely Growing Up Boulder Initiative, Play and Informal Recreation Strategy of London, and Green Schoolyard America, are introduced to demonstrate that landscape architects should not just design proposals, but act as coordinators among different parties and leaders of innovative urban space renovation. As the integrator of the urban spatial framework, landscape architects should go beyond the design of individual playgrounds and focus on improving community environment and the spatial pattern of the whole city, in order to protect child rights and to realize integration and improvement of urban spaces.     

Estimating the economic benefits of area-wide pest management: an extended framework with transport cost

While transport cost is an important explanatory variable in determining trade patterns and flows, existing analyses have not yet considered it in evaluating the economic consequences of technical innovation such as area-wide pest management. In this paper, we extended Alston et al.’s (Science under scarcity: principles and practice for agricultural research evaluation and priority setting, 1995) framework by incorporating transport cost and applied the extended model to assess the Hawaii Area-Wide Fruit-Fly Integrated Pest Management Program. The study results indicate that ignoring transport cost could significantly overestimate the potential gains from this program and overestimate the proportion of the benefits obtained by producer. Hence, it is imperative to take into account the effects of transport cost in estimating the welfare consequences associated with the adoption of area-wide pest management, especially when such adoption causes substantial changes in production.     

Reply to Oosterhaven’s: the net multiplier is a new key sector indicator

This paper is a reply to Oosterhaven’s reply of the paper “A critical comment on Oosterhaven–Stelder net multipliers” written by de Mesnard in this issue of The Annals of Regional Science. It is argued that, unlike Oosterhaven’s statement, (1) any coefficient must be stable but Oosterhaven–Stelder final demand ratio is not; (2) the output must be exogenous in Oosterhaven–Stelder net multipliers (NM); (3) the Leontief input–output model can be validly seen as an iterative model, time consistent; (4) there is a valid link with the Keynesian multiplier; (5) the output preservation requirement is satisfied by de Mesnard’s ‘iterative net multiplier’. The paper concludes by agreeing to Oosterhaven’s suggestion that NM is not suitable to examine causalities between endogenous and exogenous variables and that the wording ‘multiplier’ is very bad and confusing for NM. Oosterhaven’s new suggestion of terming it as ‘net contribution’ or ‘net backward linkage’ is very good.     

Resident Perceptions of the 2010 FIFA Soccer World Cup Stadia Development in Cape Town

The 2010 Federation Internationale de Football (FIFA) World Cup to be hosted in South Africa is expected to provide an opportunity to further the country’s objectives of using sporting events to signal international recognition and promote socio-economic development. Studies on sport tourism events tend to focus on economic impacts and neglect social issues (Ritchie and Adair 2004). In particular, residents’ perceptions are overlooked although they are often directly impacted by sport events, especially when they reside in close proximity to the event location. The 2010 FIFA World Cup is heralded as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity with significant legacy benefits for South Africans. However, generally, the actual voices of local residents are absent in relation to debates pertaining to this event and concomitant anticipated benefits (Swart and Bob 2007). One hundred residents in each location were interviewed. The focus of the study was to examine the perceptions of the residents towards the proposed stadia development and potential impacts of the 2010 World Cup. The findings reveal that there is considerable support and positive perceptions relating to South Africa’s hosting of the 2010 World Cup. However, there were several concerns raised in relation to the distribution of anticipated benefits and the impacts of the stadia on their lives.     

Estimation of strength and deformation properties of Quaternary caliche deposits

The aim of this study was to develop and evaluate statistical models for predicting the uniaxial compressive strength (UCS) and average Young’s modulus (E _av) for caliches, using some index and physical properties. The caliche samples, from Adana, southern Turkey, were of low strength and difficult to sample. X-ray diffraction and microscopy were undertaken and the following physical parameters established: unit weight, apparent porosity, Schmidt rebound number, Shore hardness, P-wave velocity, slake durability, point load, uniaxial compressive strength and average Young’s modulus. Simple and linear regression variable selection analyses were performed. The best relationships were obtained for UCS with P-wave velocity and unit weight and for average Young’s modulus with P-wave velocity, porosity and slake durability. Empirical equations are proposed, although it is emphasised that these may only be applicable for caliche of a similar geological character.