From a world history perspective, the most noticeable trend in the history of the late 19th century was the domination of Europeans over Non­Europeans. This domination took many forms ranging from economic penetration to outright annexation. No area of the globe, however remote from Europe, was free of European merchants, adventurers, explorers or western missionaries. Was colonialism good for either the imperialist or the peoples of the globe who found themselves subjects of one empire or another? A few decades ago, the answer would have been a resounding no. Now, in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the more or less widespread discrediting of Marxist and Leninist analysis, and the end of the Cold War, political scientists and historians seem willing to take a more positive look at Nineteenth Century Imperialism. One noted current historian, Niall Ferguson has argued that the British Empire probably accomplished more positive good for the world than the last generation of historians, poisoned by Marxism, could or would concede. Ferguson has argued that the British Empire was a \" liberal \" empire that upheld international law, kept the seas open and free, and ultimately benefited everyone by ensuring the free flow of trade. In other words, Ferguson would find little reason to contradict the young Winston Churchill's assertion that the aim of British imperialism was to: give peace to warring tribes, to administer justice where all was violence, to strike the chains off the slave, to draw the richness from the soil, to place the earliest seeds of commerce and learning, to increase in whole peoples their capacities for pleasure and diminish their chances of pain. It should come as no surprise that Ferguson regards the United States current position in the world as the natural successor to the British Empire and that the greatest danger the U.S. represents is that the world will not get enough American Imperialism because U.S. leaders often have short attention spans and tend to pull back troops when intervention becomes unpopular. It will be very interesting to check back into the debate on Imperialism about ten years from now and see how Niall Ferguson's point of view has fared! The other great school of thought about Imperialism is, of course, Marxist. For example, Marxist historians like E.J. Hobsbawm argue that if we look at the l9th century as a great competition for the world's wealth and …

The New Imperialism

The Brazilian Amazon and Cerrado biomes have been subject to strong pressure from agricultural expansion over the past decades. It is frequently claimed that the associated tree cover loss was partly driven by land speculation. In the mid-2000s, the Brazilian government implemented an innovative policy regime to combat deforestation with a strong focus on the Amazon region. While there is solid evidence that the new environmental governance approach was effective in reducing Amazon forest loss, some research indicates that leakage effects have contributed to increasing land conversion in the Cerrado. In this paper, we contribute to investigating these hypotheses using land market data covering the period from 2001 to 2012. Based on land rent and hedonic valuation theory, we use a first difference panel regression analysis to decompose forestland prices into land rent, conversion costs, and speculative attributes. We then assess whether, where, and to what extent conservation policy shocks affect forestland prices over time. Our measures of speculation and conservation are significant in all our model specifications. Our findings suggest that land prices represent an indicator for spatially and temporally shifting land demand and related speculative behavior, and the presence of conservation policy leakage in Brazil.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab003a/pdf

Land speculation and conservation policy leakage in Brazil

This is problematic, since research has also found that, in some cities, especially those in the Global South, a large percentage of women are "transit captives".

Transit Crime and Sexual Violence in Cities : International Evidence and Prevention

Regional-Global, Dilemas da Região e da Regionalização na Geografía Contemporânea

Environmental injustices on green and blue infrastructure: Urban nexus in a macrometropolitan territory

La question du role des mobilites quotidiennes comme facteur d’inegalites socio-spatiales se pose avec une grande acuite en Amerique latine, du fait des caracteristiques de l’urbanisation sur ce continent : une transition urbaine bien avancee, des metropoles « millionnaires » tres etalees et peu denses, marquees par de profondes inegalites sociales, une tres forte segregation socio-residentielle, ainsi qu’une inequitable repartition des emplois dans la ville. L’objectif est d’explorer ici le lien entre les deplacements domicile-travail et les inegalites socio-spatiales dans trois metropoles contrastees (Bogota, Santiago, Sao Paulo). Nous montrons qu’au-dela du simple effet de la hierarchie sociale, l’effet territorial est determinant sur les conditions de mobilite quotidienne des citadins.

https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-01110006/document

Mobilités quotidiennes et inégalités socio-territoriales à Bogotá, Santiago du Chili et São Paulo

Cet article, avant tout methodologique, explore la dispersion spatiale des lieux d’activite (etude et travail) frequentes au quotidien par des individus au regard de leurs caracteristiques sociodemographiques et de leur lieu de residence, dans l’agglomeration de Sao Paulo. L’etude repose sur l’exploitation de donnees d’enquetes sur les systemes de mobilites realisees aupres d’un echantillon de menages. L’accent est mis sur la demarche qui fait intervenir une serie d’analyses centrographiques que l’on combine dans un deuxieme temps a une analyse typologique. Nous montrons l’interet de recourir a ces outils pour apprehender et visualiser les inegalites d’acces aux ressources urbaines en lien avec le cycle de vie des individus, la hierarchie sociale et le lieu de residence.

/pdf/inegalites-d-acces-aux-ressources-de-la-ville-analysees-a-l-30gc3yekwh.pdf

Inégalités d’accès aux ressources de la ville analysées à l’aide des mobilités quotidiennes : approche méthodologique exploratoire à São Paulo

The article aims to reveal the heterogeneities and fragmentations of the produced space in the Sao Paulo Macrometropolis, unveiling the characteristics of its holes - territories that, on one hand, do not make up the urban-industrial arrangements that give identity to this city-region, yet they do provide ecosystem services and enable other ways of life. The article arose from a conceptual survey about this city-region, focusing on the vision of heterogeneity, fragmentation and symbolic construction, and reflects on the identity and produced space in the Sao Paulo Macrometropolis (SPMM) to support the empirical analysis of the region. Through spatial analysis it presents the characteristics of territories of the Macrometropolis that are not brought to light analytically, nor are they the focus of public policies, despite their regional importance.

/pdf/heterogeneity-and-spatial-fragmentation-in-the-sao-paulo-31p8q503mo.pdf

Heterogeneity and spatial fragmentation in the sao paulo macrometropolis: the production of borders and holes

The Brazilian government has been heavily investing in transportation infrastructure. According to environmental laws, this kind of enterprise must do an environmental impact assessment (EIA). However, the EIA is a regulatory measure applied post-project, which allows for limited project changes. For increasing environmental viability of the project, changes should be done from earlier steps of the project in a regional or national strategic planning context. For the transportation sector, a National Plan on Logistics and Transportation (NPLT) recommends aims, targets and plans for Brazil and neighboring countries for the future. We have evaluated the environmental aspects of the NPLT as showed in three reports from 2007, 2009 and 2012. The first report (2007) has summarized the trajectory of transportation planning in Brazil, since the military dictatorship period in the 1970s, showing the necessity of considering environmental impacts from transportation projects and from respecting environmental laws. The following reports indicated the need to expand the modal matrix of transportation, which until then is concentrated on highways, and mentioned the importance of a Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA). The SEA tool would allow to identify, previously, the cumulative and synergetic effects of the project as predicted in the PNLT; however it still remains as a proposition for improvement in the Brazilian environmental laws. We believe that using SEA oriented by Economic Ecological Zoning (EEZ) and some basic concepts of Landscape Ecology and Road Ecology, the protection of environmentally vulnerable regions and priority areas for biodiversity conservation in Brazil would effectively guide the PNLT aims, targets and plans.

/pdf/aspectos-ambientais-no-plano-nacional-de-logistica-e-2q5w1dujnc.pdf

Aspectos ambientais no Plano Nacional de Logística e Transporte do Brasil

O maniqueismo do titulo deste artigo antecipa o interesse em aqui analisar as particularidades da polarizacao da zona costeira em uma escala espacial mais abrangente. Tal analise e feita sob a otica do ordenamento territorial, da abordagem ecossistemica e da governanca ambiental, e considera os fluxos e dinâmicas incidentes sobre a zona costeira em um contexto de desenvolvimento sustentavel. Por meio do estudo de caso da Macrometropole Paulista (MMP), seu Plano de Acao 2013-2040, e as acoes propostas para seu litoral, reconhece-se que, tao perto da metropole expandida, o litoral macrometropolitano segue longe de um caminho sustentavel e socialmente justo. Argumenta-se que o planejamento espacial e a governanca deste territorio demandam uma ampla revisao dos paradigmas que amparam os instrumentos setoriais e multissetoriais de gestao. Novos paradigmas devem considerar diferentes escalas espaciais, como a zona costeira, a zona economica exclusiva e regioes metropolitanas adjacentes. Nesse sentido, faz-se necessario que o planejamento da MMP considere novos arranjos de governanca que abarquem a dinamicidade do territorio e suas dimensoes socioambientais e ecossistemicas. Devem, ainda, incorporar macroprocessos tanto do ponto de vista administrativo e territorial quanto do ponto de vista socioambiental, incluindo os atores apropriados a essa escala e, em especial, garantindo a participacao da sociedade civil.

/pdf/o-litoral-da-macrometropole-tao-longe-de-deus-e-tao-perto-do-2aal3skcg2.pdf

Silvana Zioni

Papers

Mobilités quotidiennes et inégalités socio-territoriales à Bogotá, Santiago du Chili et São Paulo

Inégalités d’accès aux ressources de la ville analysées à l’aide des mobilités quotidiennes : approche méthodologique exploratoire à São Paulo

Heterogeneity and spatial fragmentation in the sao paulo macrometropolis: the production of borders and holes

Aspectos ambientais no Plano Nacional de Logística e Transporte do Brasil

O litoral da macrometrópole: tão longe de Deus e tão perto do Diabo