Showing papers in "Annals of The Association of American Geographers in 2002"

The Economic Geography of Talent

Abstract: The distribution of talent, or human capital, is an important factor in economic geography. This article examines the economic geography of talent, exploring the factors that attract talent and its effects on high-technology industry and regional incomes. Talent is defined as individuals with high levels of human capital, measured as the percentage of the population with a bachelor's degree and above. This article advances the hypothesis that talent is attracted by diversity, or what are referred to as low barriers to entry for human capital. To get at this, it introduces a new measure of diversity, referred to as the diversity index, measured as the proportion of gay households in a region. It also introduces a new measure of cultural and nightlife amenities, the coolness index, as well as employing conventional measures of amenities, high-technology industry, and regional income. Statistical research supported by the findings of interviews and focus groups is used to probe these issues. The findings con...

Feminist Visualization: Re-envisioning GIS as a Method in Feminist Geographic Research

Abstract: Despite considerable progress in recent geographic information systems (GIS) research (especially on public-participation GIS), the critical discourse on GIS in the 1990s does not seem to have affected GIS practices in geographic research in significant ways. Development in critical GIS practice has been quite limited to date, and GIS and critical geographies remain two separate, if not overtly antagonistic, worlds. This suggests that critical engagement that seeks to conceive and materialize the critical potential of GIS for geographic research is still sorely needed. In this article, I explore the possibilities for this kind of critical engagement through revisiting some of the central arguments in the critical discourse from feminist perspectives. I examine whether GIS methods are inherently incompatible with feminist epistemologies through interrogating their connection with positivist scientific practices and visualization technologies. Bearing in mind the limitations of current GIS, I explore severa...

The Elite, the Natives, and the Outsiders: Migration and Labor Market Segmentation in Urban China

Abstract: Established migration theories are mostly based on capitalist market economies and downplay the role of institutions in internal migration and labor market processes. In socialist and transitional economies such as those in Russia and China, however, investigations of migration and the labor market must begin by examining the nature and consequences of state institutions. In this article, I argue that the migration and labor market processes in Chinese cities are deeply influenced by an institution-based opportunity structure. The household registration (hukou) system, in particular, is interwoven with distribution of services and job opportunities. Most peasants who enter cities in response to increased demands for cheap labor are not granted urban citizenship and are treated as “outsiders” to the urban society. The experiences of these “temporary migrants” contrast with those of “permanent migrants” who are state-sponsored or have access to institutional resources. Using qualitative accounts from a 1995...

A Tropical Forest Transition? Agricultural Change, Out-migration, and Secondary Forests in the Ecuadorian Amazon

Abstract: Could old colonization zones in the urbanizing and industrializing countries of Latin America become sites for a tropical forest transition in which reforestation becomes more prevalent than deforestation? We try to answer this question through a case study of land-use change and migration since 1985 in a long-settled region of the Ecuadorian Amazon. Data from remote sensing analyses, household surveys, and land-use maps of individual farms reveal two disparate patterns of reforestation in the region, one on peripheral lands far from roads and the other on lands close to roads. The former pattern characterizes most places experiencing a forest transition; the latter pattern does not. Roadside reforestation has occurred in part because Amerindian smallholders have abandoned cattle ranching in order to practice short-cycle shifting cultivation of crops for expanding urban and export markets. This example suggests that tropical forest transitions may differ from earlier temperate forest transitions in that r...

Evaluation of Methods for Classifying Epidemiological Data on Choropleth Maps in Series

Abstract: Our research goal was to determine which choropleth classification methods are most suitable for epidemiological rate maps. We compared seven methods using responses by fifty-six subjects in a two-part experiment involving nine series of U.S. mortality maps. Subjects answered a wide range of general map-reading questions that involved individual maps and comparisons among maps in a series. The questions addressed varied scales of map-reading, from individual enumeration units, to regions, to whole-map distributions. Quantiles and minimum boundary error classification methods were best suited for these general choropleth map-reading tasks. Natural breaks (Jenks) and a hybrid version of equal-intervals classing formed a second grouping in the results, both producing responses less than 70 percent as accurate as for quantiles. Using matched legends across a series of maps (when possible) increased map-comparison accuracy by approximately 28 percent. The advantages of careful optimization procedures in chorop...

The Nature of Geographic Knowledge

Abstract: The nature of geographic knowledge today is very different from what it was fifty years ago. It has evolved from phenomenal (declarative) to intellectual (primed by cognitive demands). Surges of interest in systematic specialties and technical innovations in representation and analysis have changed the nature of geographic knowledge, advanced geographic vocabulary, defined and examined geographic concepts, and developed spatially explicit theories relating to human and physical environments. Explorations of interactions between these domains has generated a new interest in integrated science. This interest has produced a unique way of examining human-environment relations, and has provided the basis for a vastly different underlying knowledge structure in the discipline. But the future still challenges and significant problems face geography if it is to remain a viable academic discipline in the new information technology society.

Cyberkids? Exploring Children’s Identities and Social Networks in On-line and Off-line Worlds

Abstract: In the first rush of academic and popular commentaries on cyberspace, a stark opposition has been drawn between off-line and on-line worlds—the “real” and “virtual.” Such understandings of the relationship between these spaces are now increasingly subject to critique, yet relatively little is known about how people actually employ information and communication technologies (ICT) within the context of their everyday lives. In this article, by drawing on research with children aged 11 – 16, we provide primary empirical material demonstrating how on-line spaces are used, encountered, and interpreted within the context of young people’s off-line everyday lives. In doing so we consider both how children’s “real” worlds are incorporated into their “virtual” worlds and how their “virtual” worlds are incorporated into their “real” worlds. In other words, we demonstrate how the real and the virtual are mutually constituted. We also reflect on some of the forms of “private” and “public” spaces constituted by childr...

Unraveling the Threads of History: Soviet–Era Monuments and Post–Soviet National Identity in Moscow

Abstract: This article explores the formation of post–Soviet Russian national identity through a study of political struggles over key Soviet–era monuments and memorials in Moscow during the “critical juncture” in Russian history from 1991 through 1999. We draw on the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Pierre Nora to explain how competition among political elites for control over the sites guided their transformation from symbols of the Soviet Union into symbols of Russia. By co–opting, contesting, ignoring, or removing certain types of monuments through both physical transformations and “commemorative maintenance,” Russian political elites engaged in a symbolic dialogue with each other and with the public in an attempt to gain prestige, legitimacy, and influence. We make this argument through case studies of four monument sites in Moscow: Victory Park (Park Pobedy), the Lenin Mausoleum, the former Exhibition of the Achievements of the National Economy (VDNKh), and the Park of Arts (Park Isskustv). In the article, we firs...

Re)producing Salvadoran Transnational Geographies

Abstract: As contemporary international migrants forge new webs of connection and social fields between distant places, transnational scholarship seeks to understand and theorize these emerging spaces. Our account of the Salvadoran transnational social field centered in northern New Jersey contributes to the development of transnational theory by considering how a particular legal provision—temporary protective status (TPS)—permeates daily life. We argue that material and nonmaterial aspects of daily life become associated with an experience of space-time relations to which we refer as permanent temporariness. Permanent temporariness limits the geographic, economic, social, and political ambitions of Salvadorans, but is increasingly resisted through acts of strategic visibility. Our article reflects on the implications of permanent temporariness for the production of scale in the particular transnational field we study, and on links to broader discussions about transnationalism, the international political economy ...

Contested Identities: Human‐Environment Geography and Disciplinary Implications in a Restructuring Academy

Abstract: (2002). Contested Identities: Human-Environment Geography and Disciplinary Implications in a Restructuring Academy. Annals of the Association of American Geographers: Vol. 92, No. 1, pp. 52-74.

Globalization and the Corporate Geography of Cities in the Less‐Developed World

Abstract: Research on the globalization experience of cities in the less-developed world is sparse. There is a notable gap in the existing literature between theory on global cities and empirical studies of cities in the less-developed world. What is needed is a return to the kinds of intensive fieldwork and primary data collection that were common in “Third World” cities in the 1960s and 1970s—but informed by theory on the changing global political economy. To this end, we present research findings from parallel studies of Accra and Mumbai. These cities were chosen because of their similar political-economic histories and their similar geographic functions as gateways cities in the global economy. A historical theoretical perspective based on the cities’ roles in global political economy is employed to detail important phases in urban evolution in the less-developed world. We concentrate on the changing corporate presence in the two cities as one important manifestation of globalization. Our research focuses on id...

Arising from the Bajos: The Evolution of a Neotropical Landscape and the Rise of Maya Civilization

Abstract: The conjunctive use of paleoecological and archaeological data to document past human-environment relationships has become a theoretical imperative in the study of ancient cultures. Geographers are playing leading roles in this scholarly effort. Synthesizing both types of data, we argue that large karst depressions known as bajos in the Maya Lowlands region were anthropogenically transformed from perennial wetlands and shallow lakes to seasonal swamps between 400 bc and ad 250. This environmental transformation helps answer several questions that have long puzzled scholars of Maya civilization: (1) why many of the earliest Maya cities were built on the margins of bajos, (2) why some of these early centers were abandoned between 100 bc and ad 250, and (3) why other centers constructed elaborate water storage systems and survived into the Classic period (ad 250 –900). The transformation of the bajos represents one of the most significant and long-lasting anthropogenic environmental changes documented in the...

Urban Indicators of China from Radiance‐Calibrated Digital DMSP‐OLS Nighttime Images

Abstract: A composite of cloud-free radiance-calibrated Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP)-Operational Linescan System (OLS) nighttime images of China acquired between March 1996 and January– February 1997 in 30-arc-second grids in byte format is evaluated for its usefulness in extracting urban indicators data of China. With the aid of image-processing and Environmental Systems Research Institute’s ArcView GIS software with 3-D Analysis extension, zonal variations of radiance were extracted and three-dimensional models created using Triangulated Irregular Network (TIN) functionality for thirty-five cities. Two variables were extracted from the TIN model: surface area and volume. These were used separately as independent variables in the form of an allometric growth model to estimate the following urban indicators for individual Chinese cities: nonagricultural population, gross domestic product (GDP), built-up area, and electricity consumption. The estimates obtained were checked against data supplied b...

Monitoring River-Channel Change Using Terrestrial Oblique Digital Imagery and Automated Digital Photogrammetry

Abstract: Imagery acquired using a high-resolution digital camera and ground survey has been used to monitor changes in bed topography and plan form, and to obtain synoptic water surface and flow depth information in the braided, gravel bed Sunwapta River in the Canadian Rockies. Digital images were obtained during daily low flows during the summer melt-water season to maximize the exposed bed area and to map the water surface on the days with the highest flows. Images were acquired from a cliff top 125m above and at a distance of 235m from the riverbed and used to generate high resolution orthophotos and digital elevation models (DEMs) at a ground resolution of 0.2m, within an area 80 x 125m. The creation of digital elevation models (DEMs) from oblique and non-metric imagery using automated digital photogrammetry can be difficult, but a solution based on rotation of coordinates is described here. Independent field verification demonstrated that root mean square accuracies of 0.045m in elevation were achieved. The ground survey data representing river bed topography were merged with photogrammetric DEMs of the exposed bars. The high-flow water surface could not be surveyed directly because wading was dangerous but was derived by ground survey of selected accessible points and photogrammetry. The DEMs and depth map provide high-resolution, continuous data on the channel morphology and will be the basis for subsequent 2D flow modeling of velocity and shear stress fields. The experience of using digital photogrammetry for monitoring river channel change allows the authors to identify other potential benefits of using this technique for fluvial research and beyond.

Where the Jobs Are: Employment Access and Crime Patterns in Cleveland

Abstract: Economists and criminologists have long tried to establish linkages between job markets and crime. Most prior research, however, used large areas such as the whole nation, states, metropolitan areas, or counties to identify job markets. Such large units are heterogeneous, and there may be more variation within such units than between them. This research uses two GIS–based methods to measure job access across census tracts in Cleveland, Ohio in 1990. The first is a ratio of jobs to resident workers (JR ratio) within catchment areas defined by reasonable commuting times. The second approach is a gravity–based job–accessibility index, which accounts for job competition among workers and longer commute times for public transit riders. Controlling for spatial autocorrelation, we find consistent inverse relationships between gravity–based job accessibility and crime rates. These relationships tend to be stronger for economic crimes than for crimes of violence.

Emerging Applications of Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) in Geomorphology and Hydrology

Abstract: Interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) is a powerful geodetic tool used to construct digital elevation models of the earth’s topography and to image centimeter–scale displacements associa...

Exploring Offence Statistics in Stockholm City Using Spatial Analysis Tools

Abstract: The objective of this article is to investigate changes since the early 1980s in offence patterns for residential burglary, theft of and from cars, and vandalism in Stockholm City using methods from spatial statistics. The findings of previous Swedish studies on crime patterns and the insights provided by different theories, notably one propounded by Wikstrom (1991), provide a background for this study and are briefly reviewed. The analytical elements of the article are presented in two main parts. The first consists of a brief description of methodological procedures to obtain robust estimates of small-area standardized offence ratios. Attention is paid to both the spatial framework and the method of calculating rates. Standardized offence ratios (SORs) are calculated and mapped using GIS, and the Getis-Ord statistic is used to identify areas of raised incidence. The variation in a relative risk is modeled as a function of socioeconomic variables using the linear regression model, recognizing the complic...

Identification of Anthropogenic Burning in the Paleoecological Record of the Northern Prairies: A New Approach

Abstract: Despite recent interest in the North American fire record, paleoecological evidence for the deliberate burning of grassland by hunter–gatherers has not previously been sought Through the analysis of grass phytoliths preserved in a sequence of buried soil horizons in the Lauder Sandhills, southwestern Manitoba, Canada, this article reconstructs a local grassland fire record for the past 5,000 years I propose that an apparent peak in fire frequency shortly after 2,500 14C years bp corresponds to the deliberate burning of prairie by Sonota–Besant (Plains Woodland) hunter–gatherers, rather than climatic “forcing” This practice, which is clearly documented in the historic record, may have functioned as a means of making bison–herd movements more predictable and may have enabled higher human carrying capacities in the Plains Woodland period This hypothesis is meant to stimulate multidisciplinary discussion on a significant, but neglected, topic

Disaggregating Induced Intensification for Land-Change Analysis: A Case Study from Madagascar

Abstract: This study investigates smallholder responses to land pressure in the Andapa region of Madagascar. Recent enforcement of conservation laws has abruptly closed the agricultural frontier, and development experts warn of land degradation if exogenous support is not forthcoming. To evaluate responses, the study identifies adaptive and maladaptive management strategies by production sector instead of by production system, allowing for a more precise linkage between strategies and associated land change. Results reveal a remarkably positive response to land pressure, with significant expansion of both market tree crops and irrigated rice fields. Yet, the study also finds excessive cropping frequency in the hill-rice sector, demonstrating independently motivated and environmentally inconsistent strategies within production systems. This evidence calls for a new formulation of the induced intensification thesis's bipolar model predicting either adaptive or maladaptive change. It also suggests that exogenous polic...

Chinese-American Banking and Community Development in Los Angeles County

Abstract: Given the rapid increase of immigrant populations and ethnic communities in the U.S., it is surprising that so little attention has been paid to the role of ethnically owned banks in community development. Analyses of banking usually focus on developments such as mergers and consolidations within the mainstream financial sector. The academic literature on financial geography and the ethnic economy has established that the discriminatory and exclusionary practices of mainstream banks and other financial institutions play a significant role in impoverishing urban, low-income ghettos. Research on minority financial services largely focuses on the dynamics of informal financial establishments in ethnic neighborhoods. With the exception of research on African-American banks, there has been remarkably little scholarship on or even acknowledgement of ethnically owned formal financial institutions in minority communities. This article examines the parallel, co-respective growth of Chinese-American residents, busi...

Spatial Patterns and Determinants of Winter Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentrations in an Urban Environment

Abstract: The purpose of this article is to describe determinants and spatial patterns of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) in Phoenix, Arizona. Specifically, we use geographic information systems (GIS) and regression-based analyses to identify the human and biological factors that contribute to spatial and temporal variations in near-surface (2-meter height) atmospheric CO2 levels. We use these factors to create estimated surfaces of CO2 concentrations for the area. We evaluate the surfaces using records of CO2 from independent monitoring stations and transects. To investigate the temporal patterns and variations in CO2 concentrations, we estimate CO2 surfaces for the early mornings and the afternoons, on weekdays when traffic is heavy and spatially focused and on weekends when it is lighter and more spatially dispersed. Findings suggest there is a distinct relationship between the structure of Phoenix CO2 levels and spatial patterns of human activities and vegetation densities. Morning CO2 levels are higher than a...

John Wesley Powell and the Mapping of the Colorado Plateau, 1869 –1879: Survey Science, Geographical Solutions, and the Economy of Environmental Values

Abstract: In 1869, John Wesley Powell led an expedition down the Green and Colorado Rivers through the Grand Canyon, the last “great blank space” on the map of the continental U.S. In the work of filling in the continental map, Powell and others in an emerging community of government scientists in Washington anticipated a new set of concerns over productivity, order, and the limits of natural resources—including land itself—in the arid lands of the West. This article examines the historical geographical processes through which Powell’s maps of an unexplored region gave way, in roughly a decade, to his maps of proper land use, epitomized by his 1878 Report on the Lands of the Arid Region of the United States, which is still conventionally recognized as a foundational piece in American environmental thought. Focusing on the work of the Powell Survey (1869 – 1879), as well as Powell’s lesser–known work as a special commissioner for the Bureau of Indian Affairs (1873 – 1874), the article situates the maps, censuses, an...

Catskill Mountain Water Resources: Vulnerability, Hydroclimatology, and Climate-Change Sensitivity

Abstract: We present an initial assessment of the potential impact of climate change on water supply in the Metropolitan East Coast (MEC) region of the U.S. National Assessment of the Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change. A version of the Thornthwaite water-balance model is applied to one of six basins in the Catskill Mountains that together provide water for approximately 10 million people in New York City and other municipalities. In addition to Thornthwaite’s original soil moisture reservoir, the model includes the snow pack water reservoir of Willmott, Rowe, and Mintz (1985), a ground-water storage term, and several additional modifications. Following a review of the vulnerability of water supplies and historical hydroclimatology of this region, we estimate (1) the sensitivity of water supply to altered temperature and precipitation regimes and (2) the potential impacts of specific climate-change scenarios used by national and regional climate-change assessments. The sensitivity of runoff to...

Wild Animals in the Garden: Conserving Wildlife in Amazonian Agroecosystems

Abstract: In this article, I draw on field research in the Peruvian Amazon to evaluate the impact of individual and regional land–use practices (hunting, forest–clearing, and fallowing) on wildlife survival. More broadly, I examine the symbolic and practical significance of the garden as a metaphor for wildlife conservation. I focus on Tambopata Province, a region containing diverse wildlife and a variety of “gardens,” from swidden fields to national parks. Field data on wildlife presence in swidden gardens reveal the attributes of an anthropogenic fauna: adaptable, fast–reproducing species, including rodents, peccaries, brocket deer, and armadillos. Larger mammals, including most primates and carnivores, are greatly reduced by hunting. Multivariate analyses show that wildlife abundance and species diversity are more strongly shaped by regional land use and community–level hunting practices than by individual “gardeners.” In Tambopata, multiple interest groups stake claims on the forests and wildlife within protect...

Missionaries and Morals: Climatic Discourse in Nineteenth‐Century Central Southern Africa

Abstract: The letters, personal papers, and journals written by British missionaries based at mission stations within and around the Kalahari region of central southern Africa in the nineteenth century provide an invaluable insight into time- and place-specific interactions with local cultures and environments. This article employs a range of unpublished and published missionary correspondence and travelogues to examine two key aspects regarding the conceptualization of and responses to climatic variability in the region. First, we explore the way in which missionaries positioned climate variability within a moral economic framework and illustrate their attitude towards local drought myths and rainmaking superstitions. This reveals a degree of conflict in the respective environmental ideologies of missionaries and the local populations. Moreover, while missionaries appear to have linked drought to moral degradation, local populations had their own "environmental religion" or climatic philosophy that located the arrival of the European within a framework of climatic change. Second, we examine the introduction of irrigation technology to the region by the missionaries. The actual construction of irrigation projects provided a forum for cultural interaction, but findings also indicate that irrigation was considered to be not only a practical response to climatic conditions in the region and a means by which the missionaries could assert some ideological control over this environment, but also a route towards moral redemption of the local populations and environments.

French Wetland Agriculture in Atlantic Canada and Its European Roots: Different Avenues to Historical Diffusion

Abstract: Wetland reclamation, a form of agricultural expansion and intensification, appeared in estuarine environments of northwestern Europe during medieval demographic expansion, prior to the Black Death....

Building Co-ops, Constructing Cooperation: Spatial Strategies and Development Politics in a Mexican Village

Abstract: Cooperative rural development has been the subject of much scholarship, yet little attention has been paid to the importance of cooperative spatial strategies. In this study, the efforts of an Oaxacan (Mexican) rural producer cooperative to construct a co-op building appear to far exceed the structure's potential contribution to commodity production. This research argues that the outsized investment into co-op infrastructure is explicable when the cultural and political economy of cooperation is analyzed. It is found that (1) well-defined co-op spaces are necessary if co-op members are to meet market-driven quality standards, yet these autonomous production spaces exclude nonmember villagers upon whom the co-op depends. Given this sentiment, (2) the co-op building plays an important political role in persuading villagers to provide social support and access to communal resources by (3) demonstrating that production cooperation presents a reasonable development alternative and that co-op members have the managerial capacity to achieve it. The article finishes by calling for a greater attention to co-op member development visions and spatial strategies, and to the contributions that geographic and ethnographic research may make to the analysis of co-op formation and survival.

Visual Categorization with Aerial Photographs

Abstract: This article investigates how people process information from aerial photographs to categorize locations. Three cognitive experiments were conducted with human subjects viewing a series of aerial p...

Composition and Sources of Sand in the Wahiba Sand Sea, Sultanate of Oman

Abstract: The Wahiba Sand Sea in the Sultanate of Oman is composed of two physiographic units that can be roughly divided into northern and southern regions. The Northern Wahiba is predominantly a large megaridge system, whereas the Southern Wahiba mostly comprises linear dunes, sand sheets, and nabkha fields. Although the dunes of the two regions are of different ages, it has previously been hypothesized that their sands were derived primarily from the same source, namely coastal sands. However, mineralogical, geochemical, and grain–size data in this study suggest that the two regions have different sources. The Northern Wahiba sands have a high composition of mafic minerals and came primarily from local wadis that drain the adjacent Hajar Mountains. One of the prominent wadi sources is presently buried under sands of the Southern Wahiba, eliminating it as a current source of the Northern Wahiba. The Southern Wahiba sands have a more mineralogically mature, quartz–rich composition and are derived from separate sou...

Extinction‐Debt Trajectories and Spatial Patterns of Habitat Destruction

Abstract: Extinction-debt theory holds that following habitat destruction, some extant species in remnants of habitat are doomed to eventual extinction. The extinction debt will affect the interpretation of ongoing impacts and extinctions, because little is understood about the changes in species abundance through time in remnants following surrounding habitat destruction. In some models, thresholds in mean time to extinction are sensitive to the spatial configuration of the remnants, but changes in abundance through time could also be affected. A simulation that includes hierarchical competition, reproduction, dispersal, and mortality was run on two-phase landscapes varying in spatial pattern and extent of habitat destruction. In this article, the courses of temporal change in species abundance, or trajectories, are examined. Thresholds are not evident among different amounts of extant habitat or across a range of spatial patterns. Instead, trends exist in the amount of impact per unit reduction in habitat. Better...