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Historic accord would end decades-long standoff but faces stiff opposition from nationalists.
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The turmoil of the 1990s has left a lasting mark on the region in the form of high levels of gun ownership.
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Albania, North Africa could host vetting centers as EU seeks to outsource processing of potential refugees.
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The Moldovan government took a big step yesterday, approving a plan to eliminate conscription, but does the country really need a professional army? From Ziarul de Garda, a news and analysis site.
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Russia deploys more naval ships and steps up stop-and-search of Ukrainian cargo vessels.
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Almost 10 years on from the 2008 war, Georgian civil society – both informal and formal – is increasingly engaging in the country’s breakaway territories. From openDemocracy.
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Some scholars emphasize the global cities network and suggest the declining of the national power. On the contrary, many studies insist on the role of the national economy on global cities. However, there is no specific model to show this relation and no evidence to conform which factor at national level impact this connectivity. The aim of this paper is to set up a specific model to illustrate the relationship between the national economic size and global cities connectivity, and to find the factor at national level impacting on world city connectivity. Bootstrap regression is adopted to set up the model for the relation. The results reveal that the national economic size has significant effectiveness on the global city connectivity with logarithmic function. This finding gives an explicit approach to clarify the idea of ‘glocal’ states with the combination of global city connectivity and national urban system.
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Demographic structures have undergone important transformations driven by economic cycles because of population movements and spatially-variable patterns of fertility and mortality. Understanding the latent relationship between changes over time in population structure and sequential waves of expansion and recession is a relevant issue in economic demography. In this regard, the recent history of southern European countries, and especially of Greece, is representative of consecutive economic expansions and recessions. The present study aims at investigating relevant modifications in population structure across Greek regions between 1988 and 2016 using a multi-temporal factor analysis. Being characterized by a relatively young population with traditional family structures, out-migration and moderate immigration up to the late 1980s, Greek demography shifted towards ageing, mononuclear families and a rising immigration rate during the early 2000s economic expansion, with an overall increase of resident population. The subsequent 2007 recession has represented a turning point in Greek demography, consolidating changes in traditional family structures, while stimulating out-migration to northern and western European countries and reducing immigration from developing countries. A diachronic analysis of population structures at sub-national scale indicates a substantial heterogeneity of demographic processes across Greek regions. Metropolitan areas and highly accessible coastal and flat districts including islands experienced rapid population dynamics, while peripheral rural regions underwent a moderate population ageing. Taken together, these processes had a short-term, synergic impact on Greek demographic structure determining a rapid increase in the median population age with possibly negative consequences for the ability of the country's economy to recover from crisis.
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The structure and pattern of agriculture in Romania has been facing significant changes over the past decades in relation to the contextual social, political and economic transformations. The current study is seeking to assess the determinants of agriculture in the main agricultural region of Romania (Romanian Plain) based on selected socio-economic factors. The authors selected nine socio-economic indicators (agricultural surface, labour renewal index, economic dependency index, economically active population, employment in agriculture, vitality index, share of young labour, share of female population and roads and railway density) which were aggregated into an index of socio-economic determinants of agriculture. Overall, the final index values revealed spatial differences which enabled a certain separation between the eastern, central and western parts of the Romanian Plain: socio-economic favourability for agriculture in the central and, to some extent, in the eastern parts and a significantly reduced favourability in the western area. The current research could become an important step for in-depth assessments of environmental and socio-economic determinants of agriculture, developing strategies and supporting policies at different spatial scales.
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The article explores the impact of migration on wages in Russian cities. Theresearch was carried out on the basis of the data collected by the authors in September–October 2017 in the administrative centres of the subjects of the Ural Federal District,Russia. The aim of the study was to find out whether migrant workers are complements orsubstitutes to local workers in the local labour markets of the Russian cities. Econometricmodels were estimated using OLS and GLS methodology. The OLS results showed thatmigration does not affect wages in the cities. The GLS estimations were also statisticallyinsignificant for the local employees with higher education, but for those with primary andsecondary education, migration demonstrates a positive and statistically significant impacton an individual’s wages. It gives us reason to suggest that migrant workers arecomplementary to the local workers with primary and secondary education.
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An imbalance in development between islands in Tanjung Pinang City causes inner-city disparities due to insufficient development strategies, lack of public infrastructure and remoteness of islands. On the other hand, properly designed administrative boundaries can reduce inner-city disparities by enabling good development strategies, prioritizing public infrastructure development, and connecting the entire area, including remoter islands. This paper discusses how to re-arrange administrative boundaries, particularly at the district and sub-district levels in order to decrease inner-city disparities. A combination method of scoring and participatory mapping is used to suggest new district delineation for the city. After considering the outputs of scoring and participatory mapping, the district boundaries were changed from four to eight and then back to six districts. The paper also proposes key development strategies to boost development in poorer districts by improving the allocation of new infrastructure investment so as to optimize the impact of new municipal and provincial government statuses bestowed on the Dompak and Senggarang Districts. In addition, we suggest that development strategies should provide adequate infrastructure to connect remoter islands in the Penyengat Sub-district to the main island.
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Endowed with rapidly changing physical and socio-economic conditions,Semarang City in Central Java Province serves as an interesting case study of Indonesia’surban transformation. Secondary data, coupled with field observations and in-depthinterviews with key informants and experts, were analyzed using both qualitative andquantitative descriptive methods to show complex variations in urban evolution betweenSemarang’s numerous districts, with changes occurring much faster in some locations thanin others. We show that urbanisation proceeds most rapidly where vacant open spaces andinvestment in various kinds of new public infrastructure are dominant, especially in suchdistricts as Tembalang, Gunungpati, Genuk and Pedurungan. In contrast, transformationprocesses operate more slowly in Semarang’s saturated inner core.
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The intention of this paper is to evaluate whether the spatial distribution ofStructural Funds (SF) for enterprise support interventions follows the relevant territorialcohesion objectives specified in the strategic documents of the Czech Republic in theprogramming period 2007-2013. The evidence provided suggests mixed results. Arelatively high SF allocation to the regions, characterized by strong agglomerationeconomies and a strong entrepreneurial climate, supports the competitiveness objective,particularly for innovation-oriented interventions. Nevertheless, little support is given to theobjective of balanced development because socio-economically disadvantaged regions donot receive a higher SF allocation, in particular traditional industrial regions suffering fromindustrial decline, high unemployment and with a poor entrepreneurial climate. In thisregard, the absorption capacity concept is emphasized as being important for explainingthe spatial distribution of SF.
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The Seoul metropolitan government has focused on the expansion of thehousing supply to address housing shortage through housing and urban redevelopmentprograms. The introduction of urban redevelopment programs has resulted in significantimprovements in both the quality and quantity of housing in Seoul. However, urbanredevelopment programs have produced gentrification and have contributed to profits forboth property owners and developers. It is necessary to identify who is moving intogentrifying neighbourhoods in Seoul and why they engage in gentrification. In order tocontribute to a more in-depth analysis, we explore in-movers’ socio-economiccharacteristics and their residential mobility. These questions are analysed using the KoreaHousing Survey data. The findings indicate that the majority of in-movers upwardhomeowners, who are more educated, have a higher income, and are relatively younger. Inthe Korean urban context, these in-movers can be identified as gentrifiers and key figuresin urban and housing regeneration programs.
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In this paper, city-status settlements of the Trans-Baikal Territory areconsidered. The Trans-Baikal Territory is a territorial entity of the Russian Federationlocated in the south of Asian part of Russia. Cities of the Trans-Baikal Territory areeconomic and cultural centres of regions; they play an important role in developmentand support of the surrounding territory. In this paper, demographic, migration, socialand economic conditions of the cities are reviewed. The analysis of conditions in citieshas been performed on the basis of statistical data collected from the administrations ofthe cities of the region and other published statistical materials on the basis of acomparative geographical method, as well as a review of the literature. The generality oftendencies in the social and economic situation and regional peculiarities of cities areshown. In all cities of the region there is a decrease in the population. The paperconcludes that, by now, the issue of migration loss is the strategically importantdevelopment problem in the Trans-Baikal Territory.
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As the need for a participatory approach towards a sustainable landscapedevelopment grows, this paper has applied the cooperative game theory to analyse themechanism of entering a landscape agreement which requires the participation andinitiative of local residents and stakeholders. The results confirmed that a landscapeagreement only becomes possible with a certain level of supporters and the optimalsituation is when all participants agree. Moreover, the possibility of free riders, which wouldprevent reaching a universal agreement, was also confirmed. The effect of governmentsubsidies for landscape considerate building and the enforcement of penalties for buildingwithout were also examined. As a result, we learned that subsidies and the enforcement ofpenalties influences the number of supporters required for the landscape agreement and inpreventing free riders.
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