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Bad urban policy leads to environmental degradation and a reduction in the quality of life in cities. Therefore, local government action ought to be guided by the principle of sustainable development. The application of the green city idea can have a positive effect on the natural environment and urban quality of life. The research methods presented in this paper concern the development of green cities, which are most vulnerable to the risk of what can be called excessive urbanization. The conversion of degraded or neglected cities into green urban centers may be the answer to environmental, social, and economic problems in such cities. Urban planners increasingly more often pay attention to the link, which exists between the idea of green cities and the urban concept of a garden city. However, this novel idea assumes not only the creation of green areas, but also a reduction in dust and gas emissions, likewise noise and waste, renewable energy, implementation of sustainable transportation, and promotion of organic food staples. Cities that properly apply these principles are called green cities or eco-cities. Many Scandinavian and North American countries base their policy on sustainable development. Local governments in Poland, as well as urban planners in Poland, must derive inspiration from the environmental approach employed in other countries. Greenery plays important roles in urban aesthetics; therefore, it is necessary to take it into consideration in land use planning, city development strategies, and local programs linked with urban revitalization. New housing projects should assume the existence of such spaces, which would interfere with the natural environment as little as possible. Developers should also be required to restore destroyed green areas. The revitalization of Polish housing units must be rethought in the spirit of the green city concept. Greenery should dominate in all housing complexes, which would refresh and enrich the landscape through so-called living walls. This would have a positive effect not only on the aesthetic appearance of buildings, but also it would help maintain a more comfortable temperature throughout housing estates in the winter and in the summer. So-called green roofs could be built on the flat roofs of all existing housing blocks. Geographers and landscape ecologists should be permitted to evaluate new construction projects. Community participation and environmental education both play a key role in pro-environmental policy. Moreover, city residents should have some influence on the appearance of their city.
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Geothermal energy is one of the renewable sources of energy, which is extremely important from the point of view of the idea of sustainable development. In modern Poland, the use of geothermal energy is so far limited. There are several plants that use geothermal energy for heating purposes, but the cost-effectiveness of this type of investment is low. For several years, a rapid development of so-called thermal parks has been observed, which is related with a newfound fashionability of the healthy lifestyle. Particularly advantageous geological conditions in the region of Podhale, as well as the significant tourist popularity of this area in general all year round, make this type of investment substantially profitable. In other parts of the country, only a few relatively small thermal parks are operational and development is not easy because of the high start-up cost and difficulty of providing adequate financial resources
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The paper analyses the morphological changes in the spatial structure of the southern district of Wrocław city (Lower Silesia, Poland). The district developed from the former villages of vegetable-growers, which in the Middle Ages bordered directly with the city as set out in the charter. In the second half of the 19th century, the villages were incorporated into the city, and after a while, they started their metamorphosis. Rectangular urban blocks were formed on the basis of medieval axes in the villages. At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, the blocks were successively filled with typical tenement buildings. As a result of World War II, existing buildings were totally destroyed. In the 1960s, they started re-construction of the district, which led to its second metamorphosis. The new constructions resembled typical, socialist apartment projects in other Polish cities. The prestige the district enjoyed before World War II was lost together with its style and character.
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The temporal dimensions and tendencies, including some characteristic features of suicide in Turkey during the social transformation process, are the subject of this study with a focus on the provinces and differentiation on a regional scale. The number of suicides in Turkey and the characteristic features of those committing suicide during the years 1974-2013 have been collected in the 'Suicide Statistics' yearbook within this context. Both the suicide numbers as well as the crude suicide rates in Turkey have increased from the last quarter of the 20th century to the beginning of the 21st century. As a matter of fact the number of suicides which was 788 in 1975 increased at a rate of 304.7% to become 3189 in 2013. The crude suicide rate per 100,000 population increased from 1.95 in 1975 to 1.69 in 1980, to 2.42 in 1990, to 2.67 in 2000 and increased to 4.19 in 2013. Although crude suicide rates are smaller than those in most European countries, the fact that there is a rapidly increasing trend indicates that it has started to become a significant public health problem.
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The emergence of negative trends in the demographic development of Russia falls on the end of the 1960s. The demographic crisis observed in modern Russia is one of the most serious threats to the country's transition to the knowledge economy society. It creates quite real, tangible risks for Russia, creating a threat to Russia's territorial integrity, making it impossible to sustainably develop the country's economy and social sphere in the coming XXI century. The size of the demographic crisis and the actions of population policy is the word in this work.
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The paper analyses changes in the composition of the Serbian capital’s labor force, which changes have started developing at the same time as similar transitional changes in other ex-communist countries trough-out Eastern Europe. Apart from basic demographic parameters, such as: changes of the activity rate, employment, unemployment, composition against type of activity,age and occupation, additional parameters included in the labor force official pools are analyzed. Parameters included in the analysis secure an international match, so a further comparative analysis of similarities and differences of similar trends in development processes observed in other cities outside of the EU could be done, as well as an analysis of similarity of trends observed in emerging global cities or in primate cities of the global sub-periphery and periphery.
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Republic of Kazakhstan is a new state, created in the post Soviet area of Central Asia. Its specificity is that the nation of Kazakhs has not been the national majority since the moment of getting independence. However, for these two decades Kahakhs became majority of the population in the country, what had been achieved in different ways: by higher birth rate than Slavic end population of European origin, by planned immigration of Kazakhs from China and Mongolia, but also by pressures and endangering of rights of Russians, other Slavs, Germans, what has in the period till the beginning of XXI century especially led to their mass emigration from Kazakhstan. To this we should add also favoring national Kazakhs in public administration, as well as insisting on the knowledge of kazakh language.
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By the first preliminary results, Serbia had a population of 7.1 million, which, according to the Serbian Statistical Office, constitutes a decrease of 377 thousand persons compared to the size of the population at the time of 2002 Census. However, given the different definitions of total population (with or without persons abroad who have been outside of the country for less than a year, and further, with or without the internally displaced persons from Kosovo and Metohija), this comparison of the initial results of 2011 Census and the final results of 2002 Census is methodologically unsound, leading to incorrect conclusions about the change of the population size between the two censuses. In this paper, we analyze the changes in population size for the intercensal period 2002-2011 based on comparable data from the 2002 and 2011 Censuses, which allows for more accurate understanding of depopulation of Serbia and the immediate demographic causes of this depopulation. According to the authors, Serbia's population (in country) in fact decreased by 424 thousand persons. The analysis concerns all territory levels, according to the administrative and territorial distribution which has come valid on 1 July 2011, and according the Nomenclature of Statistical Territorial Units (statistical regions, districts/areas, municipalities, settlements).
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Active interactions between the countries, regions, economic entities, non-profits, and inhabitants of the Baltic Sea territories contributed to the emergence and development of a transnational socioeconomic region. The Baltic macroregion is one of the most developed among international regions that appeared as a result of regionalization, which is strengthened by globalization. At the same time, its creation is a consequence of coastalization, which affects settlement patterns and the spatial organization of the economy. In academic literature, this factor is primarily seen as a general tendency; however, there are significant geographical differences. The impact of the coastalization on the Baltic region has not been studied sufficiently. Based on available statistics, this article analyses differences in the levels and rates of settlement and economy in the coastal zone and the rest of the Baltic region. The economic, statistical and cartographical methods were applied. The indicators of the study objects condition include population density and growth rate, gross regional product (GRP) per capita, and GRP growth rate. The study covers the period from 2005 to 2016. The obtained results have allowed identifying the features of ‘coastalization’ at the microlevel by country, showing that this factor is less significant in Russia, Germany, and Poland than in the other countries of the region. Thus, the study identifies microregions with a varying effect of the ‘maritime’ factor on their development. These patterns can be used in developing national strategic and spatial planning documents and in international spatial planning efforts in the Baltic region.
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In recent years, new and promising developments have made new economic geography (NEG) a popular framework for examining the spatial distribution of economic activity around the world. A major NEG prediction is that wages are higher in regions with a large market and easy access to suppliers of intermediate inputs. Based on this principle, we examine this hypothesis by using provincial data in Vietnam. Since the Doi Moi reform in 1986, the Vietnamese economy has successfully transformed from a centrally planned to a market-based economy. The Vietnamese experience has been seen as a valuable case study for other economies in transition. This paper estimates a structural model of NEG using Vietnamese provinces data for the period 2000 — 2012. Using instrumental variables based on the principle of generalised method of moments (GMM), we take account of potential endogeneity problem between regressors. We provide evidence that the industrial linkages and trade costs are statistically significant and quantitatively important in ex-plaining variation in provincial wages. This finding is robust to controlling for a wide range of considerations. Moreover, local governments need to strengthen human capital as the first step towards improving average wages. Indeed, a better education system is not only instrumental to raising average earnings per worker, but also crucial for minimizing income inequality in the long run.
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This study focuses on the rationality of the migrants’ behaviour. We hypothesise that the migration growth rate depends on the territory attractiveness for living. The rational behaviour is defined as the direct dependence of the migrations on the characteristics of the territory attractiveness. The irrational behaviour means that the reverse dependence is present. The direct dependence is recognised if the level of the migrants’ positive reactions to the factors of the territory attractiveness is no less than 30 % from the maximum. 83 subjects of the Russian Federation were clustered based on 12 objective characteristics of the life’s quality. We distinguished the largest Middle Cluster, which includes 56 regions. Further we transformed the panel data for the period from 2005 to 2015 into the array of the coefficients of correlations between the characteristics of the territory attractiveness and the migration growth rates in the regions. Using these characteristics, the regions were clustered again. The regional types of the Middle cluster with the rational and irrational behaviours include 22 regions each. The level of the migrants’ positive reactions to the factors of the territory attractiveness is 44.1 % for the first (rational) regional type and 42.5 % for the second (irrational) type. The regional type with the indifferent behaviour includes 12 regions. The level of the migrants’ reactions to the characteristics of these territory attractiveness is just 5.8 %. Based on the regression models of the migration coefficient for each cluster type, we have provided recommendations for managing the migration flows using the differential approach.
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The article documents the importance and significance of castle and land court books for studying the history of the early modern Ukrainian family, many aspects of which so far have hardly been explored. An overview of the history and the content of Volhynian court books is provided, and the documents that contain information on contemporary families are detailed and analyzed. The court books are shown to represent a comprehensive and valuable source that helps reconstruct single and extended family structures, identify kin relations, characterize demographic behaviour, and study intra-family relationships. The analysis of the court books suggests that some stereotypes about the early modern Ukrainian family need to be revised.
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The Geological Museum of the University of Szczecin was founded in 1994. For 24 years the Museum has changed its location several times and last year it finally moved to the Natural Sciences Education and Research Centre of the University of Szczecin. The Museum’s collection holds over 4320 exhibits, including such specimens as minerals, rocks, fossils, meteorites, and sand samples. The most valuable scientific collections are: the specimens of one of the oldest rocks in the world, originated from the Isua Greenstone Belt, Oligocene sand concretions, the so-called Szczecin balls (Germ. Stettiner Kugeln), the collection of minerals with the fluorescence phenomenon on display, and the collection of sand samples from various beaches and deserts. The Museum serves its primary educational function and organises many events, such as geological workshops, trainings, and others.
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The article presents an outline of the city as made in the frame of the sociogeographic conception of Jovan Cvijich. The core of Cvijich work is settled down within four of sociological topics: 1. relation between geographic environment and society, 2. types of the city, 3. migrations, 4. ethno-psychological differentiation of populace.
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This paper provides valorization of Cvijić’ ideas concerning sociology by establishing a link between phenomena and issues investigated by Jovan Cvijić and the modern, post-socialist society of Serbia. In the course of our research on post-socialist transformation of Serbian society, we made use of the following ideas by Cvijić: methodology, migrations, investigation of settlements and the problem of under urbanization, family cooperatives and post-socialist extended family, Cvijić’s „blindness as to gender“ and the description of local military patriarchate, low social capital posing a risk to the development of civil society, and the national character as an obstacle for the development of citizenry.
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"Maps of stereotypes", whether they are made for commercial purposes created by Bulgarian designer Yanko Tsvetkov or have been created by anonymous authors, has become extremely popular in Cyberspace in the last two years. They are transmitted via e-mail communication or via social networks and the web pages which host this kind of maps attracts millions of visitors. Their intended humor has it vicious side: in the form of joke they provide folklorized prejudices about nations and states, and at the same time they cemented them as fixed images, ethnic labels and essentialized notions in consciousness and conception of the numerous Internet audience. From the multicultural perspective and its necessity for negotiating the diversity of identities who are supposedly susceptible of change, these stereotypical maps by utilizing cleverly constructed notions express the complete opposition: the characteristics of the people and of the state of a particular historical and political period are essencialized, offering as a "truth" the point of view of the sender without the possibility of the message recipient to respond in other ways than to press the "like button" or to show "silent" revolt or, even, by creating the "contra-map" with similar humorous and vicious content. In this paper we will examine the phenomenon of so called maps of stereotypes and ascribed notions of Serbia within political and geographical territory of former Yugoslavia and the Balkans.
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The article aims to reveal the importance of the Lithuanian museums of nature as an educational environment and the opportunities for teaching biogeography according to the general education school curriculum in such museums. The choice of Biogeography as the research subject was determined by its unique nature as well as by the need for a non-traditional educational environment. A scientific research was carried out in order to evaluate the internet websites of 32 Lithuanian museums of nature according to the following criteria: the presentation of information on the internet, the characteristics of exhibitions, and the explicitness of the presentation of educational activities.
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The study shows the links between nature and culture which developed in thousands of years and evidence nature as the source and „carrier“ of culture. The work is based on rich natural data, geological and geomorphological data about different localities in particular, and published folklore selections. The importance of folklore (legends, etiological stories, etc.), creative art (poetry, fine arts, etc.), and importance of scientific, including historical, knowledge for promotion of natural values and educational work is analysed. It is expedient to use the natural data in the training process, especially in communicating the data of natural sciences, of young people.
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Currently, more attention is paid to the improvement of education quality, curriculum renewal, new methods, and so on. No important became methods by which content has reached the target. Of course, the methods existed in the past, but their importance was not so significant because educational objectives stressed the importance of knowledge. Now focus on raising students‘ skills, the ability to think independently, to plan, combined with the knowledge gained by practice. The aim is to find the teaching methods of high school educational practice. In order to achieve these objectives, the study was used for analysis of scientific literature, a survey prepared by students.
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