Hasil untuk "Urbanization. City and country"

David MIHIGO, Ahmed, John

Context and background Agriculture remains a cornerstone of economic development in many African countries, supplying food for the population and raw materials for industry. However, despite its vital role, rural smallholder farmers who constitute a majority of agricultural producers continue to face considerable challenges in accessing modern markets. Their produce often remains unsold or delayed at the farm level due to limited market connections, inadequate infrastructure, and a lack of technological integration. As urbanization rapidly transforms peri-urban and rural landscapes in developing countries, the intersection of agricultural productivity, food security, and urban planning becomes increasingly critical. The encroachment of urban arable land due to urban sprawl further exacerbates these issues, threatening both rural livelihoods and food security in cities. Goal and Objectives: This study aims to investigate how the adoption of digital agriculture technologies, particularly those powered by Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), combined with proactive private sector engagement, can serve as a bridge to connect smallholder farmers in rural areas to modern markets. Specifically, the study aimed to document recent smart technologies adopted in agriculture and private sector engagement to link smallholder farmers with modern market; to explore community perspectives on Digital Agriculture employed to connect Smallholder farmers to modern market; and to recommend future digital agriculture and private sector engagement to link smallholder farmers to modern market.   Methodology: By enhancing access to buyers, optimizing agricultural practices, and facilitating real-time data sharing, these digital tools offer a pathway to elevate smallholder productivity and economic outcomes. Specifically, the research focuses on insights drawn from Kigali City, Rwanda a country actively pursuing smart agriculture solutions. A mixed-methods research design was adopted for this study, employing both qualitative and quantitative approaches within a case study framework. Kigali was selected as a representative case due to its advanced urban planning initiatives and ongoing efforts to integrate digital solutions in agriculture. Data collection involved structured and semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders. Respondents included 50 rural smallholder farmers and a city-level agronomist responsible for agricultural projects in Kigali. The interviews were designed using a combination of open- and close-ended questions to elicit detailed responses on current practices, perceived challenges, and opportunities related to smart agriculture and market accessibility. Results: The findings reveal a strong consensus among participants on the transformative potential of digital agriculture. An overwhelming majority (97%) of smallholder farmers affirmed that the use of digital technologies such as satellite-based mapping, weather forecasting tools, mobile-based agricultural extension services, and online market platforms could significantly enhance their farming efficiency and market access. Farmers reported that such tools allowed them to shift from labor-intensive practices to more informed, strategic decision-making in crop cultivation and sales. Furthermore, the agronomist interviewed corroborated these findings, emphasizing that GNSS-enabled tools and other precision agriculture technologies can benefit both small-scale and large-scale farmers. He highlighted that these innovations not only support better resource management and yield forecasting but also play a crucial role in linking rural producers with urban consumers and international markets. The ability to showcase available harvests, quantities, and locations in real time can dramatically improve the visibility of smallholder produce, reduce post-harvest losses, and stimulate private investment in rural agriculture. The study also explores the implications of urbanization for agricultural land use and food supply chains. As cities like Kigali continue to expand, the encroachment on agricultural zones raises concerns about long-term food security and rural economic displacement. However, digital agriculture presents an opportunity to mitigate these risks by enabling farmers to intensify production on existing land, reduce inefficiencies, and tap into broader markets without the need for physical proximity. Based on the research findings, the study proposes the development and implementation of a District Agricultural Harvest Information System (DAHIS). This system would act as a centralized digital platform for displaying real-time data on agricultural produce types, quantities, and geographic locations available for purchase. By leveraging GNSS and mobile technologies, DAHIS would allow buyers to locate and procure crops both locally and internationally, thereby expanding market reach for rural farmers. Moreover, this platform would reduce the instances of surplus produce going to waste due to a lack of buyer awareness or logistical coordination. In conclusion, the study underscores that digital agriculture, supported by GNSS technologies and robust private sector partnerships, holds significant promise in addressing the persistent disconnect between rural farmers and modern markets in Africa. When effectively implemented, these tools can promote sustainable food production, empower smallholder farmers, and strengthen food systems across both rural and urban settings. However, to maximize impact, these efforts must be integrated into broader policy frameworks that support infrastructure development, digital literacy, and institutional collaboration between governments, private investors, and farmer cooperatives. Recommendations include: [1] Establishing DAHIS at district levels to aggregate and disseminate harvest data; [2] Encouraging public-private partnerships to fund digital agriculture initiatives; [3] Training smallholder farmers in the use of digital tools to ensure adoption and effectiveness; [4] Integrating digital agriculture platforms into national urban and regional development plans to ensure coordinated growth that preserves agricultural productivity. By bridging the digital divide and connecting rural farmers with viable markets, African countries can unlock the full potential of their agricultural sectors and drive inclusive economic growth.

Md. Atik Hasan, Shabikunnahar Suborna, Afrida Jinnurain Urbee

Foreign aid, remittance, and foreign direct investment have a significant role in shaping and promoting globalization and these factors also play a vital role in determining health quality in developing countries. Developing countries, especially South Asian countries still need research and policies to efficiently utilize the contributions of these external capital sources in their health sector. For this reason, the present study examined the effects of different globalization-related factors (remittances, foreign direct investment, foreign aid) and health spending from 2000 to 2020 on the quality of healthcare in six South Asian countries: Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Maldives, and Sri Lanka. Moreover, this investigation introduces an unprecedented facet to the realm of health sector research by introducing a novel health quality index that incorporates life expectancy, newborn mortality rate, maternal mortality rate, and illness prevalence (specifically tuberculosis). This study used Augment Mean Group (AMG) estimation for data analysis. To ensure the precision and dependability of the findings, this research utilizes sophisticated statistical methodologies, including the Common Correlated Effect of Mean Group (CCEMG), Driscoll-Kraay Robust Standard Error approaches, and Dumitrescu and Hurlin (D-H) causality test, thereby establishing their dependability. The findings of the study demonstrate that foreign aid and health spending have a significant beneficial impact on the health quality of South Asia. In contrast, remittances tend to harm health quality. Furthermore, the influence of FDI on the quality of health in South Asia is equivocal. South Asian countries must allocate more of their budget to the health sector and ensure that foreign aid is properly utilized for its development. On the other hand, these countries are required to take policy and create an environment that will help to improve health quality through effective use of remittance and FDI.

Atefeh Faghih Abdollahi, Ali Soltani, Nader Zali

This study investigates the capacity for regional branding for Guilan province concerning the existing brands' identification, new brands' creation opportunities, and development obstacles. The current mixed-method study by using MICMAC analysis method describes the main variables affecting branding results. Its findings recognize tourism, agriculture, and horticulture as the most dominant existing brands and ecotourism, agritourism, and commercial tourism as having huge development potential. Inferior infrastructure, inadequate coordination among stakeholders, and lack of governmental support are major barriers. The study proposes practical solutions to overcome these barriers and to use regional assets effectively. The findings present critical views for policymakers and stakeholders toward the competitiveness and sustainable development of Guilan.

Francisco Ollero Lobato, Soledad Cebey, Tatiana Rimbaud et al.

En este artículo analizamos el contexto geográfico y demográfico de la Banda Oriental —nombre del actual Uruguay— durante la segunda mitad del siglo XVIII. Para ello nos apoyamos en relatos de viajeros, bibliografía y cartografía histórica. Observamos el momento previo a la creación de las Nuevas Poblaciones que ayudaron a articular el territorio y fijar núcleos de población cercanos a la principal ciudad de la región, Montevideo. Para ello estudiamos el poblamiento que hubo en esa región, lugar de fronteras y multicultural en un espacio casi desértico, caracterizado por la presencia del ganado vacuno y el dominio de los estancieros. Estudiamos el desarrollo cartográfico del territorio, sus principales vías de comunicaciones y los asentamientos de una población dispersa. Por último, valoramos el papel de las nuevas poblaciones como hitos de estabilidad y seguridad de una tierra en la frontera de indios y de la corona portuguesa, que confirma el poder de la corona, configura el planeamiento del territorio y dota de identidad a un sector del Virreinato de la Plata que camina hacia a una rápida transformación.

Emanuela Braì, Giovanna Mangialardi, Domenico Scarpelli

The current climate change consequences, the migration phenomena, the pandemic, and the war affect the already unstable housing system situation. Implementing resilience is as necessary as ever to solve the existing housing crisis. In particular, a little number of housing units, lack of maintenance, the inadequacy of the heritage to the new housing needs, and weak attention to social aspects, characterize the Italian social housing system. Considering the possible powerful relationships between resilience, circular economy, and housing, this paper is aimed at determining whether and how CE principles can be applied in the social housing system to make it more resilient, adopting a qualitative research method. To this end, a model for Circular Living (CL) is proposed: it includes strategies at the building, neighbourhood/city, and territorial scales. It is extrapolated from the existing bibliography on housing system, resilience and circular economy; the analysis of the case study of south Salento together with its critical housing system and some emerging best practices. The use case of a 70s public building in Lecce is also presented. Although the CL Model is for the resilience of the social housing system in peripheral territories, future research could implement and validate the model in different contexts and systems.

Yunus Pustu

From the middle of the 19th century, Ankara, and Anatolia generally, became important locations for settlement following the loss of various territories by the Ottoman Empire. This immigration continued after the establishment of the Republic of Turkey, although at a reduced level. Many small groups settled in the city during the first years of the Republican era, including some immigrants from Greece who settled in Ankara after the population exchange between Turkey and Greece. Significant measures were taken to support immigration in Ankara after 1926 when separate living areas were established for immigrants. These areas included the Nogai and Circassian villages constructed and improved during the Ottoman period for previous immigrants. It is of particular note that sample villages, similar to the ones established in certain other provinces of Anatolia, were constructed during the rule of Atatürk for the settlement of immigrants as examples to the Anatolian people and surrounding villages. It is therefore possible to argue that the project was not only an attempt to settle immigrants, but constitutes a zoning plan. The aim of this study, which is based on archival sources, newspapers of the period and field research studies, illuminates the issue of migration to Ankara, as well as various forms of the settlement of immigrants during the rule of Atatürk.

Joseph Fiifi Fosu-Ankrah, Akwasi Kwarteng Amoako-Gyampah

The outbreak of COVID-19 subjected prophets and the prophetic ministry to ridicule and taunts by both disenchanted Christians and non-believers alike. This study examines responses to these challenges posed by COVID-19 to prophets and the prophetic movement in Africa. The study shows that Charismatic Christianity on the continent may serve as useful resource for public education amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, but also, a source of public health misinformation and thus, create doubts, uncertainties and fear. The paper argues that, the Covid-19 pandemic has both prospects and challenges for prophecies, as well as greater implications for Charismatic Christianity in Africa.

Martina Schorn, Axel Priebs

Theorie und Praxis der Stadtregionspolitik richtet sich klassisch an großstädtischen Ballungsräumen aus. Die Österreichische Raumordnungskonferenz (ÖROK) jedoch nahm in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Österreichischen Städtebund schon früh eine Vorreiterrolle ein, indem sie bereits zu Beginn der 2010er Jahre kleine und mittlere Städte in ihre Stadtregionsstrategie involvierte. Vor diesem Hintergrund haben sich im vergangenen Jahrzehnt in Österreich zahlreiche kooperative Initiativen von Klein- und Mittelstädten mit ihrem Umland herausgebildet. Dabei zeigt sich, dass diese stadtregionalen Kooperationen inhaltlich und institutionell sehr unterschiedlich ausgestaltet sind. Dieser Beitrag untersucht in vier Fallbeispielen etablierte Stadt-Umland-Kooperationen und deren unterschiedliche Governance-Arrangements, im Rahmen derer Klein- und Mittelstädte in Österreich gemeinsam mit ihrem Umland abgestimmte Konzepte zur räumlichen Entwicklung erarbeiten und umsetzen. Dabei zeigt sich, dass Klein- und Mittelstädten mit ihrem Umland „auf Augenhöhe“ zusammenarbeiten und als Leistungsträger der österreichischen Stadtregionspolitik angesehen werden können.

Sujit Kumar Sikder

Marco Rampulla

El resumen todavía no está disponible.

Cem Karayalçin, Hakan Yilmazkuday

Many developing countries display remarkably high degrees of urban concentration that are incommensurate with their levels of urbanization. The cost of excessively high levels of urban concentration can be very high in terms of overpopulation, congestion, and productivity growth. One strand of the theoretical literature suggests that such high levels of concentration may be the result of restrictive trade policies that trigger forces of agglomeration. Another strand of the literature, however, points out that trade liberalization itself may exacerbate urban concentration by favoring the further growth of those large urban centers that have better access to international markets. The empirical basis for judging this question has been weak so far; in the existing literature, trade policies are poorly measured (or are not measured, as when trade volumes are used spuriously). Here, new disaggregated tariff measures are used to empirically test the hypothesis. A treatment-and-control analysis of pre- versus post-liberalization performance of the cities is also employed in liberalizing and non-liberalizing countries. It is found that (controlling for the largest cities that have ports and, thus, have better access to external markets) liberalizing trade leads to a reduction in urban concentration.

Graeme Lang, B. Miao

Somik V. Lall, Nancy Lozano‐Gracia, O. P. Agarwal et al.

Attila Grieco, Chiara Montaldo, Sylvie Occelli et al.

Road safety has been a main societal and policy issue in many European countries since the early years of last decade. After the 2000-2010 Road Safety Programme launched by the European Commission, in 2011 the Commission adopted the new 2020 programme, even more demanding than the previous. As the societal consequences of road casualties are increasingly perceived as a core dimension of smart mobility, road safety system is now facing new challenges. Current mobility shifts to softer and greener transportation means raise new safety concerns for an increasingly larger share of vulnerable road users. The need to integrate road safety requirements with other residential, mobility, and environmental policies calls for a more detailed understanding of the phenomenon at different spatial levels and with different observation lenses. The pilot study described in this paper is a contribution to this end. It aims at identifying the accident prone sites of the regional road network to help prioritizing safety interventions, by the regional administration having road planning responsibilities. The study develops a screening approach to select hazardous road locations, outside urban premises, from the Piedmont provincial and state roads. The most recent data for the 2010-2012 years were considered, drawn from the ISTAT road accident database, managed by the CMRSS. The procedure consists of the following steps: identification of the elementary road sections to be screened, through a GIS analysis; definition of the screening groups (road sections have been subdivided in 4 length classes); definition of the selection criteria, with two severity thresholds based on the crash density; classification of the elementary road sections by severity thresholds.

Xinhai Li, Jill Liu, Valerie Gibson et al.

R. Ahsan, S. Karuppannan, J. Kellett

Rameshwar Sharma, Sandeep Jain, Kewal Singh

Carlos Osvaldo Scornik, Juana Caric Petrovic, Susana Godoy et al.

El estudio de los problemas metropolitanos generados por el fuerte proceso de urbanización mundial no es nuevo. Ya en 1960 el Consejo Económico y Social de Naciones Unidas recomendaba que los gobiernos estudien la posibilidad de formular una política nacional de planificación y desarrollo metropolitano y de designar organizaciones adecuadas como centros regionales que se ocupen de tales cuestiones Res. 8930B (XXXII). Sin embargo, países como Argentina no han asumido seriamente los desafíos que implican los procesos masivos de concentración, su administración, gestión y ordenamiento sustentable, especialmente la coordinación interjurisdiccional de los territorios involucrados. Se corre el riesgo de afrontar tardíamente la racionalización de los procesos de metropolización (SOJA, 2008). La gobernabilidad que reclaman regiones metropolitanas como la conformada por el Gran Corrientes-Gran Resistencia exige pensar en responsabilidades, acciones y proyecciones compartidas entre los sectores públicos y privados, y considerar la conveniencia de abordar las cuatro dimensiones planteadas por John Friedmann: la Planeación Económica, la Física, la Socio-cultural y la Planeación para la Sustentabilidad Ambiental (FRIEDMANN, 1999).El trabajo recoge un proceso inicial de obtención de información urbana y regional de las ciudades tratadas, y el de homogeneización y procesamiento de los antecedentes con criterio integrador y flexible.

H. Al-Hazzaa, A. Musaiger, Arab Teens Lifestyle Study Research Group

During recent decades, almost all major cities in the Arab countries have witnessed dramatic lifestyle changes. This is mainly due to rapid urbanization, crowded population, availability of high-fats and dense-caloric foods, propagated satellite TV, increased reliance on computer and telecommunication technology, and decreased occupational-work demands. These enormous lifestyle changes have considerable negative impacts on societal health. In fact, such lifestyle transformation was thought to be greatly responsible for the epidemic of noncommunicable diseases along with their complications in this part of the world. 1,2 According to the World Health Organization, the most important risk factors of non-communicable diseases in the Arab countries included high blood pressure, high concentrations of cholesterol in the blood, inadequate intake of fruit and vegetables, overweight or obesity, physical inactivity and tobacco use. Five of these risks are closely related to improper diet and physical inactivity. 3

P. Fan, J. Qi