Author: Human Geographies - Journal of Studies and Research in Human Geography

By Posted on Posted in Volume 6, Issue 2, 2012 Tagged with , , ,

Liouciou Island, located off the south western coast of Taiwan, has 12,550 inhabitants of which high proportion are elderly and fisherman. The medical services are provided mainly by the local Public Health Clinic. Any emergencies or major medical treatment requires patients to be transferred to a regional hospital in Taiwan, which normally takes 40 minutes by the Ambulance boat. The aims of this paper are: 1) To examine the potential risk factors of disease based on the geography and medical services of Liouciou island; 2) To analyze the participants’ perception of disease risk on the island at various spatial scales (individual, family, neighbor, island or nation); 3) To analyze the adjustment strategies towards disease risks used by the Liouciou island people. Questionnaires and in-depth interviews were used to gather the information. The results show that participants in Liouciou worried about the Ambulance boat not being able to sail in bad weather conditions. In addition, the young people complained about the local medical facilities and physician’s skill while the elderly admitted their life was predetermined by God. The fishermen also reported that they were unable to follow up on their chronic disease. As a result, most of them ignored their health.

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By Posted on Posted in Volume 6, Issue 2, 2012 Tagged with , , ,

The conservation of tropical ecosystems is complex and contested, not least in terms of cultural and political perspectives between developed and developing nations (Bawa & Seidler, 1998; Colchester, 2000; Brosius & Hitchner, 2010). In Sabah, on the island of Borneo, Malaysia much of the forest has recently been converted to oil palm plantations. The plantations cover vast areas and leave relatively little space for native flora and fauna. Whilst efforts are underway to enhance biodiversity within the plantations, there is no clear consensus as to how this might best be achieved and this has led in part to divisions opening up amongst stakeholders (Othman & Ameer, 2009). A range of Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) working within Sabah endeavour to conserve threatened biodiversity; at the Governmental level there are significant drivers for development and economic stability; while the plantation owners are trying to improve their yields and increase their global market. There is also increasing consumer pressure in Europe and North America linked to concerns about the survival of iconic rainforest species such as orang-utans. This paper considers these issues within a context of globalisation and profound economic and social change within Malaysia.

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This paper reports on research to develop local indicators of ‘habitation comfort’ that are relevant for population health in the Vladimir region, located in Central Russia. We present a conceptual model based on the literature which led us to include three groups of factors for assessing population habitation comfort: natural-anthropogenic, social and medical-ecological. To assess and display a ‘comfort map’ of socio-economic conditions, a single database has been developed Higher comfort level is associated with better social-economic conditions, and also with proximity to major economically developed regions like Moscow and Nizhniy Novgorod. The lowest comfort level index was detected in the regions with the worst natural-anthropogenic and social-economic conditions. In further analysis, demographic conditions in the Vladimir region were evaluated by administrative region, and medical-ecological zoning was carried out based on principal causes of diseases affecting the population.

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Developing tourism in an area represents the continuous process of planning and building tourist facilities, refurbishing and modernizing the existing ones, resizing them according to the types and sizes of tourist fluxes, shaping demand and offer, rendering a sustainable tourist activity. Perspective studies on the evolution of the phenomenon are necessary to design the tourist activity, following the insertion of the future area parameters into the decision models allowing them to be monitored and changed during the modelling process. Given the geographic really of space, the present study focuses on highlighting several indicators concerning tourism development in an area severely affected by economic cut backs, suggesting and also trying to monitor the social and economic effects tourism development could have upon. Besides determining the function of the territory, authors have conducted a diagnostic analysis which underlines the favourable factors of tourism, indicating, at the same time, the necessary measures to insure the best development. Thus, given the conditions of massive cut backs in the major economic sectors, the local development of tourism is of a crucial importance. As a key element of the sustainable development, tourism could provide new business and work places in the same time; it could determine the increase of incomes for the rural area habitants through the capitalization of local resources.

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By Posted on Posted in Volume 6, Issue 2, 2012 Tagged with , , , ,

The city centre is a place of emblematic significance for the urban community, where the essence of the socio-urban identity is condensed. The centre of the post-socialist city has travelled varied meanings and extensions that have been perceived differentiated between sequences of generations. Functionalist stratifications have induced in the collective imagination a superposed series of centres: historical, tourist, economic, cultural, each dilating or contracting the urban centre’s limits, depending on the significance that has been inoculated to the receiving subject. It was starting with year 1977 that the political will imposed the achievement of a new “Civic Centre” which was desired to be an imprint of the cultural and scientific progress of that moment. Communist interventions attempted to uniform the urban landscape by inserting visual and emotional mutations. The present analysis regards the perception of Bucharest`s centre and offers a perspective on the relation between residents and place, considering that human behaviour indicates some inconsistencies related to the urban planning of the post-socialist city that deals with intense processes of identity transformation.

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By Posted on Posted in Volume 6, Issue 1, 2012 Tagged with , ,

In recent years geographic mental maps have made a comeback into the spotlight of scholarly inquiry in the area of Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA). While never disappearing completely from scholarly examination, geographic mental maps were side-lined in most geographic and international relations (IR) research agendas. While geographers had long acknowledged the importance of mental maps in the study of international politics, few studies centred on the influence of geographic cognition on foreign policy. Only with the cognitive revolution in IR did geographic mental maps find space to develop conceptually and empirically with regards to international politics. Beginning with Henrikson’s initial conceptualisation over three decades ago the mental map research agenda has adopted several different theoretical and methodological approaches which will be analysed in the current article.

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By Posted on Posted in Volume 6, Issue 1, 2012 Tagged with , , , , ,

This paper discusses the complementarity of methodological guides dealing with microregional development in Central Europe. As an example, the Czech Republic framework has been selected. This study compares seven common methodologies written in Czech, which the author has divided into three groups, namely manual-like methodologies, semi-scientific texts and hybrid texts dealing with other complementary aspects. The result is a comparison of methodologies, their usage and implications for the practices of regional development. The paper also includes a brief analysis of sustainable development elements incorporated into the methodological texts. The final part outlines links to the four-capital model of regional development.

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By Posted on Posted in Volume 6, Issue 1, 2012 Tagged with , , , , ,

Over the past decades, the ageing of our society has become a widespread phenomenon. A continuing increase of the elderly population is particularly present in more developed regions of world. However, demographic changes are soon expected in less developed regions as a consequence of socio-economic development. The paper reports on the development of characteristics of the burden carried by the productive population as the consequence of the demographic ageing of population in the conditions of Slovak and Czech regions. Population was divided into to the age groups and burden on the productive population was analysed using burden coefficients, age index and coefficients describing the dynamics of burden changes, specifically the inflow, outflow and substitution coefficient. The significance of this analysis is based on the fact that ageing influences – to the great extent – the spatial structure of human activities.

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By Posted on Posted in Volume 6, Issue 1, 2012 Tagged with , , , ,

The landscape pattern of the Romanian urban system has experienced significant transformations as a result of the rapid and irreversible changes undertaken after the fall of the communism. In Romania almost 34% of its total population are living in metropolitan areas. The paper is aiming to analyse the landscape-related challenges land-use/land-cover changes in the Romanian metropolitan areas in relation with the main factors involved in the patterns of change: demographic, political and natural. Based on the investigation of relevant cartographic supports of the last 20 years, the authors are making use of different GIS methods in order to conduct a series of complex analysis of the spatial-temporal landscape challenges. The paper will mainly focus on four metropolitan areas considered as case-studies: the capital-city (Bucharest) and the three functional metropolitan areas (Oradea, Iaşi and Constanţa), each metropolitan area is facing different patterns and causes of change.

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By Posted on Posted in Volume 6, Issue 1, 2012 Tagged with , , , ,

While cities appeared and disappeared during the history, and different disciplines, such as ecology and geography attempted to model the process from a systemic perspective, the growth of modern cities, particularly under the form of urban sprawl, is an important phenomenon due to its environmental and socioeconomic impacts. CORINE data allow for analyzing the growth of cities based on the changes in land cover and use. This study aimed to assess the magnitude of long-term urban growth in Romania, chosen as an example of a transition country, hypothesizing that the phenomenon is visible at the national scale. The results locate urban growth in area where the real estate boom is prominent, but its extent is masked by the small share of urban areas from the total territory. If growth is analyzed in relationship to the urban area, its magnitude becomes visible, supporting the underlying hypothesis.

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