Search Results (28)

Population aging–weakening has become a critical constraint on rural sustainability in China’s Yellow River Basin (YRB), posing substantial challenges to ecological conservation and high-quality development. This study develops a multidimensional evaluation framework categorizing rural aging–weakening into four typologies: general development type (GDT), shallow aging–weakening type (SAT), medium aging–weakening type (MAT), and deep aging–weakening type (DAT). Then, the XGBoost model is used to assess the factors influencing the spatial diversity of aging–weakening types in the rural population at different spatial and temporal scales. The key findings reveal the following: (1) The proportion of aging–weakening areas increased from 65% (2000) to 72% (2020), exhibiting distinct regional trajectories. Upper reaches demonstrate severe manifestations (34% combined MAT/DAT in 2020), contrasting with middle reaches dominated by GDT/SAT (>80%). Lower reaches show accelerated deterioration (MAT/DAT surged from 10% to 31%). (2) Spatial differentiation primarily arises from terrain-habitat conditions, industrial capacity, urbanization, and agricultural income. While most factors maintained stable directional effects, agricultural income transitioned from positive to negative correlation post-2010. Upper/middle reaches are predominantly influenced by geographical environment, with the role of socioeconomic factors gradually increasing. Lower reaches exhibit stronger economic–environmental interactions. (3) This research provides actionable insights for differentiated regional strategies: upper reaches require ecological migration programs, middle areas need industrial transition support, while lower regions demand coordinated economic–environmental governance. Our typological framework offers methodological advancements for assessing demographic challenges in vulnerable watersheds, with implications extending to similar developing regions globally. Full article

Converting traditional villages into ecovillages provides a sustainable path for rural development by integrating ecological, social, and cultural aspects. This study utilizes the Community Sustainability Assessment (CSA) tool from the Global Ecovillage Network to evaluate the potential of six villages in Bursa, Turkey, across coastal, lowland, and mountain typologies using 21 themes and 900 criteria. Within the scope of the research, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was applied to the quantitative data obtained from the CSA using IBM SPSS V28. The results indicate that coastal villages show greater potential for transition to a more sustainable lifestyle, while mountain villages face challenges with resource management and infrastructure. The villages show strong cultural and spiritual resilience, having existed for centuries, but many ecological practices have been lost due to urban migration. Recommendations include creating a national ecovillage database, training experts, supporting local projects, and convincing villagers of the transformation’s benefits. This study highlights the significance of the CSA for measuring sustainability potential and suggests future research on traditional villages in various geographies, along with developing region-specific methodologies. This approach focuses on enhancing existing villages rather than starting new ecovillages from scratch. Full article

Traditional villages face many difficulties in the era of globalization, especially in light of fast industrialization and urbanization. The breakdown of settlement patterns and the erosion of local characteristics and cultural identities pose critical issues for the sustainable development of these communities. While research on traditional villages and dwellings in core cultural areas is relatively advanced, there remains a significant gap in studies focusing on traditional villages and dwellings in multicultural intermingling regions. By clarifying the characteristics of traditional villages and the cultural landscapes of dwellings under the influence of multiple cultures, as well as their differentiation and underlying mechanisms, this research aims to provide theoretical support for the protective planning of world cultural heritage, which is increasingly characterized by clustering and regionalization. Taking the traditional villages and dwellings in the Jiangxi and Anhui junction area as a case study, we developed a cultural landscape factor system for traditional villages and dwellings across four dimensions: natural environment, spatial configuration, dwelling typology, and historical and cultural context. Using geographic information systems (GIS) zoning methods and statistical spatial analysis, we divided the area into three distinct cultural landscape zones. The findings indicate that the cultural landscapes within each zone exhibit unique regional characteristics at both the village and dwelling levels, particularly in site selection, settlement patterns, and architectural aesthetics. Differentiation across zones is shaped by natural factors, such as topography and water systems, as well as by regional culture, historical migration, the chronological sequence of regional development, commerce and trade growth, and the evolution of administrative systems, alongside broader cultural, economic, and social factors, showing consistent patterns. This study demonstrates that utilizing a scientific and objective zoning approach to accurately identify the cultural landscape characteristics and differentiation patterns across various cultural zones, while clarifying the historical evolution of villages and the transformation of dwelling forms, provides practical insights for cultural landscape zoning in other multicultural regions. Furthermore, it provides scientific guidance to advance China’s rural revitalization strategy and supports the regional protection and sustainable development of world cultural heritage. Full article

This article introduces systemism as a method of evaluating the expanding research agenda on the politics of migration. Systemism is a graphic method for presenting academic research concisely. It provides three methods of advancing the research agenda: elaboration, systematic synthesis, and bricolagic bridging. I employ two of these methods to follow the evolution of research on states’ migration policies from the 1990s to the 2020s, providing a critique of the research and suggesting methods for advancing our knowledge of this politically important policy issue. The article provides a short overview of systemism, and then illustrates its application through the presentation of two articles in graphic form: “No Vacancy. The Political Geography of Immigration Control in Advanced, Market Economy Countries” by Jeannette Money, and “The Migration State in the Global South: Nationalizing, Developmental, and Neoliberal Models of Migration Management”, authored by Fiona Adamson and Gerasimos Tsourapas. Elaboration is employed to expand the systemist presentation of “No Vacancy”, to communicate causal mechanisms more thoroughly. The next section employs systematic synthesis to bring together the two articles and to engage the research agenda on the politics of migration policy. The past 30 years have witnessed an expansion of the definition of migration management strategies captured by the four-fold typology proposed by Adamson and Tsourapas. However, continuing to pay attention to the domestic politics of migration management would help to illuminate variation among states within each category. Both articles acknowledge structural factors that constrain or provide opportunities for states’ migration policy choices, but neither develops a clear picture of the systemic factors that shape international mobility and the policy choices of states in the international system. The conclusions point to a continuing expansion of the research agenda along these three dimensions. Full article

Since the 1990s, the academic discourse on climate change, migration, and adaptation has undergone significant shift. Individuals previously characterized as “climate refugees” are now cast as adaptable agents. Against this backdrop, academic explorations of the nexus between mobility and adaptation within the context of climate change have burgeoned, particularly in the latter half of the 2000s. The objective of this paper is to identify linkages between adaptation and different forms of (im)mobility situated on the spectrum of movement that has been conceptualized and discussed in theoretical and empirical material. To accomplish this, I undertake an exhaustive review of the extant literature on the subject of climate change-induced (im)mobility and adaptation. This paper suggests three possible types of relationships between (im)mobility and adaptation in the context of climate and environmental change: adaptation in situ, relocation, and migration as an adaptation strategy. These dimensions have so far been treated separately by scholars. Full article

Tianjin is currently in the phase of urban stock renewal, yet its industrial heritage encounters significant challenges, including constrained spatial development, a misalignment between industrial progress and the reuse of industrial heritage, and an understated cultural representation. This study utilized geospatial analysis methods, including kernel density analysis, standard deviation ellipse analysis, and gravity migration model analysis, to elucidate the distribution characteristics of Tianjin’s industrial heritage across temporal, spatial, and typological dimensions. Moreover, a geographic detector was employed to assess the impact of various factors on the development of Tianjin’s industrial heritage, ultimately elucidating the correlations between existing challenges and objective patterns. The conclusion of this paper presents three strategic approaches for the renewal of industrial heritage, emphasizing historical culture, environmental space, and sustainable development. These strategies are designed to provide a solid research foundation for protecting and revitalizing Tianjin’s industrial heritage resources. Full article

Many smaller coastal towns that rely on tourism for their economic survival have been badly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Many have since rebounded, and in some, inbound migration has soared. Unfortunately, this influx of tourists and new residents brings with it increased development and associated environmental and social changes that often negatively impact the distinctive character and sense of place many of these places possess, which makes them attractive destinations in the first place. Protecting features in the landscape that define the character of these settlements and preventing future changes that would be incompatible with it will be crucial for the environmental, social, and economic sustainability of these ‘sea change’ settlements. Once the distinctive character of these places is lost, it is nearly impossible to recapture. This paper reviews the findings of a suite of studies previously undertaken by the author that explored the perceptions of residents in ten ‘sea change’ settlements, nine in Australia and one in Thailand, regarding how they perceived the character of their towns and what features they felt were compatible or incompatible with that character. In comparing the findings from these studies, a clear pattern emerged in that similar types of landscape features were consistently identified as supporting or detracting from the character of these towns. This allowed a typology of features salient to the character of these types of ‘sea change settlements’ to be formulated, providing insights into this intangible yet highly valuable resource of place character within the context of these types of settlements and establishing a basis for further research in other similar tourism-intensive coastal settlements. Full article

Depopulation is caused by low fertility rates and out-migration, and it applies to countries, regions and smaller areas. Rural depopulation is defined as a sharp population decline that falls well below an adequate population size and indicates that an area has lost its demographic reproductive capacity. This paper discusses the socioeconomic and territorial aspects of rural depopulation, attempting to do justice to the spatial dimensions of the phenomenon. Greece exhibits all the symptoms of demographic transition, leading to labour shortages, declining economic productivity, and increasing demands on the health and welfare system. The study on rural depopulation in Greece focuses on the changes and dynamics observed at the municipal and regional levels. A typology has been developed to identify rural communities in Greece. The main source of demographic data for our study is the Greek censuses (1991, 2001, 2011, and 2021). Demographic and socioeconomic trends in Greece are interlinked and show different regional and local dynamics. Rural depopulation is closely related to the study of (international and internal) migration, even though the latter does not provide a permanent solution to depopulation. An empirical analysis has shown that there is a need to revitalise rural areas through socioeconomic improvements, infrastructure investments, and policies that directly impact rural communities. Full article

Many European countries have faced the process of urban shrinkage in recent decades. Due to the various theoretical aspects of urban shrinkage, there are numerous approaches to the interpretation of this process. The most widely accepted of these refers to the demographic component as the starting point for defining this phenomenon, with the decline of the total population as the main indicator. The demographic shrinkage of cities in Serbia is a process that has been in place since the 1960s, with the dynamics of spatial-demographic and socioeconomic transformation during the post-socialist transition having exacerbated urban shrinkage. As a result, over 80% of urban settlements are affected by it. This paper identifies the trajectory and spatio-temporal patterns of the intensity and dynamics of urban shrinkage for the period from 1961 to 2022. The aim of this work is to show the diversity of shrinking cities and to explore the driving forces behind this process in Serbia. In this study, we conducted an analysis of population trends in 167 urban settlements in Serbia. Further analysis included the identification of contrasting spatio-temporal and demographic dynamic patterns characterized by either natural losses or out-migration. Due to the complex urban trajectories, a typology was created that distinguishes four different types of shrinking cities: continuously shrinking cities, episodically shrinking cities, recently shrinking cities, and resurgent cities. The results are important to achieving a better understanding of how patterns of local population trends change over time and space. The result will thus be a step towards explaining the main demographic factors causing population change and inter- and intra-regional differences between shrinking cities in Serbia, as well as towards examining urban renewal opportunities in the future. Full article

Burkina Faso is a sub-Saharan African country suffering from a high poverty rate. It has quadruplicated its population over the last twenty years, that is, from 4.5 to 18 million inhabitants. Such demographic changes, together with an intense migration process from rural areas to large cities, among other issues, are contributing to a rapid process of socio-cultural transformation. In this context, changes in both traditional and contemporary housing are analyzed for this article. To this aim, a thorough thermo-hygrometric evaluation is carried out by processing significant data from on-site measurements to shed new light on the adaptation of the said dwellings to the environmental and local cultural values. Preliminary results show that the introduction of land ownership linked to climate change and the increasing scarcity of natural resources are forcing native ethnic groups to modify their traditional ways of life, even threatening their subsistence. Consequently, we can prove that the new building typologies are not suitable in the least for the climatic conditions nor the rich cultural heritage of Burkina Faso. This fact negatively affects the possibility of revitalizing vernacular and environmentally oriented solutions for the contemporary world and the necessary advance towards a more sustainable architecture. With this research, we intent to start a reversal of such a deterioration process. Full article

The efficiency of glass eel restocking as a conservation measure to restore the altered local eel stocks has never been evaluated by integrating the dimension of typological diversity of freshwater habitats in eel recruitment performance in terms of the abundance, density, growth, silvering, survival, catchability and eel yields. Here, we used the electrofishing method during a 6-year study to catch eels, and the most appropriate Jolly–Seber model was applied to estimate the demographic parameters in open populations. We found that most eels were yellow eels in the growth phase with a low abundance (eels 3⁺: 2.8% and eels 5⁺: 7.1%) of silver eels, which were only males at the MII migrating phase. Eel recruitment performance varied between sector/river habitats. Restocked eels showed annually positive allometric growth type with good length increments and better condition factors. They have survived in almost all sectors with a survival rate > 0.810. Eels were more abundant and denser (maximum 0.128 individuals m⁻²) in one sector with a high quality of habitats offering optimal living conditions in terms of the protection against predators and water flow, settlement and food availability, as revealed by it having the highest eel yields. In contrast, no eels were found in two sectors whose habitats offered a high threat of predation, poor burial properties and insufficient protection against water flow. Sector/river habitats play a key role in the success of yellow eel production and certainly, over time, future genitor production. This study provides recommendations for the management of eels and their habitats during restocking aimed at the conservation of this threatened species. Full article

Focusing on the Yangtze River Delta region, the spatial distribution and change characteristics of the employed population were assessed by selecting three time points: 2000, 2010 and 2020. Firstly, a correlation was established between population employment statistics and spatial units of administrative divisions to analyze the spatial distribution characteristics of the employed population in general and by industry; secondly, the changing characteristics of the spatial distribution of the employed population over time, including the migration of the centroid and density changes, were analyzed; thirdly, a systematic clustering approach was adopted to carry out a typological analysis of 41 cities in the Yangtze River Delta from three perspectives: industrial structure, time stage and spatial level. It was found that (1) regional differences within the Yangtze River Delta are still significant, but are narrowing; (2) different cities or regions show different characteristics of development stages, and late-developing regions can learn from early developing regions; (3) metropolitan areas are still the main areas of employment concentration, and the spatial distribution of employment in some cities is beginning to suburbanize. Full article

Forest succession can be monitored in the present, modelled for the future, but also reconstructed in the past on the records of forest history, including through the use of palaeo-ecological techniques. Longer-term records from pollen data can show changes over centennial and millennial timescales that are impacted by climate, migration or soil development. Having knowledge of previous phases of post-disturbance seral stages of woodland regeneration however, as after fire, can provide insights regarding successional process and function over short-term decadal timescales. The aim of this paper is to test the high-resolution pollen record as a source of new insights into processes of succession, assisted by the supplementary data of microscopic charcoal analyses. On short-term timescales, multiple phases of forest disturbance and then recovery have been identified in early to mid-Holocene peat records in northern England, many from the uplands but also from lowland areas. We identify and describe a typology of recovery patterns, including the composition and rate of recovery, and then test the processes and factors that impacted on different seral trajectories, concentrating on fire disturbance which might have had a natural origin, or might have been caused by pre-agricultural Mesolithic hunter-gatherers. Factors considered include the spatial location and intensity of the fire event, the duration of the disturbance phase, the structure and dynamics of the successional regeneration vegetation communities and the pre-disturbance tree cover. Data from examples of fire disturbance of woodland have been examined from both upland and lowland sites in northern England and indicate that they had different successional pathways after disturbance. Fire disturbances in the denser lowland forests were mostly single burn events followed by natural successions and regeneration to forest, whereas fire disturbances in the upland woods usually showed continued or repetitive fire pressure after the initial burning, arresting succession so that vegetation was maintained in a shrub phase, often dominated by Corylus, for an extended period of time until disturbance ceased. This creation of a kind of prolonged, almost plagioclimax, ‘fire-coppice’ hazel stage suggests controlled rather than natural successional pathways, and strongly suggests that Mesolithic foragers were the fire starters in the upland English woodlands where hazel was naturally common and could be maintained in abundance in later-stage successions, along with other edible plants, for human use. All post-fire seral stages would have been attractive to game animals, providing a reliable food source that would have been of great benefit to hunter-gatherer populations. Full article

This article reports on an interview study with six secondary school LX English teachers working in a part of Austria where there is an above-average number of residents–and thus also students–who are multilingual and come from migration backgrounds. It attempts to extend research on deficit perspectives of multilingual learners from migration backgrounds to the area of LX English learning and to provide insights into a language learning context that is underrepresented in international applied linguistics research, which has tended to focus on elite language learning. The article explores teachers’ perceptions of teaching English in this context. We hypothesized that teachers would hold negative beliefs about their students’ multilingual backgrounds and practices. The typological analysis of teachers’ interview data revealed that teachers did hold some dominant deficit perspectives about their students’ multilingualism and language learning; however, it also suggests that teachers are taking on the rudiments of a translanguaging stance that values multilingual practice. The article thus closes by considering how possibility perspectives can be harnessed and extended to foster students’ multilingual and multicultural development, with particular regard to LX English language learning. Full article

COVID-19 has come to change societal organization. Due to lockdowns, work typologies have been rethought and telework has gained strength. However, the impact of the constant use of information and communication technologies on the mental health of workers needs to be considered. We aimed to investigate the impact of different work conditions on mental health, to which end we disseminated an online questionnaire during lockdowns to assess imagined surveillance, mobile maintenance expectation, communication overload, feelings of entrapment, depression, anxiety, stress, and flourishing in four groups (employed in telework, employed on-site, employed in layoff, and unemployed). We computed mean comparisons and serial mediations. We show that depression and anxiety were more prevalent in women; parents flourished more than people without children; and people with a higher level of education feel more entrapment. Crucially, we show that telework was associated with imagined surveillance and communication overload, which mediated the association with mobile maintenance expectations and entrapment (which was exacerbated by parenthood), impacting mental health and the quality of life. However, this was also partially observed in the remaining work conditions. Finally, flourishing worked as a protector against mental health issues in all work conditions. We discuss this given the massification of digital migration. Full article