Applied Geographic Studies最新文献

The Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) provides the public with a general idea of the potential for public health problems associated with exposure to industrial toxic chemicals. It is, essentially, a public risk communication tool. TRI data are usually presented to the public as gross quantity of toxic chemicals annually emitted into air, into water, onto land, or transferred to other sites by facilities in the United States that handle a selected set of hazardous materials. Simply reporting annual emissions, however, fails to communicate a realistic measure of the potential for adverse impacts stemming from exposure to these emissions and fails to accurately measure a region's vulnerability. Health problems caused by local environmental contamination are, after all, of great interest to the general public. Annual reports of toxic releases for the counties of the state of Texas are used to test whether inclusion of other spatial attributes improves the association between county-level hazard measures and patterns of selected airborne-exposure-related diseases. Spatial, demographic, and toxicity-related factors are combined with release quantities into an aggregated value. Simple linear regressions and analyses of variance show that the revised value is a better predictor of mortality from certain exposure-related illnesses. The strength and significance of association between disease patterns and patterns of place vulnerability is improved by the new measure, particularly in rural counties. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Communities deciding how to equitably distribute the cost of storm-water management systems need an understanding of how selection of a particular apportionment approach alters the cost distribution between various segments of the community. With the use of a geographic information system (GIS), differential impacts by apportionment approach were assessed for the Cuppy-McClure Watershed, Indiana, an area undergoing conversion from agricultural to residential and industrial uses. A per-acre charge approach is simple to construct and administer and gives a spatially uniform cost, but does not account for differential storm-water generation between different land uses. A single storm event runoff coefficient approach increases the cost load on land areas that generate more storm-water runoff from rare, extreme rainstorms, in particular, land uses with extensive impervious surfaces. For the single-storm approach, cost per unit area in the study area ranges from 25% below the per-acre charge level to 291% above the per-acre charge level. A long-term runoff impact approach increases the cost load on land uses that generate more runoff from the natural range of storm events for an area. It gives the greatest differential impact between land uses, ranging from 51% below the per-acre charge level to 484% above the per-acre charge level. Runoff-based approaches to fee apportionment shift financial burden to the landowners responsible for generating storm water runoff. Assigning fiscal responsibility on the basis of impact level encourages impact-minimization strategies, such as including hydrologic analyses in land-use decisions. Different spatial arrangements of the same land uses in a watershed can significantly alter the level of hydrologic impact, thus impact-based fee apportionment also encourages inclusion of spatial organization and environmental concerns in land-use planning. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

The traditional equidistant assignment of ocean area rights to coastal neighbors is not always equitable. A well-defined and easily computed alternative is provided by a line dividing the sea into areas of equal dominance relative to each of several countries. The Gulf of Maine is used to illustrate the concept. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

The aim of this paper is to encourage those interested in applied geographical research to broaden their horizons to consider exciting new areas where geographical expertise has much to offer. A brief overview of dominant past trends is followed by a suggestion to apply geographical knowledge and research methods to benefit disabled populations. Several possible venues for making this commitment are explored, and some interesting and useful contributions are reviewed to show that geography has as much to offer as other disciplines in searching for solutions to the problems of the disabled. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Shift-share is one of the most widely applied techniques for regional and industrial development analysis. However, the conventional shift-share model has limited analytical capacity and is frequently criticized for its structural problems and sometimes-contradictory explanations. The new extension and integrated approach presented in this article enhances the analytical power of this method and introduces new scope for shift-share applications. This new extension is applied to sectoral change studies of the national capital region, including the detection of structural change, the identification of growth sectors, and growth analysis. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

This article describes the implementation of a geographically focused job linkage policy as part of the City of Phoenix's federally-funded Enterprise Community. Job linkage policy faces formidable obstacles in Phoenix because it runs counter to prevailing transportation, employment, and demographic forces. Efforts to improve the employment outcomes and raise the standard of living of inner-city residents should be metropolitan in scope, reflecting the metropolitan scale at which most Phoenicians, even inner-city residents, live and work. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

The probabilistic model of consumer spatial behavior formulated by Huff in 1962 continues to be used extensively by academicians and professional analysts in a variety of different applications. Consumer patronage, transportation demand, and economic impact are a few examples of such applications. The widespread use of the model has resulted in a number of misuses due to misconceptions and lack of knowledge on key issues. This article highlights key operational problems such as parameter estimation, choice set determination, variable selection and interpretation, and so on. The theoretical underpinning of the model is shown to be rooted in Central Place Theory. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

In this article we examine the process of community reimaging in a Canadian resource town that has been traditionally dependent on forest industries and is now seeking to establish its tourism economy. The discussion is framed within a conceptualization of postproductivism and the nature of contested transitions in rural areas. We draw on this debate, which has its origins in a British agricultural setting, to consider aspects of rural transition in a nonagricultural North American setting. The transitional process is examined through a case study of Squamish, British Columbia, Canada. First, we examine the results of a community survey and identify attitudinal differences between newer residents (of 5 years or less residency) and longer-term residents. Analysis reveals that the differences are predominantly a matter of degree rather than of an opposing nature. Differences between these two resident groups are further explored by examining the process of reimaging undertaken by a Citizen's Tourism Advisory Committee as they seek to develop a community vision statement to guide future tourism development. Membership of the Committee was weighted in favor of newer residents, and clear differences of opinion between the two groups emerged as they sought consensus on the vision statement. The past landscape of production was relegated to the category of heritage as a means of integrating it into the new landscape of consumption. The new image reflected attempts to integrate residents' amenity desires for a rural idyll with those of the emergent tourism economy. Although the findings reflect the distinctiveness of the geographic context, underlying commonalities with British rural transitions are evident. ©1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

This study examines the geographical diffusion of the annual reporting of both newly diagnosed cases of HIV-AIDS and HIV-positive persons in a textile manufacturing county that typifies the “mill culture” of the American South. Nearest-neighbor analysis helps in identifying clusters of cases over time. As the HIV-AIDS epidemic progresses from the late 1980s into the 1990s, newly identified clusters of cases increasingly converge closer together. We also identify clusters of reported HIV-positive persons with the realization that the information is under-representative of the population not clients of public health facilities. The relative risk to African-Americans is much higher than other groups in spite of lower proportion than found in large metropolitan areas. The risk to females also continues to grow, especially for African-Americans. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.