A FARM-TO-DOOR DELIVERY MODE FOR ORGANIC VEGETABLES UNDER MOBILE COMMERCE IN METROPOLISES OF CHINA

This paper presents a farm-to-door delivery mode for organic vegetables, which connects farmers and customers directly, under the circumstance of mobile commerce (M-commerce). In recent years, the need of organic vegetables is growing constantly in China. Meanwhile, the farm-to-door delivery mode widely spread in metropolises as people there barely have time to go to food markets on weekdays. However, the terrible traffic condition makes it impossible to conduct the delivery in day time. So vegetables have to be delivered very early in the morning (usually 3:00-7:00 A.M.), which makes the owner unable to attend delivery. And in the traditional delivery mode, the absence of delivery may lead to the package missing in China. Aiming at solving these practical issues in China, an SMS-based interaction system is integrated in the delivery mode for informing, endorsing, confirming, tracing and complaining. Intelligent cupboards are used as a buffer to realize the asynchronously endorsement. This is a new business mode that extends the frontiers of the M-commerce. It can greatly reduce the intermediate links of vegetable distribution and simplify the food purchasing in people’s daily life. This application of mobile technology would have a huge potential in market

Place-making under Japan's neoliberal regime: ethics, locality, and community in rural Hokkaido

How should people live in rural Japan today? And how can they live together in declining communities? As counter-urbanization and the trend of rural revitalization have become a major scene of cultural politics in contemporary Japan, these fundamental questions become more and more important. To respond to the puzzle, it is necessary to re-conceptualize community for the sake of capturing the changing nature of rural society and delineating the current configuration of rural communities. Rather than viewing the countryside as a construct of urban consumerism, the active role and subjective meaning of local advocates of rural revitalization require systematic study. Only with a better understanding of rural community can researchers make a fair evaluation of the practices of place-making in Japan today. To answer the questions, I conducted a yearlong fieldwork on a rural revitalization project called the BVP in a rural town of Hokkaido, the northern island of Japan. A local non-profit organization, the ODC, sponsors this project, which aims to recruit retired urbanites to settle in their depopulated town to practice pesticide-free farming. During my residency in Hokkaido, I did participant observation in the activities and events of the BVP, and followed the daily practices of the major participants. In addition to that, I also did archival research and in-depth interviews to collect necessary data. Through the long-term fieldwork, I found that the implementation of the BVP has created a new form of communal life, which I term, a “rhizomatous community.” Urbanite newcomers settle down in different corners of the township via the assistance of the ODC, and work with native residents on the same ground. The ODC members mobilize available resources to realize the BVP, including people, extra income and food, and public assets. In so doing, the BVP grows into a discursive community that does not physically exist but that is substantially constituted by face-to-face contact, seasonal events, gift exchange, and various interactions with nature. In this respect, the BVP can be imagined as an assembled network that is composed of heterogeneous actors and things. The BVP as a rhizomatous community is embedded in the specific context of a regional society and its natural environment. The study contributes to community studies by challenging the understandings of community in classical and contemporary theories. A rhizomatous community is neither an interpersonal network existing in a socio-geographic vacuum, nor a traditional or newly invented neighborhood situated in a spatially bounded place. Rather, it is a heterogeneous assemblage discursively constituted through the process of producing locality. It is liberated from while remaining associated with traditional bonds such as family, kinship, and neighborhood

Cities in Asia by and for the People

This book examines the active role of urban citizens in constructing alternative urban spaces as tangible resistance towards capitalist production of urban spaces that continue to encroach various neighborhoods. The collection of narratives presented here brings together research from ten different Asian cities and re-theorises the city from the perspective of ordinary people facing moments of crisis, contestations, and cooperative quests to create alternative spaces to those being produced under prevailing urban processes. The chapters accent the exercise of human agency through daily practices in the production of urban space and the intention is not one of creating a romantic or utopian vision of what a city "by and for the people" ought to be. Rather, it is to place people in the centre as mediators of city-making with discontents about current conditions and desires for a better life

Land Use and Spatial Planning from a Sustainability Perspective: Designing the One-Minute City

This PhD thesis by publication, comprising four journal papers and a book chapter, addresses the overarching research question of how sustainability features can increase the value of land in urban development. Using two case studies (in China and Australia), it offers insights from a sustainability perspective into land use and spatial planning within the wider notion of value creation. The key findings are the concept of the Minute City and the spatial logic behind it

Of Rurban and its Waters

Using a qualitative approach and a case study method, this thesis advances the conceptualisation of rurban and contributes to the understanding of corresponding rurban water governance. In the context of Haldwani, a small city in the Kumaon Himalaya of Uttarakhand State in India, it is argued that a rurban space may or may not be at the immediate periphery of the urban centre, and it may or may not become urban. In this thesis rurban is conceptualised through the flows of goods, services, and resources between rural and urban. It is seen as a construct that is process-based and not an entity that is socio-organisational; it is studied through processes that lead to its creation and not as a state of being, or a way of life; as rurbanisation and not as rurbanism. In studying rurbanisation, emphasis is laid on enhanced historical sensitivity towards the economic, socio-political, and demographic foundations of rural-urban changes. In the dynamic context of rurban, a corresponding ever-evolving water governance is established. Institutional bricolage is used as a conceptual tool to unpack the water governance in rurban Haldwani. Rurban water governance is imbued with the agency of the users and is characterised by ‘thick’ institutions made by piecing and layering of historical, contemporary, traditional, customary, and statutory practices, norms, rules, and codes of conduct. The research captures changes in everyday practices and logics surrounding water access and use, as well as the meanings locals ascribe to the shifting spatial contexts of rural-urban interaction. This study paves the way for future studies on rurban resource governance, with a greater acknowledgement of the role and agency of rurban residents in making of the rurban space, and in (re)creation of institutional arrangements around resource use and access

The value of multi-functional urban agriculture in creating sustainable cities

PhD ThesisChina's cities continue to expand rapidly and under severe challenge of sustainable urban development. The Chinese Government has decided to bring agriculture back into the city in a state-controlled way and to re-educate urban residents to enjoy agriculture activities in urban areas. This research explores the Chinese Government’s approach to new urban agriculture in China. It seeks to better understand and evaluate the impacts of multifunctional urban agriculture on sustainable urban development. The work is set within the context of China’s extremely rapid urbanization and concerns about pollution, poor lifestyles and an over-emphasis on manufacturing as the economic driver of growth. This thesis has presented a first attempt to redefine the term ‘urban’ in relation to urban agriculture, extending it to the urban core areas, desakota areas and exurban areas. In this way it suggests a new typology of urban agriculture in China, with a potentially broader range of objectives and possibilities that might normally be associated with the subject or practice. Taking Beijing as the case study city, this study selects 3 of its 16 districts: Chaoyang, Changping and Miyun representing core, desakota and exurban areas. The specific projects in these three districts are totally different, and together they represent the three levels in the model of Chinese new urban agriculture. Each level of model is informed and supported by case study of practical projects. These are: Government fully-owned large projects, Government-supported privately run projects and Folk Custom Villages. Data was collected from direct observation, documentation, archive, physical survey, interviews and questionnaires. This thesis found that the “Chinese” urban agriculture model, through three different types of projects, aims to make people rethink the role of agriculture and see it not simply as something undertaken by others in a rural area, nor as something simply to provide food. Rather, it can be something which enhances the urban experience, improves the urban environment, offers leisure facilities, engages people in traditional culture and provides a diverse range of employment and livelihood activities. A well planned modern agricultural production is required to create an agricultural environment with reasonable spatial layout to reduce pollution and to create aesthetically pleasing and sustainable landscapes. It can help urban agriculture ii integrate into the city system in a more sustainable way by reconnecting urban life and rural culture. This model, therefore, sets urban agriculture in a central role within planned urbanization. In summary, this thesis suggests that this model could become an important strategy for land use planning, urbanization and the sustainable development of Chinese cities, indeed, all cities, in the future. This study will be of interest to those scholars who are seeking to explore the Chinese urban agriculture as an effective method for land use in sustainable urban development

Designing Urban Food Policies

This Open Access book is for scientists and experts who work on urban food policies. It provides a conceptual framework for understanding the urban food system sustainability and how it can be tackled by local governments. Written by a collective of researchers, this book describes the existing conceptual frameworks for an analysis of urban food policies, at the crossroads of the concepts of food system and sustainable city. It provides a basis for identifying research questions related to urban local government initiatives in the North and South. It is the result of work carried out within Agropolis International within the framework of the Sustainable Urban Food Systems program and an action research carried out in support of Montpellier Méditerranée Métropole for the construction of its agroecological and food policy

Economic reform, urban proximity and small town development in China: a tale of two towns

This thesis studies small town development in contemporary China (1978-present). It focuses on the socioeconomic impact of economic reform on small town development, with particular emphasis on how gradually released market forces enable urban proximity to play different roles to determine the developmental trajectory of small towns. The research design chooses two economically prosperous towns with different degrees of urban proximity, in which fieldwork is conducted. Xihongmen town is located in suburban Beijing and Zhulin town is located in a rural area of Henan province. The research focuses on government, firms and people as three key elements of small town development, and systematic comparisons have been used as the key research strategy throughout. The main research findings are as follows: 1) Xihongmen town's government has been transformed into a sophisticated, bureaucratic and complex organisation and the role of leadership in local development has declined over the years, but a simple and hybrid governmental structure was founded in Zhulin town and the personal capacity of local leaders still plays a vital role in local development; 2) The industrial environment in Xihongmen town is dynamic and an upswing has been observed in the local industrial structure (from the primary to the secondary and tertiary sectors), but Zhulin town still relies solely on the ongoing government-led entrepreneurship; its private sectors are underdeveloped and the industrial structure remains unchanged, and some key firms have even relocated themselves to larger cities duo to the constraints of the local infrastructure; 3) The local residents of Xihongmen town enjoy much more secure livelihoods, with multiple income sources, welfare and flexible job opportunities available in the local area, but the residents of Zhulin town rely primarily on the local government to provide non-farming jobs and both income sources and job opportunities are very limited to the local area. The thesis concludes that the economic reform initiated in 1978 played a key revitalising the rural industries and hence laid the foundations for the growth of small towns. The rural reform policies gave rural areas advantages over urban ones in the early stages of the reform. The evolving policy frameworks gradually lifted the various constraints and enabled urban proximity, a previously less important factor under the centrally planned system, which became the key factor to differentiate the developmental trajectories of small towns. The thesis further explains that proximity has multi-dimensional impacts on the socioeconomic development of small towns. On the one hand, small towns that enjoy close proximity to cities can benefit enormously from economies of scale and urban spillover effects, and this advantage could be further reinforced during the course of ongoing urbanisation. On the other hand, urban proximity could also have impacts on the social structures/orders of small towns, which in turn could affect their economic outcomes. For those towns with low degrees of urban proximity, a high level of community solidarity generated from dense clan/kinship networks might also act as a force to motivate their economic development. However, the latter type is certainly more vulnerable and requires the right blend of a number of historically contingent factors, which are path-dependant and difficult to replicate