Does land use and landscape contribute to self-harm? A sustainability cities framework

Self-harm has become one of the leading causes of mortality in developed countries. The overall rate for suicide in Canada is 11.3 per 100,000 according to Statistics Canada in 2015. Between 2000 and 2007 the lowest rates of suicide in Canada were in Ontario, one of the most urbanized regions in Canada. However, the interaction between land use, landscape and self-harm has not been significantly studied for urban cores. It is thus of relevance to understand the impacts of land-use and landscape on suicidal behavior. This paper takes a spatial analytical approach to assess the occurrence of self-harm along one of the densest urban cores in the country: Toronto. Individual self-harm data was gathered by the National Ambulatory Care System (NACRS) and geocoded into census tract divisions. Toronto’s urban landscape is quantified at spatial level through the calculation of its land use at di erent levels: (i) land use type, (ii) sprawl metrics relating to (a) dispersion and (b) sprawl/mix incidence; (iii) fragmentation metrics of (a) urban fragmentation and (b) density and (iv) demographics of (a) income and (b) age. A stepwise regression is built to understand the most influential factors leading to self-harm from this selection generating an explanatory model.This research was supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Strategic Team Grant in Applied Injury Research # TIR-103946 and the Ontario Neurotrauma Foundation grantinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Knowledge and the diversity of innovation systems: a comparative analysis of European regions

The main goal of this paper is to shed some light on European regional diversity in terms of knowledge accumulation and socio-economic performances. Dynamic links between knowledge, innovation and performance are complex to address because they take place in different contexts, involving heterogeneous agents interacting through different institutions. Studies on national systems of innovation (Edquist, 1997) stressed the role of the institutional context in these dynamics and identify various configurations associated with these national systems. This conceptual framework, used at the regional level, leads to the identification of regional systems of innovation (Cooke, 2001) and thus underlines the limits of a regional scoreboard only based on high-tech indicators as it is usually proposed. This paper constitutes a first attempt to propose a more exhaustive effort in characterizing the diversity of "regional knowledge an innovation systems" within Europe. The study is performed through data analysis using the conceptual framework of "social systems of innovation and production" (SSIP) proposed by Amable, Barré and Boyer (1997). A Social System of Innovation and Production can be defined as a coherent combination of different components referring to Science-technology-industry (STI) configurations articulated with financial system, labour relations, education and training and economic performances. This framework can be adapted at the regional level by identifying specific arrangements of each part of the system even if the concept of system is questionable at this level. The analysis is performed combining data from three sources (Eurostat, the Cambridge Econometrics database and OST (Observatoire des Sciences et des Techniques)) over a sample of NUTS-II european regions and using multivariate data analysis (principal component analysis, hierarchical anova). Putting together the SSIP and local economic performances allows defining different regional configurations in order to identify regional trajectories and patterns of articulation between knowledge dynamics and performance. Our hypothesis is that regional growth in not a problem of best practice but of coherent knowledge combination: institutional differences may lead similar (or different) STI structures to different (respectively same) performances.NARegional Innovation systems, Knowledge economy, Institutional diversity, European regions, Regional economic performances