Productive cities: opportunity in a changing economy

Most Australians live and work in cities. They are essential to generating growth and to creating and distributing opportunities. Cities are shaped by where people live, where they work, and how they get around. When these three things are in tune with the structure of the economy, cities operate efficiently and productively, and drive growth and innovation.This report examines housing, income and travel data in Australia\u27s four largest cities and reveals strains in the triangle of work, home and transport that could threaten national prosperity.Addressing these issues will provide a significant boost to national productivity, because as the economy becomes more knowledge intensive, deep labour markets and good links between firms become more important.Firms engaged in high-knowledge activities benefit from connections that enable them to collaborate and learn from one another. They locate in places with deep labour markets to ensure that they can attract the talent and skill they need.This report reveals, however, that labour markets are shallow in significant parts of Australia‟s biggest cities. In many suburbs – particularly outer suburbs – residents can reach fewer than 10 per cent of all metropolitan jobs with a reasonable commuting time.Increasingly, employees with high-level qualifications and high incomes live close to the heart of our cities. Meanwhile, workers with trade skills or low skills, and people on lower incomes, tend to live further from the centre. Rising house prices have exacerbated this divide. If this polarisation continues, then many people risk being locked out of the parts of the city that offer the richest access to jobs.How can government\u27s respond? Governments are frequently called upon to create jobs in outer suburban areas by offering incentives to business to relocate or by building new employment clusters from scratch. Yet there is little evidence that such policies work. A better option is to move people closer to jobs. This can be done in two ways. First, the supply and diversity of dwellings in existing suburbs can be increased. Previous Grattan research has shown that people want more housing choice. It can be created if the disincentives developers face are addressed, if suburbs are not locked down by restrictive zoning and planning rules and if residents are engaged up front in decisions affecting their neighbourhoods.Second, the transport system‟s capacity to connect people and jobs can and must be improved. That means better road systems and better public transport. Facing up to the challenges of road use pricing would go a long way to ensuring that space on city roads goes to the most important and most productive uses, and could raise revenue to help increase public transport capacity.The shape of our cities is above all an economic issue. Giving knowledge-intensive firms access to more workers would make them more productive. It would also give workers more opportunities to find rewarding jobs. Better functioning cities would unleash higher productivity, and provide everyone with more opportunities. In this case, what is good for the economy is also good for the fair go

Mapping Australia’s economy: cities as engines of prosperity

This report maps the Australian economy by the location of economic activity, defined as the dollar value of goods and services produced by workers within a particular area. Overview Eighty per cent of the value of all goods and services produced in Australia is generated on just 0.2 per cent of the nation’s land mass – mostly in cities. Today, cities are the engines of economic prosperity. But the concentration of highly productive activity in city centres presents challenges for policymakers. Too many workers live too far away to fulfil our cities’ economic potential. This report maps the Australian economy by the location of economic activity, defined as the dollar value of goods and services produced by workers within a particular area. It finds that economic activity is concentrated most heavily in the central business districts (CBDs) and inner areas of large cities. The CBDs of Sydney and Melbourne – just 7.1 square kilometres in total – generated $118 billion in 2011-12, almost 10 per cent of all economic activity in Australia, and triple the contribution of the entire agriculture sector. The intense economic contribution of CBDs occurs partly because of the concentration of jobs in these areas. But CBD businesses are also much more productive on average than those in other areas. Inner city areas and secondary commercial hubs, such as those around large cities’ airports, also tend to be more productive than other locations. For example, in 2011-12 the Sydney CBD produced$64.1 billion worth of goods and services: about $100 for every hour worked there. Employing only 13 per cent of Sydney’s workforce, this small area generates almost a quarter of the value of the Greater Sydney economy. Parramatta, often said to be Sydney’s second CBD, generated only$68 for each hour worked, and its total of $6.8 billion was about a tenth of the value generated in the CBD. There is a reason intense economic activity is concentrating in CBDs and inner suburbs. Many businesses in these areas provide highly knowledge-intensive and specialised services such as funds management, insurance, design, engineering and international education. These businesses depend on highly skilled workers, and locating in the heart of large cities gives them access to the largest possible pools of them. Proximity to suppliers, customers and partners also helps businesses to work efficiently, to generate opportunities and to come up with new ideas and ways of working. Knowledge-intensive activity is present in all sectors, including manufacturing and mining. Perth’s CBD is home to more than a third of Western Australian mining jobs, including accountants, administrators, geologists and specialist engineers. In the early 20th century one in three workers were employed in primary industry and almost half of the population lived on rural properties or in towns of less than 3,000 people. By 1960 manufacturing had grown to make up almost 30 per cent of GDP and employ one in four Australians, with a big presence in suburban areas. But today the small areas that generate most value are often a very long commute from the fast-growing outer suburbs in which many Australians live. If the prosperity that comes from knowledge-intensive activity is to be widely shared, governments need to enable more people to live closer to these areas, and to improve road and public transport networks so that they better connect employers and workers

Effects of Amendments to H-2A Rules on Use of H-2A Program in Tobacco Growing States

Agricultural and Food Policy,

Exits Among U.S. Burley Tobacco Growers After the End of the Federal Tobacco Program

This study explores the relationship between family/farm characteristics and the probability of exiting burley tobacco farming in Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia. Following the termination of the federal tobacco program in 2004, 54% of burley tobacco–growing households in Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia exited burley tobacco farming by 2006. Tobacco yield, tobacco farm cash receipts, tobacco price, off-farm employment, and farm size are the most dominant variables discriminating between exiting and surviving tobacco farms. Data for this study came from a mail survey of burley tobacco producers in Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina in May 2006.burley tobacco, exit, federal tobacco program, Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy, Crop Production/Industries, Environmental Economics and Policy, Financial Economics, Land Economics/Use, Risk and Uncertainty, C25, Q12, Q18,

Towards construct validity: Investigating the structure of the mental toughness in Sport Questionnaire (MTSQ-32)

In effort to gather construct validity evidence for a new measure of mental toughness, the Mental Toughness in Sport Questionnaire (MTSQ-32), confirmatory factor analyses were performed to examine the plausibility of competing theoretical models. This was done in accordance with Benson\u27s (1998) strong program of construct validity. Four primary models were tested: a unidimensional model, a five-factor model based upon social-cognitive personality theory, a five-factor model based upon the commonly identified attributes of mental toughness, and a 10-factor multidimensional model combining the two five-factor models. Further models were tested that expanded upon the four former by including a reverse coding method effect factor. Complete data on the 32-item questionnaire was collected from 536 high school athletes. Although the unidimensional, unidimensional with the method effect factor, and five-factor attribute models converged to admissible solutions, ultimately none of the hypothesized models were able to provide adequate fit to the data. However, upon the exploratory removal of item 25, the five-factor attribute model provided preliminary support for fitting the data. Implications of this study were discussed, as well as implications for future research

Narratives of gang desistance amongst former gang members

Gangs are found all over the world, including South Africa. In Cape Town specifically, gang involvement is a critical problem in need of intervention. Despite this, little research has explored the perspectives of former gang members on leaving and staying out of the gang. Understanding how and why individuals desist from gangs has important implications for policymakers, the criminal justice system, and in the development of effective interventions, which is particularly important in low- and middle-income countries like South Africa, where very little is known about desistance from gangs, and where economic and other conditions that may lead to gang involvement are different from those in high-income countries. Drawing on a narrative theoretical framework as well as the theory of critical realism, this research sought to examine how former South African gang members understand and make sense of their desistance from gang involvement, focusing on exiting the gang life as well as maintaining a reformed lifestyle after exiting, despite the challenges this may present. Two rounds of life history interviews were conducted with twelve former gang members from a Cape Town community with a high prevalence of gangsterism. Thematic narrative analysis was used to analyse the interview data. Findings revealed that the participants’ narratives of desistance focused on a profound transformation in identity in which they moved away from the hardened, stoic gangster identity and embraced a more prosocial identity, such as that of a positive role model in the community. This transformation was a process punctuated with key turning points (such as incarceration or becoming religious) that prompted active reflection on the gang life and contributed to their decision to desist. The participants’ narratives also focused on their agency in the desistance process, which included forming a purposive intention to change their lives, committing to and maintaining this change, in spite of challenges they faced (for example, a relapse into drugs), taking personal responsibility for their pasts and striving for more independence in the future. Importantly, it also involved actively drawing on protective resources (such as meaningful and practical support from loved ones and religious belief systems) and prosocial identities (for example, being a caring husband and father) available to them within their environments, thus illustrating how the desistance process is an interaction between inner and outer resources. Therefore, it is imperative that interventions that assist desisting gangsters are targeted not only on an individual level, but a contextual level too, ensuring that individuals have access to the kinds of resources in their environment that will support their desistance

Use of the Polymerase Chain Reaction in the Detection of Bovine Leukosis

A diagnostic test for bovine leukosis was developed using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to amplify a 375 base pair region in the gag gene of the proviral genome. Blood samples were collected from 3 adult Holstein cows shown to be infected with bovine leukosis virus (BLV) by the agar-gel immunodiffusion (AGID) technique. The 3 samples were mixed and the composite blood was used to inoculate 10 cows. Five of the cows were inoculated with 0.1 ml of blood, and the other cows were inoculated with 1 ml of blood. Five of the cows were negative for BLV by AGID and PCR on the day of inoculation, and the other five cows were positive for BLV on the day of inoculation. The 10 cows were bled on day 1 (day 0 being the day of inoculation) and day 7 post-inoculation, and every 2 weeks subsequently until 3 months post-inoculation. Samples were stored until the end of the study, at which time the AGID and PCR tests were performed. Three cows became AGID-positive 3 weeks post-inoculation, and two cows seroconverted 5 weeks post-inoculation. The time of seroconversion did not correlate with the volume of viral inoculum. In comparison, the PCR consistently detected infection sooner than the AGID: by day 7 post-inoculation all 5 cows were BLV-positive as determined with the PCR test, and remained positive until the end of the study. The results indicate that under the experimental conditions, bovine leukemia virus infection in cattle can be detected as much as 2 to 4 weeks earlier by PCR than by AGID

Ecomorphological differences between sister species, Rhinolophus capensis and Rhinolophus swinnyi

Includes abstract.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 69-81).Phenotypic analyses of sibling species provide the opportunity to examine divergence that is caused by adaptation rather than phylogenetic history. Rhinolophus capensis and Rhinolophus swinnyi diverged from a common ancestor between 15 and 20 million years ago. The Fynbos biome of the south-western Cape (South Africa) arose around the same time, and its distribution is coincident with that of R. capensis. Since this event probably influenced the speciation of these species, I examine differences in the ecomorphology of these bats in their current distributions. R. capensis is bigger than R. swinnyi, with corresponding differences in echolocation call signatures and wing morphology

Patients frequently referred from primary care to hospital outpatient clinics for medically 'unexplained' symptoms

BACKGROUND One third of frequent attenders to UK outpatient clinics have symptoms that are inadequately explained by disease according to specialist opinion (medically 'unexplained'). Some of these patients are frequently referred for similar symptoms to multiple specialties. The characteristics and treatment needs ofthese frequently referred patients are poorly understood.AIM The aim was to identify and describe patients frequently referred from primary care to hospital clinics for medically 'unexplained' symptoms (FRMUS) and compare them with patients frequently referred with medically explained symptoms (FRMES) and patients infrequently referred for symptoms (IRS).HYPOTHESES Compared to FRMES and IRS patients, a greater proportion of FRMUS patients would have anxiety or depression and this would be inadequately treated. Subsidiary hypotheses relating to: consulting multiple doctors, health care costs, perceived general health, satisfaction with care, and health beliefs, as well as the general practitioners' (GPs) expressed difficulty managing the patient, were also tested.METHODS The methodology employed for this study involved three phases as follows: (1) Identification of cases and controls from five Edinburgh general practices using a combination ofNational Health Service (NHS) referral data and primary care case notes. (2) A case-control study to describe and compare FRMUS patients with the two control patient groups. This comprised a questionnaire survey of GPs and patients, and a lifetime case note review for a 15% random selection of FRMUS and FRMES participants. (3) An economic analysis of the health care contacts.RESULTS FRMUS patients made up 1.1% (293/26252; CI 0.01-0.013) of the primary care population aged 18-65 years, and nearly two thirds (218/293, 74.4%) were female. The FRMUS patients had statistically more anxiety (67/193, 34.7%) when compared to 37 ofthe 162 FRMES (22.8%, OR 1.8, CI 1.12-2.88) and 23 of the 152 IRS (15.1%, OR 2.98, CI 1.75-5.09) comparison patient groups. Although there was no statistical difference for diagnoses of depression between the FR groups, the FRMUS patients had a significantly greater mean score for depressive symptoms than the FRMES control patients (mean difference 2.03, CI 0.66-3.41). Of the 67 FRMUS patients with an anxiety disorder 41(61.2%) were receiving adequate treatment, and this was considerably more than the six of 37 FRMES (16.2%, OR 8.147, CI 2.99- 22.21) and the six of 23 IRS (26.1%, OR 4.47, CI 1.56-12.8) comparison patients who had an anxiety disorder. Treatment for those patients with depression was also significantly greater for FRMUS patients (43/64, 67.2%) compared with the FRMES (10/41, 24.4%, OR 6.35, CI 2.62-15.36) and IRS (5/21, 23.8%, OR 6.56, CI 2.11- 20.32) groups. FRMUS patients were also more likely to: be female, reside in a deprived area of Lothian, referred by multiple doctors, have problems considered to be more difficult to help by a GP, have high health care costs, and report poor general physical and mental health.DISCUSSION A third of FRMUS patients had anxiety and depression, the majority of whom were receiving 'adequate treatment'. Factors other than undetected anxiety and depression may better explain why these patients are repeatedly referred to outpatient clinics for 'unexplained' symptoms