Factors of land abandonment in mountainous Mediterranean areas : the case of Montenegrin settlements

Land use changes have been investigated in the surroundings of 14 rural Montenegrin settlements in order to get specific information about trends in land abandonment since around 1950. Permanently, seasonally and less inhabited settlements with different geographic conditions were studied. This was done by interviewing local inhabitants, which enabled a holistic approach to reveal the underlying processes of land abandonment. According to the observed patterns of land use change, the study sites can be categorized into intensified, urbanized, extensified, overgrown and forested cases. The category of extensified settlements is characterized by a highly reduced agricultural management intensity, resulting in an increase in grasslands and fruit trees at the expense of cropland. This land use change is mainly related to emigrating and aging inhabitants, having less livestock. Such extensive land use is found in both permanently inhabited and abandoned villages. Only some studied settlements became largely overgrown by bushes and forest. The steep average slope gradients and a large distance to the nearest city are explanatory factors of such land abandonment. Land use intensification takes place in low-lying areas located nearby towns

Tourism Development Strategies in the Context of Coast, Culture and Agriculture-Büyükmenderes Basin

Turkey, during nearly in a hundred years of development period have lived a process where population and income in rural areas have decreased but on the contrary urban and coastal areas have developed. Now, one of every four people live in urban settlements. During this process, the living environment and the quality of life has negatively effected by the concentration of the urban areas not as the planning has foreseen, the concretion of urban surfaces and insufficient reinforcement area problems. The naturalness of the rural areas, product diversity, open space, the relations of production, rural culture and lifestyle has become longed qualifications. Büyükmenderes basin with its nature of accessibility, integrity of coastal-plain-mountain where combined, different geographies, naturalness, rich fauna and flora, the sea, lakes, rivers, hot springs, special products, historical values and cultural diversity has a special place. At the same time the country's most important coastal tourism are the focus of the surface of the rear axle Ku?adas?-Bodrum. Increase in the density of urban settlements, inadequate reinforcement measures and the loss of legibility, rural poverty and abandonment of settlements inhabited by the problems of this scope requires new improvements and the development of new principles of sustainability. In this context Büyükmenderes basin is in great potential. To participate in the production process, nature sports facilities, health tourism through thermal resources, cultural tourism, access to a rich diversity of fauna and flora, opportunities provided by sea, lake, river sources, the local culture, lifestyle, recognition of settling relations, accommodation with local properties for the region will take different roles at all levels and contains programmability. In this study, such urban settlements like Aydin, Soke specified in the above content, for Büyükmenderes basin development and promotion strategies will be examined for the integrity of coastal tourism, culture, agriculture and a proposal of a model will be developed.

Features of designing of social and economic development of municipal formations on the basis of semantic-cognitive modeling

In the article features of social and economic development of municipal formations are allocated. It is noted that most of the municipalities on the territory of the Russian Federation are rural settlements. It was concluded that it is difficult to construct an adequate model of socio-economic development with the help of traditional approaches. It is proposed to use semantic modeling to represent the socio economic development of rural settlements, as well as cognitive mapping to identify the many dependencies that arise between indicators that directly affect the socio-economic development of rural settlements

Labor market distortions, rural-urban inequality, and the opening of China's economy

The authors evaluate the impact of two key factor market distortions in China on rural-urban inequality and income distribution. They find that creation of a fully functioning land market has a significant impact on rural-urban inequality. This reform permits agricultural households to focus solely on the differential between farm and non-farm returns to labor in determining whether to work on or off-farm. This gives rise to an additional 10 million people moving out of agriculture by 2007 and lends a significant boost to the incomes of those remaining in agriculture. This off-farm migration also contributes to a significant rise in rural-urban migration, thereby lowering urban wages, particularly for unskilled workers. As a consequence, rural-urban inequality declines significantly. The authors find that reform of the Hukou system has the most significant impact on aggregate economic activity, as well as income distribution. Whereas the land market reform primarily benefits the agricultural households, this reform's primary beneficiaries are the rural households currently sending temporary migrants to the city. By reducing the implicit tax on temporary migrants, Hukou reform boosts their welfare and contributes to increased rural-urban migration. The combined effect of both factor market reforms is to reduce the urban-rural income ratio dramatically, from 2.59 in 2007 under the authors'baseline scenario to 2.27. When viewed as a combined policy package, along with WTO accession, rather than increasing inequality in China, the combined impact of product and factor market reforms significantly reduces rural-urban income inequality. This is an important outcome in an economy currently experiencing historic levels of rural-urban inequality.Labor Policies,National Urban Development Policies&Strategies,Urban Housing and Land Settlements,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Banks&Banking Reform,Economic Theory&Research,Urban Housing and Land Settlements,National Urban Development Policies&Strategies

The state of sewage system economics in rural areas in Poland

Infrastructure is the basis of economic activities both in urban and in rural areas. It is also one of main conditions for improving quality of life. Among its most important elements are: water delivery system, as well as sewage treatment network and sewage treatment plants. These devices should create one composite techno-economical system. Non-integrated water delivery contributes to bigger waste of water, and without connection to integrated sewage treatment systems, it can be a serious threat to the environment In Poland, and in rural areas particularly, this situation is highly unsatisfactory. In 2007, share of population connected to water network in rural areas was 73.3%, while for sewage network is was only 21.3%. In many communes, this share was even less than 10%. One can mention a few reasons of this state, mainly: lack of sufficient investment for 40 years after the 2nd World War, big water deficit in rural areas (brought about by droughts and thus, big reduction or decline of water level in shallow homestead wells, being a main water source), big dispersion of rural settlements in the country, limiting economies of scale achievement, and lack of resources available for local authorities. The latter, having not enough resources for infrastructure development, made a decisions to concentrate on water system firstly, while more costly waste management was treated as a second-tier need. In consequence, bigger investment in this field has just started since the half of nineties in the 20th century. Despite this late investment, in December 2007 one could observe that the total length of sewage network was still 4 times shorter than water network. Only 15.5% of rural administrative units were canalized. A quantity of household wastewater purified was 5 times smaller than a quantity of water used. There was also a small number of household sewage treatment plants (figure 4), which can be a good response for dispersed rural settlements. Thus, cesspools (many of them leaking), remain the main way of wastewater collection, being a serious threat for environment. However, there is a hope that this situation will change during next 7 10 years, mainly by obliging Poland to follow the EU Directive 91/271/EEC. This law expects any European Union member state to create, till the end of 2015,more than 2 thousand inhabitants. In Polish National Sewage Treatment Program, almost 1600 administrative units of these kind, were indentified. 1400 of them are totally or partially inhabited by rural community. Releasing this program is, however, determined strongly by local self-government activity and its ability to gain sufficient financial resources for this purpose

Information technology in rural Hungary: plans and reality

Rural areas cover 87% of the territory and are inhabited by 45% of the population in Hungary. These areas have the same problem as most of the rural areas in Europe: migration of the active, well-trained labour force, depopulation, unfavourable age structure, high unemployment rate with critical labour market situation in the small settlements. Information and Communication Technology – if used properly – can serve as a solution to these problems, although there is much to be done in this field. The authors have started to examine the current situation of the basic ICT-indicators in Hungary, with a special focus on small settlements, and they have also given a historical overview on the past years’ governmental strategies (especially the National Information Society Strategy), the new National Rural Development Strategy and civic efforts (ex. The telecottage movement) to boost the widespread usage of these technologies, as well as an evaluation of the impact of the aforementioned factors

Deadly Cities? A Note on Spatial Inequalities in Mortality in Sub-Saharan Africa

In this paper we analyze if an 'urban mortality penalty' exists for today's developing countries, repeating the history of industrialized nations during the 19th century. We analyze the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) of 19 Sub-Saharan African countries for differences in child and adult mortality between rural and urban areas. Our findings indicate that child mortality is higher in rural areas for almost all countries. On average child mortality rates are 13.6 percent in rural areas and 'only' 10.8 percent in urban areas. In contrast, average urban adult mortality rates (on average 14.5 percent) have indeed exceeded rural adult mortality rates (on average 12.8 percent) in many of our sample countries in the 2000s. For many countries high child mortality pockets do, however, exist in slum areas within cities. Child mortality rates in slum areas are on average 1.65 times higher than in the formal settlements of cities, but still lower than in rural areas. --mortality,urban,slum,inequality

The Agricultural Labourer in Worcestershire: Responses to Economic Change and Social Dislocation 1790-1841.

The study of rural history and social unrest in the English countryside has concentrated largely on East Anglia and southern England. Apart from one or two recent studies, the western agricultural counties have been relatively ignored. More importantly, apart from giving some detailed accounts of the lives of rural political activists, many historians have paid less attention to the daily lives of the majority of agricultural labourers. This has led to a general acceptance that most labourers were part of a rural proletariat whose loss of common rights and declining living standards culminated in the Last Labourers’ Revolt of 1830. This thesis seeks to broaden this view by providing a more holistic view of labourers’ lives in Worcestershire in order to determine what social and economic changes had the most impact on rural life in general and on three settlements in particular. The introduction demonstrates how romantic views of the past have influenced some historians’ attitudes. It then determines the empirical basis for this study