Wrestling Sprawl to the Ground: Defining and measuring an elusive concept

Abstract

The literature on urban sprawl confuses causes, consequences, and conditions. This article presents a conceptual definition of sprawl based on eight distinct dimensions of land use patterns: density, continuity, concentration, clustering, centrality, nuclearity mixed uses, and proximity. Sprawl is defined as a condition of land use that is represented by low values on one or more of these dimensions.

Each dimension is operationally defined and tested in 13 urbanized areas. Results for six dimensions are reported for each area, and an initial comparison of the extent of sprawl in the 13 areas is provided. The test confirms the utility of the approach and suggests that a clearer conceptual and operational definition can facilitate research on the causes and consequences of sprawl.     

The selling of the President 2004: a marketing perspective

• George W. Bush won the 2004 US Presidential election despite the facts of one thousand people losing their life in the Iraq war, the highest rate of increase in unemployment in 70 years and a vitriolic propaganda campaign (Michael Moore, etc.) against him. This case study seeks to explain the success through the prism of marketing theory and conceptual structures, that is, that the Bush team had a superior communications strategy and, within those parameters, superior marketing elements. Thus we seek to surface and integrate a number of causal explanations for his victory that arose from a political marketing orientation, specifically the offer of a ‘coherent narrative’; the conduct of a ‘permanent campaign’; more effective negative advertising (especially by pro‐Bush 527 groups), targeting and packaging; the success of the late campaign ‘big tent’ ploy. None of this however seeks to exclude the more purely political explanations for his success (located in such phenomena as the mobilization of the ‘Christian Right’ and the continuity to the aura attached to the ‘911 President’); nor is the application of marketing thought to political contexts treated uncritically.
• A further aim is to introduce political marketing modes of analysis to a political science audience—not to present them as a new ‘correctness’, for they are certainly vulnerable to challenge, but rather to precipitate more of an intellectual exchange between these two disciplines.

Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

From Senators to the President: Solve the lumber problem or else

We use key events associated in the two decade-long U.S.–Canada softwood lumber trade dispute to present the dynamic relationship between U.S. Congress and the Administration in the formation of international trade policy. We find that the executive branch of the U.S. government responded quickly to several letters from a group of U.S. Senators demanding a solution to the “lumber problem.” A roll call analysis is used to identify factors influencing Senators’ willingness to sign these letters and pressure the President on behalf of the U.S. lumber industry. The results show that the economic importance of the lumber industry in a Senator’s home state is positively correlated with signatory on these letters and that the presence of a large housing industry in a state makes a Senator less likely to sign these letters.