WarViews: Visualizing and Animating Geographic Data on Civil War

In the recent years, the field of conflict research has produced new findings on the relation between conflict and geography. In doing so, new data sets have been created with the help of GIS software. These data sets include variables relevant for the study of conflict with a spatial component. However, the use of geographic data requires specialized software and substantial training and therefore involves high entry costs for researchers and practitioners. This paper introduces the WarViews project whose aim is to create an easy-to-use front end for the exploration of GIS data on conflict. It takes advantage of the recent proliferation of Internet-based geographic software and makes geographic data on conflict available for these tools. With WarViews, geographic data on conflict can be accessed, browsed, and time-animated in a few mouse clicks, using only standard software. As a result, a wider audience can take advantage of the valuable data contained in these databases, for example, as supplementary data for conflict case studies or for classroom demonstrations. We present two versions of WarViews. The static version runs in a web browser and allows the user to switch between different data sets. The dynamic version is based on Google Earth and can time-animate geographic data such that the development over time can be monitored. The WarViews website can be freely accessed at http://www.icr.ethz.ch/research/warviews .     

轿车文明对都市社会空间的重塑

作为“流动的现代性”,轿车文明对当代城市社会发展的影响,绝不仅仅表现在便利快捷、产业利润、交通拥堵、噪音污染、尾气排放等具体而有形的利害层面,最具实质意义的是从根本上重塑了都市社会空间,并导致郊区的勃兴和内城的衰落、“公共领域”的私有化、城市空间的分化与隔离、“私”空间的流动性等剧烈变动。     

新马克思主义空间批判范式及当代意义

20世纪60年代末兴起的新马克思主义城市学派，以资本主义生产方式分析为主要入口，探讨“空间的生产”在资本主义体系形成和发展中的重要意义。其贡献不仅在于从政治哲学视角揭露当代资本主义的空间政治经济矛盾，把社会关系再生产的故事完整地叙述出来，从而完成了对资本“空间生产”的价值批判；更在于其坚持了解放政治的宏大目标——通过揭示人类社会变迁的空间路径，寻求重新定位“乌托邦想象”的可能性。这种历史唯物主义的空间化努力使马克思主义在新的时代条件下焕发出新的活力，为我们寻求马克思主义政治哲学的“当代出场路径”提供了一种理论启示。     

BITING ONCE,TWICE: THE INFLUENCE OF PRIOR ON SUBSEQUENT CRIME LOCATION CHOICE

Properties, victims, and locations previously targeted by offenders have an increased risk of being targeted again within a short time period. It has been suggested that often the same offenders are involved in these repeated events and, thus, that offenders’ prior crime location choices influence their subsequent crime location choices. This article examines repeated crime location choices, testing the hypothesis that offenders are more likely to commit a crime in an area they previously targeted than in areas they did not target before. Unique data from four different data sources are used to study the crime location choices of 3,666 offenders who committed 12,639 offenses. The results indicate that prior crime locations strongly influence subsequent crime location choices. The effects of prior crime locations are larger if the crimes are frequent, if they are recent, if they are nearby, and if they are the same type of crime.     

Legislative Committees as Uncertainty Reduction Devices in Multiparty Parliamentary Democracies

Most research on committees in multiparty legislatures in parliamentary democracies focuses on their role in solving intra-cabinet delegation problems. Using a straightforward spatial model, this article discusses how committees can also solve uncertainty problems that arise in settings characterised by unstable coalitions, weak governmental agenda control and a lack of government change. In order to explore empirically how committees solve these problems, the article focuses on the success (and later decline) over the last 30 years of the sede legislativa, a law-making procedure that formalises ‘universalism’ in Italian legislative committees. The statistical results largely confirm the theoretical expectations.     

INCOME INEQUALITY,RACE, AND PLACE: DOES THE DISTRIBUTION OF RACE AND CLASS WITHIN NEIGHBORHOODS AFFECT CRIME RATES?*

This study tests the effects of neighborhood inequality and heterogeneity on crime rates. The results of this study, which were obtained by using a large sample of census tracts in 19 cities in 2000, provide strong evidence of the importance of racial/ethnic heterogeneity for the amount of all types of crime generally committed by strangers, even controlling for the effects of income inequality. Consistent with predictions of several theories, greater overall inequality in the tract was associated with higher crime rates, particularly for violent types of crime. Strong evidence revealed that within racial/ethnic group inequality increases crime rates: Only the relative deprivation model predicted this association. An illuminating finding is that the effect of tract poverty on robbery and murder becomes nonsignificant when the level of income inequality is taken into account; this finding suggests that past studies that failed to take income inequality into account may have inappropriately attributed causal importance to poverty. This large sample also provides evidence that it is the presence of homeowners, rather than residential stability (as measured by the average length of residence), that significantly reduces the level of crime in neighborhoods.     

透明材料上的透明附着物证检测

目的提出了一种检测透明材料上附着透明物证的新方法—位相滤波法。方法采用现代光学信息处理技术改变光信号的频谱,使零级频谱与一级频谱干涉。结果实现了由位相到强度的调制,最终检测到透明材料上的透明附着物证。结论该方法是一种无损光学检测法,操作简便,效果好。     

社会主义社会正义的空间价值维度——《社会主义空间正义》一书评介

当代中国正在驶入城镇化快车道,数亿人口将在短短几十年间从乡村迁徙定居到城市,也因此将带来大量的矛盾和问题。如何通过城市及更广泛意义上的空间问题寻求社会正义这个人类核心的价值,青年学者王志刚博士的专著给我们提供了一个清晰的答案。该书视角新颖,文笔流畅,观点独到,是近年来学术界研究城市哲学与空间问题的一部力作。     

Policy integration: placing the spatial dimension in the health agenda. Evidence from Portugal

The significance of spatial policies for health and well-being is well recorded. While there has been an increasing body of literature illustrating the importance of including a territorial perspective in health decision-making processes, evidence shows that policy integration between spatial and health policies is still scarce. This paper aims to develop a deeper understanding of how this integration can be considered in conceptual terms and how it is actually embraced in practice by health decision-makers. Drawing upon the concept of territorial cohesion, the paper presents and discusses the results of a research held in Portugal aiming to understand this topic.