Accommodating Bureaucrats in Canberra: A History of the Commonwealth Bureaucracy's Office Space in the National Capital During the Howard Decade

This article seeks to explore an important intersection of the Commonwealth's administrative and spatial histories by examining the Commonwealth bureaucracy's office space accommodation practices between 1996 and 2006 in the urban spatial context of Canberra. After initially conceptualising and describing the experience of the Howard decade and contrasting it with previous policy and practice, the article seeks to theorise the general experience of the last ten years through stressing the interweaving of neoliberalism, path‐dependencies, and contingency. In doing so, the piece offers a number of insights into not just the Howard government, the Commonwealth and Canberra, but also of neoliberalism, and the potential impacts of social spaces on policy processes and public sector practice.     

Space-Time Granger Analysis of the War in Iraq: A Study of Coalition and Insurgent Action-Reaction

We investigate insurgent-coalition interaction using the WikiLeaks dataset of Iraq war logs 2004–2009. After a review of existing theoretical interventions on the dynamics of insurgency and presenting a baseline model of violent events, we test a conceptual model of reciprocity using an innovative space-time Granger causality technique. Our estimation procedure retains predicted probabilities of reaction in response to a previous opponent's action across different temporal and spatial configurations in Iraq and in Baghdad. Our conclusions about conflict in Iraq are based on these profiles of risk—what we call space-time signatures. We find strong evidence of “tit-for-tat” associations between coalition/Iraq forces on one side and insurgents/militants on the other. Specifically, we find that the action-reaction association varies strongly by majority ethnic region across Iraq and in Baghdad, by urban and nonurban location, and within Sunni-dominated areas, by district income. While violence is strongly temporally dependent in the same location, the effect of distance varies significantly across the different subsets of the Iraq data.     

“A Plague on both Your Houses?”: Risks,Repeats and Reconsiderations of Urban Residential Burglary

Research has shown that mapping techniques are useful in forecasting future crime events. However, the majority of prospective mapping techniques has focused on the event-dependent influence of instigator incidents on subsequent incidents and does not explicitly incorporate the risk heterogeneity of the setting. The study here discussed is a modest attempt to address this issue by using a two-step process: first, using risk terrain modeling, we operationalized the “environmental backcloth,” (the risk heterogeneity of an area) to forecast locations of residential burglaries in the urban city of Newark, New Jersey. Second, using the near repeat calculator, we assessed the variability of underlying risk between different types of residential burglaries. A discussion of the findings and the joint utility of these approaches is provided.     

基于DEA模型的我国政府社会管理职能绩效评价研究——以30个省(直辖市、自治区)为统计样本的实证分析

政府社会管理职能绩效评价是政府管理中的一个重点和难点问题。本文采用数据包络分析模型对中国30个省(直辖市、自治区)的政府社会管理职能绩效进行时空差异分析和实证评价。研究发现,30个省(直辖市、自治区)的政府社会管理职能绩效具有空间差异性、雁行形态和区域梯度性、时间动态变化性、结构复杂性特征。为进一步提高我国政府社会管理职能绩效,本文提出了有关对策建议。     

Cores and Peripheries: Spatial Analysis of Housing Choice Voucher Distribution in the San Francisco Bay Area Region, 2000–2010

This study uses spatial regressions and spatial statistics to examine the changes in the distribution of Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) households within an expanded San Francisco Bay Area region. From 2000 to 2010, the density of HCV households grew disproportionately across the region, and areas of significant increase emerged in both the region’s urban cores and its rural periphery. Furthermore, the destination communities shared a set of common characteristics. In 2010 HCV households were more likely to locate in areas with lower housing prices, lower percentages of educated people, higher rates of poverty, and higher percentages of African American households when compared with the region as a whole. These findings suggest that voucher holders locate where housing is affordable. We conclude that in regions with tight housing markets, supply matters. This study also introduces housing researchers and policy makers to a methodological approach that addresses what is known in geostatistics as a change of support problem.     

The Spatial Dimensions of Gentrification and the Consequences for Neighborhood Crime

This study examines neighborhood economic improvement, what is occurring in nearby neighborhoods, and the consequences for neighborhood crime rates. Negative binomial regression models are estimated to explain the relationship between the increase in average home values (a component of gentrification) and crime in Los Angeles between 1990 and 2000. We find that the spatial context is important, as gentrifying neighborhoods located on the “frontier” of the gentrification process have significantly more aggravated assaults than gentrifying neighborhoods surrounded by neighborhoods also undergoing improvement. Furthermore, this effect is stronger in neighborhoods that began the decade with the highest average home values. Our findings indicate that the extent to which neighborhoods are more or less embedded in a larger process of economic improvement, and where the neighborhood is at in the economic development process, has differential effects on neighborhood crime.     

Journey to murder: examining the correlates of criminal mobility in sexual homicide

Although the empirical research on the journey to crime seems to indicate that most crimes are committed close to home, only a few studies have specifically examined the journey to crime in cases of sexual homicide. Using a sample of 214 sexual homicide cases, the current study investigates, using logistic regression, offenders who travel during the crime to those offenders who commit their crime, all at the same location. Current findings suggest that sexual murderers who engage in intra-crime travel tend to use a vehicle in the commission of their offence, target adult victims who are involved in the sex trade and move the body post murder.     

城市犯罪的移动空间盲区及其综合治理

移动空间的依托——公共交通工具,是城市人的活动发生空间位移时的主要运载体,对其犯罪盲区实施科学的综合治理是防控城市公共交通载体犯罪的有效途径.移动空间是一种很特殊的空间实体,存在许多犯罪盲区的致盲因素.对移动空间盲区实施综合治理,既要注重对所有类型移动空间盲区的共性对策,也要注重不同类型移动空间盲区的综合治理各有侧重.