Can You Home Again? Desertion and Control of Hometowns in Civil Wars

What allows an armed group in a civil war to prevent desertion? This paper addresses this question with a focus on control in the rearguard. Most past studies focus on motivations for desertion. They explain desertion in terms of where soldiers stand in relation to the macro themes of the war, or in terms of an inability to provide positive incentives to overcome the collective action problem. However, since individuals decide whether and how to participate in civil wars for multiple reasons, responding to a variety of local conditions in an environment of threat and violence, a focus only on macro-level motivations is incomplete. The opportunities side of the ledger deserves more attention. I therefore turn my attention to how control by an armed group eliminates soldiers’ opportunities to desert. In particular, I consider the control that an armed group maintains over soldiers’ hometowns, treating geographic terrain as an important exogenous indicator of the ease of control. Rough terrain at home affords soldiers and their families and friends advantages in ease of hiding, the difficulty of using force, and local knowledge. Based on an original dataset of soldiers from Santander Province in the Spanish Civil War, gathered from archival sources, I find statistical evidence that the rougher the terrain in a soldier’s home municipality, the more likely he is to desert. I find complementary qualitative evidence indicating that soldiers from rough-terrain communities took active advantage of their greater opportunities for evasion. This finding has important implications for the way observers interpret different soldiers’ decisions to desert or remain fighting, for the prospect that structural factors may shape the cohesion of armed groups, and for the possibility that local knowledge may be a double-edged sword, making soldiers simultaneously good at fighting and good at deserting.

Analysis of Irish tourism policy’s contribution to urban tourism: Dublin case study

L’objectiu principal del treball és analitzar les polítiques i plans turístics irlandesos nacionals, regionals i locals, i determinar com aquestos influeixen en el turisme urbà a Dublín. L’objectiu secundari és investigar el concepte de turisme urbà i examinar les tendències turístiques actuals i la seva repercussió en la formulació de polítiques

Urban design proposes for the norwegian cities

Alta is the biggest city in the country of Finnmark. The area of study, Bossekop, is situated 4km from the city centre. It has some commercial areas, offices, hotels and housing, mostly single family housing. The most important Norwegian road, E6 goes through Bossekop, there for it has a big traffic flow. The concept builds on the idea of two axis, one local leading from the local sports development area into the centre core, and one on a higher level, the E6. In Bodø, after analysing carefully the surroundings we reached the conclusion that it is posssible to conserve a lot of the green as well as offering the municipalities the chance to develop with several housing typologies. Nature should be preserved and with this connect directly the mountain to the sea, using the existing creek to make the water connection. In order to keep a big part of this land untouched, we suggest that the rest of the site can be developed quite densely in one of the areas and then continuously fading out in direction of the mountains. Finnsnes is an important communication point for the region with its good connections. In that way it is becoming a central point for commerce and leisure. The concept is based on the wish from the municipality of Lenvik to look upon the city’s connection to the surrounding sea and green areas, together with the wish to make the pedestrian access better and the car traffic lighter., and in that way improve the conditions in the city

Sumak Kawsay, or the concept of living well, and perceptions about natural, urban and rural areas: the case of Cuenca (Ecuador)

This research explores critical environmental concepts from the standpoint of political ecology. It contrasts the Ecuadorian Kichua indigenous concept of Sumak Kawsay (i.e., living well), with discourses about natural, urban and rural areas. Sumak Kawsay was included in Ecuador’s 2008 constitution as an alternative to the neoclassical idea of development. This work reveals interesting insights from a variety of social and political viewpoints from both rural and urban areas. The research is based on the medium sized city of Cuenca, which is located in the southern Ecuadorian Andes. We used an adaptation of the Q Method to investigate stakeholders’ perceptions. Four remarkably well-defined viewpoints were revealed. Although these views contrast strongly with Sumak Kawsay, it is possible to transform this paradigm in the foundation of Cuenca’s public policies and institutional structure.

Chaos and order in the contemporary city. The impact of urban spatial structure on population density and commuting distance in Barcelona, 1986-2001.

One of the criticisms leveled at the model of dispersed city found all over the world is its unarticulated, random, and undifferentiated nature. To check this idea in the Barcelona Metropolitan Region, we estimated the impact of the urban spatial structure (CBD, subcenters and transportation infrastructures) over the population density and commuting distance. The results are unfavorable to the hypothesis of the increasing destructuring of cities given that the explanatory capacity of both functions improves over time, both when other control variables are not included and when they are included.

Does Warfare Matter? Severity, Duration, and Outcomes of Civil Wars

Importa si una guerra civil es combat com un conflicte irregular, convencional o simètric no convencional? En altres paraules, tenen les “tecnologies de la rebel·lió” un impacte sobre la gravetat d’una guerra, la seva durada o el seu resultat? Aquest treball mostra que els conflictes irregulars duren més que els altres tipus de conflicte, mentre els convencionals tendeixen a ser més greus en termes de letalitat al camp de batalla. D’altra banda, els conflictes irregulars tendeixen a ser guanyats pels governs, mentre els altres són més propensos a acabar en empat. Substancialment, aquests resultats ens ajuden a donar sentit a l’evolució de les guerres civils, les quals tendeixen a ser més curtes, més intenses i més difícils per als governs. Teòricament, aquests resultats donen suport a la importància de la tecnologia de rebel·lió a l’estudiar la gravetat, la durada i els resultats de les guerres civils; a més, contribueixen a una millor comprensió de la contribució històrica de la guerra irregular a la construcció de l’Estat i al canvi social.

La Gestió policial als esdeveniments públics en espais urbans a l'Àfrica: situació actual i perspectives = Policing public events in urban spaces in Africa : an analysis of the current situation and a perspective on follow-up action

L’informe que es presenta en aquest llibre és el resultat d’un nou acord de col·laboració entre el Programa de les Nacions Unides per als Assentaments Humans (ONU-Habitat) i l’Institut de Seguretat Pública de Catalunya, impulsat amb l’objectiu de millorar la seguretat en esdeveniments públics en els espais urbans a l’Àfrica. La fase pilot es va dur a terme el 2010, durant els dos seminaris de formació realitzats a Mollet del Vallès (Barcelona) com a part de la Plataforma Policia per al Desenvolupament Urbà (PPUD). En aquest informe es descriuen els orígens i l’estat de la iniciativa i resumeix els resultats. També s’inclouen algunes recomanacions per a millorar la seguretat d’esdeveniments públics. Font d'informació: http://www.onuhabitat.org.

The Determinants of Urban (Un)employment Duration: Evidence from Barcelona

This paper analyses the likelihood of leaving and joining employment in an urban area. Estimates show that individual, firm, regulatory and macroeconomic factors a ffect urban (un)employment duration in di fferent degrees. Also, national and urban (un)employment seem to share a common baseline hazard and similar macroeconomic and regulatory drivers. Individual characteristics are the only source of di fference we can identify between national and urban (un)employment duration. Keywords: Duration Models, Urban (Un)employment. JEL Classi fication: J64, R23.

Association between GIS-based exposure to urban air pollution during pregnancy and birth weight in the INMA Sabadell Cohort

Background: There is growing evidence that traffic-related air pollution reduces birth weight. Improving exposure assessment is a key issue to advance in this research area.Objective: We investigated the effect of prenatal exposure to traffic-related air pollution via geographic information system (GIS) models on birth weight in 570 newborns from the INMA (Environment and Childhood) Sabadell cohort.Methods: We estimated pregnancy and trimester-specific exposures to nitrogen dioxide and aromatic hydrocarbons [benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, m/p-xylene, and o-xylene (BTEX)] by using temporally adjusted land-use regression (LUR) models. We built models for NO2 and BTEX using four and three 1-week measurement campaigns, respectively, at 57 locations. We assessed the relationship between prenatal air pollution exposure and birth weight with linear regression models. We performed sensitivity analyses considering time spent at home and time spent in nonresidential outdoor environments during pregnancy.Results: In the overall cohort, neither NO2 nor BTEX exposure was significantly associated with birth weight in any of the exposure periods. When considering only women who spent < 2 hr/day in nonresidential outdoor environments, the estimated reductions in birth weight associated with an interquartile range increase in BTEX exposure levels were 77 g [95% confidence interval (CI), 7–146 g] and 102 g (95% CI, 28–176 g) for exposures during the whole pregnancy and the second trimester, respectively. The effects of NO2 exposure were less clear in this subset.Conclusions: The association of BTEX with reduced birth weight underscores the negative role of vehicle exhaust pollutants in reproductive health. Time–activity patterns during pregnancy complement GIS-based models in exposure assessment.

Quantifying urban attractiveness from the distribution and density of digital footprints

In the past, sensors networks in cities have been limited to fixed sensors, embedded in particular locations, under centralised control. Today, new applications can leverage wireless devices and use them as sensors to create aggregated information. In this paper, we show that the emerging patterns unveiled through the analysis of large sets of aggregated digital footprints can provide novel insights into how people experience the city and into some of the drivers behind these emerging patterns. We particularly explore the capacity to quantify the evolution of the attractiveness of urban space with a case study of in the area of the New York City Waterfalls, a public art project of four man-made waterfalls rising from the New York Harbor. Methods to study the impact of an event of this nature are traditionally based on the collection of static information such as surveys and ticket-based people counts, which allow to generate estimates about visitors’ presence in specific areas over time. In contrast, our contribution makes use of the dynamic data that visitors generate, such as the density and distribution of aggregate phone calls and photos taken in different areas of interest and over time. Our analysis provides novel ways to quantify the impact of a public event on the distribution of visitors and on the evolution of the attractiveness of the points of interest in proximity. This information has potential uses for local authorities, researchers, as well as service providers such as mobile network operators.

Automatic low baseline stereo in urban areas

In this work we propose a new automatic methodology for computing accurate digital elevation models (DEMs) in urban environments from low baseline stereo pairs that shall be available in the future from a new kind of earth observation satellite. This setting makes both views of the scene similarly, thus avoiding occlusions and illumination changes, which are the main disadvantages of the commonly accepted large-baseline configuration. There still remain two crucial technological challenges: (i) precisely estimating DEMs with strong discontinuities and (ii) providing a statistically proven result, automatically. The first one is solved here by a piecewise affine representation that is well adapted to man-made landscapes, whereas the application of computational Gestalt theory introduces reliability and automation. In fact this theory allows us to reduce the number of parameters to be adjusted, and tocontrol the number of false detections. This leads to the selection of a suitable segmentation into affine regions (whenever possible) by a novel and completely automatic perceptual grouping method. It also allows us to discriminate e.g. vegetation-dominated regions, where such an affine model does not apply anda more classical correlation technique should be preferred. In addition we propose here an extension of the classical ”quantized” Gestalt theory to continuous measurements, thus combining its reliability with the precision of variational robust estimation and fine interpolation methods that are necessary in the low baseline case. Such an extension is very general and will be useful for many other applications as well.

Ethnic Polarization, Potential Conflict, and Civil Wars

This paper analyzes the relationship between ethnic fractionalization, polarization, and conflict. In recent years many authors have found empirical evidence that ethnic fractionalization has a negative effect on growth. One mechanism that can explain this nexus is the effect of ethnic heterogeneity on rent-seeking activities and the increase in potential conflict, which is negative for investment. However the empirical evidence supporting the effect of ethnic fractionalization on the incidence of civil conflicts is very weak. Although ethnic fractionalization may be important for growth, we argue that the channel is not through an increase in potential ethnic conflict. We discuss the appropriateness of indices of polarization to capture conflictive dimensions. We develop a new measure of ethnic heterogeneity that satisfies the basic properties associated with the concept of polarization. The empirical section shows that this index of ethnic polarization is a significant variable in the explanation of the incidence of civil wars. This result is robust to the presence of other indicators of ethnic heterogeneity, other sources of data for the construction of the index, and other data structures.

The Three Horsemen of Growth: Plague, War and Urbanization in Early Modern Europe

How did Europe overtake China? We construct a simple Malthusian model with two sectors, and use it to explain how European per capita incomes and urbanization rates could surge ahead of Chinese ones. That living standards could exceed subsistence levels at all in a Malthusian setting should be surprising. Rising fertility and falling mortality ought to have reversed any gains. We show that productivity growth in Europe can only explain a small fraction of rising living standards. Population dynamics - changes of the birth and death schedules - were far more important drivers of the longrun Malthusian equilibrium. The Black Death raised wages substantially, creating important knock-on effects. Because of Engel's Law, demand for urban products increased, raising urban wages and attracting migrants from rural areas. European cities were unhealthy, especially compared to Far Eastern ones. Urbanization pushed up aggregate death rates. This effect was reinforced by more frequent wars (fed by city wealth) and disease spread by trade. Thus, higher wages themselves reduced population pressure. Without technological change, our model can account for the sharp rise in European urbanization as well as permanently higher per capita incomes. We complement our calibration exercise with a detailed analysis of intra-European growth in the early modern period. Using a panel of European states in the period 1300-1700, we show that war frequency can explain a good share of the divergent fortunes within Europe.

Urban mobilities: the anglo-catalan production of the Barcelona model

The aim of the project was to gauge the extent to which the so-called ‘Barcelona Model’ of urban transformation has been ‘exported’ to Britain and whether Barcelona has learned from British cities. We engage with the literature on successive British governments’ strategies for cities, focused on collecting data on contemporary policy initiatives and debates in the UK, did interviews in Manchester, London Barcelona and participated in the official visit of Leeds to Barcelona in March. Our research findings to date suggest that there is a good deal of mobility and interaction between Barcelona and the UK. However, it is by no means certain that this has resulted in definite instances of policy transfer. While the ‘Barcelona model’ has indeed featured in oficial discourse on urban regeneration in the UK, it does not appear to be the preferred best practice ‘model’ – other North American and European cities figure discursively as much, if not more. Where Barcelona does feature in official discourse, it is usually as an example of good design and an appealing urban aesthetic, rather than in terms of economic or social policy best practice. Our research suggests that the Barcelona model is seen as non-transferable to the UK due to the relatively more centralised governance structure therein.In contrast, evidence collected suggests that the Barcelona model is not influenced by UK British cities experiences but there is small evidence of being influenced by UK-based professionals.

Fighting against Malaria: Prevent wars while waiting for the "miraculous" vaccine

The World Health Organization estimates that 300 million clinical cases of malaria occur annually and observed that during the 80's and part of the 90's its incidence increased. In this paper we explore the influence of refugees from civil wars on the incidence of malaria in the refugee-receiving countries. Using civil wars as an instrumental variable we show that for each 1,000 refugees there are between 2,000 and 2,700 cases of malaria in the refugee receiving country. On average 13% of the cases of malaria reported by the WHO are caused by forced migration as a consequence of civil wars.