Taunton's citizens' and travelers' rapid transit map and time table of the Metropolitan and New York elevated railways : showing, on a new plan, the railways with up and down-town tracks ... ferries, etc., etc.

Covers Manhattan south of 62nd Street.

THERE GOES THE ELECTORAL NEIGHBORHOOD: LOCAL NETWORKS, ATTRIBUTION OF RESPONSIBILITY, AND THE (UN) FAIRNESS OF ELECTIONS

During the last two decades there have been but a handful of recorded cases of electoral fraud in Latin America. However, survey research consistently shows that often citizens do not trust the integrity of the electoral process. This dissertation addresses the puzzle by explaining the mismatch between how elections are conducted and how the process is perceived. My theoretical contribution provides a double-folded argument. First, voters’ trust in their community members (“the local experience”) impacts their level of confidence in the electoral process. Since voters often find their peers working at polling stations, negative opinions about them translate into negative opinions about the election. Second, perceptions of unfairness of the system (“the global effect”) negatively impact the way people perceive the transparency of the electoral process. When the political system fails to account for social injustice, citizens lose faith in the mechanism designed to elect representatives -and ultimately a set of policies. The fact that certain groups are systematically disregarded by the system triggers the notion that the electoral process is flawed. This is motivated by either egotropic or sociotropic considerations. To test these hypotheses, I employ a survey conducted in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala during May/June 2014, which includes a population-based experiment. I show that Voters who trust their peers consistently have higher confidence in the electoral process. Whereas respondents who were primed about social unfairness (treatment) expressed less confidence in the quality of the election. Finally, I find that the local experience is predominant over the global effect. The treatment has a statistically significant effect only for respondents who trust their community. Attribution of responsibility for voters who are skeptics of their peers is clear and simple, leaving no room for a more diffuse mechanism, the unfairness of the political system. Finally, now I extend analysis to the Latin America region. Using data from LAPOP that comprises four waves of surveys in 22 countries, I confirm the influence of the “local experience” and the “global effect” as determinants of the level of confidence in the electoral process.

Strong influence of local habitat structure on mammals reveals mismatch with edge effects models

Context: What determines mammal occurrence across wildland-urban edges? A better understanding of the variables involved will help update edge effects theory and improve our ability to conserve biota in urbanizing landscapes. Objectives: For the first time, we tested whether the occurrence of mammals across urban-forest edges and forest interiors was best predicted by: (1) edge variables (i.e. edge type and distance to an urban boundary), (2) local habitat structure (e.g. proportion of understory cover), or (3) edge variables after accounting for local habitat structure. Methods: Using 77 camera stations in South-Eastern Australia, we quantified the factors influencing the occurrence of five native mammals (brown antechinus, bush rat, common brushtail possum, black wallaby and long-nosed bandicoot) and three non-native mammals (red fox, cat, and dog). Results: The occurrence of most native and non-native mammals was best predicted by local habitat structure rather than by edge variables. Although edge variables had effects on most species occurrences, local habitat structure outweighed the impacts of edge effects. Conclusions: Our findings are important for management and urban planning as they suggest that local-scale management of habitat and habitat retention at urban edges will mitigate urban impacts on fauna. Our work reveals a critical mismatch in the spatial scale of predictive variables commonly used in edge effects models (edge types and distance to a boundary) compared with the smaller scale of local habitat variables, which underlie most species occurrence. We emphasize the need to consider heterogeneity within patches in predictive frameworks of edge effects.

The local dimension of employment-related welfare policy in Germany, England and Sweden

The link between work and welfare is a key pathway of modern welfare state development in Western Europe. National governments face a constant balancing act between the welfare expectations of the labour forces and the labour market liberalisation demands of the business communities. Facilitating the transit from welfare into employment has therefore become an important tool for the British, German and Swedish governments, providing labour as and when needed while keeping welfare expenditure in check. However, the approaches to organising active labour market policies are quite different, notably with regard to the territorial dimension. Although labour markets are quite diverse in all three cases, the role of local authorities, local agencies and local labour market actors from the private and voluntary sector are generally under-developed and apparently under-appreciated, but in different ways and for different reasons. The article compares current employment-related welfare provisions and approaches to develop active labour market policies in the three countries, and concludes that while certain structural and procedural similarities exist, the basic political priorities and actual support and services provided remain very far apart.

Guidelines on building design and operation to minimize air quality impacts from major roads in transit oriented development

Poor air quality has a huge detrimental effect, both economic and on the quality of life, in Australia. Transit oriented design (TOD), which aims to minimise urban sprawl and lower dependency on vehicles, leads to an increasing number of buildings close to transport corridors. This project aims at providing guidelines that are appropriate to include within City Plan to inform future planning along road corridors, and provide recommendations on when mitigation measures should be utilised.