Социокультурные и политические аспекты формирования городского пространства: образы «изнутри» и «извне»

Coastal areas are unique environments, and plants have undergone various changes to adapt to them. Morphological, anatomical, and mechanical analyses of wild and cultivated populations of Setaria viridis var. pachystachys (Franch et Savat.) Makino and Nemoto (Poaceae) were used to elucidate their adaptation patterns in coastal environments. In addition, comparisons were made with the closely related species S. viridis (L.) P.Beauv. var. minor (Thunb.) Ohwi. Morphological analyses revealed that S. viridis var. pachystachys has maintained its maximum fitness by increasing the number of tillers, even though this species has a short culm length and a small panicle that tolerates strong coastal winds. Anatomical analyses indicated that this species shows a decrease in stomatal number and size, which increased under cultivation conditions, revealing plastic changes in the stomata to adapt to coastal environments. Mechanical analyses showed no significant differences in culm strength between S. viridis var. pachystachys and S. viridis var. minor. In addition, cultivation experiments showed that the cultivated populations of S. viridis var. pachystachys had fewer tillers, longer culms, and larger panicles than those of the wild population. However, panicle mass per individual was not significantly different between these populations, suggesting that S. viridis var. pachystachys plastically changed its morphology to adapt to wind stress without affecting total yield. Our study showed that artificial alteration of coastal areas may exceed the phenotypic plasticity of S. viridis var. pachystachys, making it unable to adapt.

Central Asia is commonly associated with two popular concepts—the Silk Road and the Great Game. The first underlines Central Asia’s association with China and its connecting role between the East and the West; the second exemplified great power rivalry through Russia-Britain competition for control of their frontiers. Contemporary studies of Central Asia in various disciplines often rely on these two concepts to draw analogies for modern regional dynamics. While neither accurately reflects the nature of Central Asia’s position in relation to external actors, the two concepts do provide essential clues for analyzing modern Central Asia. First, after decades of isolation from each other, China and its Central Asian neighbors began interacting as independent entities. Second, the nature of the relationship between Russia and China, the two main external actors in Central Asia, is incredibly complicated, which implies that regional dynamics do resemble a ‘game’. Sino-Russian relations play an inseparable role, and an inquiry into the nature of the two major power’s engagement is essential for understanding international relations in the Post-Soviet Central Asia. The introduction highlights the institutional nature of regional cooperation in Central Asia, provides the historical background of the dynamics and motivating forces behind the major powers and their respective engagement in the region, and identifies the gap in the existing literature in order to justify the question: how does the nature of China’s and Russia’s engagement affect Central Asian regionalism?

The use of alternative materials in Civil Engineering is necessary due to environmental issues that trouble the world. The insertion of regional materials on concrete, which is one of the most essential elements in construction, is the main focus of this article. We will discuss the addition of latex from the Amazon region (Heveas brasiliensis) on the making process of concrete since the harvest of rubber is a common practice by local producers and river communities throughout the region. Considering the socioeconomic importance of the practice as a means to promote natural rubber extraction, employee turnover, and income of rubber tappers, the addition of latex will show a better performance to the concrete. The methodology has bibliographical and experimental researches, such as material characterization laboratory tests and a mechanical behavior study, which follow current technical regulations. Furthermore, future research should be conducted with means to further improving concrete by adding new components to latex.

Over the years, public housing has evolved into a phenomenon of a less than desirable aspect of urban existence. It is part of the urban mystique reflected in media depictions as a place of crime and discontent. This essay, written by a scholar of urban planning and design, examines public housing not simply as something reported in the news but rather as a dynamic communication environment. The role of communication in the construction of public perceptions and community identity are explored as it functions in this highly stigma-laden locale. The process of socially constructed meaning for insiders and outsiders is examined within the context of this unique and problem-ridden urban environment.

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This article presents a novel approach to improving multitarget searching in unknown environments using multirobot systems while ensuring adaptability to changing communication conditions. The proposed method addresses challenges arising from limited scope, dynamic circumstances, and inaccurate decision data due to communication disruptions or interference in real-world scenarios. A comprehensive environmental map is generated using a grid-based mapping methodology, encompassing data related to obstacles, coverage, target occupancy, and communication conditions. Considering the constraints imposed by communication conditions, we develop the adaptive communication condition hierarchical distributed model predictive control framework. This framework incorporates a hierarchical communication strategy for multirobot target search. To assess the effectiveness of our approach, a series of comparative experiments are conducted on three distinct maps, each characterized by unique communication environments, obstacle layouts, and target distributions. These experiments employ four commonly used swarm intelligence algorithms. The research findings indicate that implementing the proposed search framework and communication strategy significantly reduces the time and communication costs associated with locating targets in complex and unfamiliar environments. This is particularly relevant for multirobot systems operating under diverse and limited communication conditions, substantially increasing the task’s success rate.

Peacebuilding research, specifically in post-conflict societies and those transitioning from authoritarian rule to democracy and from violence to peace, demonstrates a growing demand to enhance our understanding about the efficacy of peace infrastructures, particularly informal peace infrastructures as potential tools for sustained and inclusive peacebuilding. In the same vein, the growth and popularity in recent decades of peace infrastructures as peacebuilding tools suggests the need for further investigation especially in societies where transition(s) is reluctant - a case in point is Zimbabwe. Further, the use of peace infrastructures to facilitate inclusive peacebuilding has gained prominence in the light of growing evidence of the correlation between societal stability and socioeconomic development on the one hand, and inclusive peacebuilding on the other. This is a participatory and exploratory action study that investigated the possibilities of using a community peace infrastructure to facilitate inclusive peacebuilding in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe to overcome gender disparities in local peacebuilding processes. The study’s objectives were twofold, namely: firstly, to identify and understand conditions that promote successful conflict intervention at grassroots level, and secondly, to find out the extent to which these interventions can help to positively transform conflicts. To this end, the principal researcher in this study collaborated with an action team to establish an informal peace infrastructure (local peace committee) where the envisioned change could potentially happen. This study draws together empirical qualitative data on an informal peace infrastructure created as part of this research intended to facilitate inclusive peacebuilding in four communities that fall under wards 7, 8, 16 and 28 in Bulawayo (refer to Table 7.1). Zimbabwe’s protracted social and political conflicts and its long history of human rights violations remain as sources of polarisation and political violence. Consequently, a significant component of the country’s contemporary history is about violence, its memory, and impunity. What has been variously described as a culture of violence can in fact be traced to incomplete transitions and complex historical processes starting with the precolonial episode where political cultures and practices were influenced and permeated by primordial ideologies of heredity, patriarchy and kinship. Similarly, colonial subjugation and occupation in the 19th century imposed an undemocratic system based on white supremacy, patriarchy and violent authoritarianism such that equal and even higher levels of violence had to be employed to resist colonial occupation and subjugation in the middle of the 20th century. Emerging from these multiple episodes of violent conflicts and authoritarianism; it is unsurprising that command politics and violent suppression of dissent became preferred “governance tools” for a triumphant ZANU-PF that won the country’s first democratic election in February 1980. The study uses Lederach’s Conflict Transformation theory as a lens for analysis. As a theoretical tool, Conflict Transformation is rooted in a transformative paradigm that places emphasis on constructive relationship building and the need to transform oppressive and undemocratic systems into democratic and inclusive systems as a basis for sustained peacebuilding. By emphasising local agency through transformative bottom-up peacebuilding processes, Conflict Transformation aims to facilitate constructive change by anchoring peacebuilding within a society’s unique socio-political environment. Findings from this study show that while informal peace infrastructures face numerous challenges such as resource constraints and sometimes barriers to accessing key policy and decision makers and political players, they fill a vital peacebuilding void left by the state which is not only incapacitated to lead peacebuilding initiatives but also lacks the legitimacy to fulfil its peacebuilding roles. Research findings in this study indicate that informal peace infrastructures can be useful platforms to facilitate inclusive peacebuilding, for example by increasing minority groups’ representation and women’s involvement in peace processes at the community level. The study aimed to increase understanding of the gendered nature of peacebuilding in the country and the ways in which women, but also men exercise agency through a focus on their own voices and lived experiences. Similarly, this study also revealed that socioeconomic challenges, politics and entrenched patriarchal interests present stumbling blocks to women’s effective participation in peacebuilding processes. At the same time, while dominant discourse depicts and projects peacebuilding as a ‘masculine’ and ‘manly terrain’, this study found that men who are involved in informal peace processes at the community are sometimes perceived as weak and feminine, a label that the men in this study continue to resist and push back against. Finally, this inquiry hopes to make small but important contributions to the peacebuilding discourse by illuminating how informal peace infrastructures may serve as a basis for improving peacebuilding practice in the country.

언어 장애인에게 기존의 키보드에 의한 문자입력 방법보다 원활하고 편리한 의사전달 환경을 제공하기 위한 아이콘 언어 인터페이스를 설계한다. 이를 위하여 활용성이 높은 대화 영역으로부터 구축한 원시 말뭉치를 대상으로 어휘 구사 경향과 특성을 분석하고 형태소, 구문, 의미 분석을 적용하여 아이콘에 부여되는 한국어의 어휘와 의미를 추출한다. 사용자가 직관적으로 인지하고 전달할 수 있는 아이콘 영역을 선별하고 추출한 한국어의 어휘와 의미를 정합시킨다. 이웃하는 아이콘간의 연결로부터 전달하고자 하는 의미적 상황을 만들어내기 위하여, 아이콘 언어의 어휘와 품사, 문법 규칙, 의미체계를 정의하여 아이콘 언어를 설계한다. 아이콘 언어에서 나타날 수 있는 언어적 애매성을 해결하기 위한 방법으로 범용의 한국어 의미사전과 술어 중심의 하위범주화사전으로부터 아이콘 언어에 대한 상황중심의 의미 데이터를 구축한다. 이를 바탕으로 아이콘 언어 인터페이스로부터 한국어를 의미적인 범주에서 생성한다. The iconic language interlace is designed to provide more convenient environments for communication to the target system than the keyboard-based interface. For this work, tendencies and features of vocabulary are analyzed in conversation corpora constructed from the corresponding domains with high degree of utilization, and the meaning and vocabulary system of iconic language are constructed through application of natural language processing methodologies such as morphological, syntactic and semantic analyses. The part of speech and grammatical rules of iconic language are defined in order to make the situation corresponding the icon to the vocabulary and meaning of the Korean language and to communicate through icon sequence. For linguistic ambiguity resolution which may occur in the iconic language and for effective semantic processing, semantic data focused on situation of the iconic language are constructed from the general purpose Korean semantic dictionary and subcategorization dictionary. Based on them, the Korean language generation from the iconic interface in semantic domain is suggested.

The relevance of the study lies in the need to analyze the transformations of the Russian labor market in conditions of uncertainty for the subsequent justification of measures to ensure its adaptability to changing conditions. The purpose of the study is to analyze the impact of uncertainty factors on the labor market, identify positive trends and threats, as well as to substantiate the mechanisms of adaptation of the labor market to changing conditions. The objectives of the study are to study the factors determining the growth of uncertainty at the present stage of socio-economic development and to identify the nature of the labor market's response to them; to substantiate the vector of development of labor relations in order to ensure the adaptation of the labor market to changing conditions. Methodology. The study was carried out using methods of theoretical analysis, systematization, economic analysis, comparing indicators in different time periods, morphological analysis, and graphical method. Results. The article analyzes the indicators of labor market development in dynamics, identifies negative trends in 2020. It is proved that in 2020 the labor market reacted to the challenges of uncertainty by changing the employment structure. The authors propose ways to maintain the adaptability of the Russian labor market to changes by implementing a set of state policy measures. Conclusions. The authors identified the traditional forms of labor market response to crisis manifestations in the economy (price and time adjustments), established the emergence of new forms of labor based on the transformation of models of interaction between participants.

Construction logic of ocean city branding: Based on cultural brand and cultural memory

Rapid socio-economic development and imbalanced ecosystem conservation have heightened the risk of species extinction, reduced urban climate adaptability, and threatened human health and well-being. Constructing ecological green space networks is an effective strategy for maintaining urban ecological security. However, most studies have primarily addressed biodiversity needs, with limited focus on coordinating street spaces in human settlement planning. This study examines the area within Chengdu’s Third Ring Road, employing the following methodologies: (1) constructing the regional ecological network using Morphological Spatial Pattern Analysis (MSPA), the Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Trade-offs (InVEST) model, and circuit theory; (2) analyzing the street green view index (GVI) through machine learning semantic segmentation techniques; and (3) identifying key areas for the coordinated development of urban ecological networks and street green spaces using bivariate spatial correlation analysis. The results showed that (1) Chengdu’s Third Ring Road exhibits high ecological landscape fragmentation, with 41 key ecological sources and 94 corridors identified. Ecological pinch points were located near urban rivers and surrounding woodlands, while ecological barrier points were concentrated in areas with dense buildings and complex transportation networks. (2) Higher street GVI values were observed around university campuses, urban parks, and river-adjacent streets, while lower GVI values were found near commercial areas and transportation hubs. (3) To coordinate the construction of ecological networks and street green spaces, the central area of the First Ring Road and the northwestern region of the Second and Third Ring Roads were identified as priority restoration areas, while the northern, western, and southeastern areas of the Second and Third Ring Roads were designated as priority protection areas. This study adopts a multi-scale spatial perspective to identify priority areas for protection and restoration, aiming to coordinate the construction of urban ecological networks and street green spaces and provide new insights for advancing ecological civilization in high-density urban areas.

The ecological security of a county is the basis for guaranteeing sustainable socio-economic development in the process of new urbanization, as well as the key to maintaining the rational functioning of natural ecosystems in urban and rural areas, and the primary prerequisite for satisfying the ecosystem service functions enjoyed by urban and rural residents. This study takes Pulandian, an estuary county with low mountains, hills, plains, and beach lands, as an example, and comprehensively applies various methods such as the model of driving–pressure–state–impact–response (DPSIR), the mainstream model of minimum cumulative resistance (MCR), the model of morphological spatial pattern analysis (MSPA), and the circuit theoretical model to assess the spatial and temporal evolution characteristics of the ecological spatial network of Pulandian District from 1990 to 2020 and evaluate its ecological risk from the socio-economic and environmental perspectives to provide a basis for the construction of ecological resistance surfaces. On this basis, an ecospatial network optimization model was constructed to reduce ecological risk and meet ecological security requirements. The results showed that the ecological space showed an upward trend of increasing, then decreasing, and then increasing in the area during the 30-year period, but there was serious fragmentation in the low area of the northeastern river valley, the low-hill plain area in the central part of the county, and the coastal area in the southeastern part of the county. High-resistance radiation centered on townships with high urbanization breaks the original ecological spatial network gradient, resulting in the absence of ecological corridors in large areas of the central and southeastern regions. Therefore, seven new ecological source sites were added for the central and southern portions of the study area, and the number of optimized ecological corridors increased from 47 to 66. In addition, we established an ecosystem consisting of an ecological barrier, an ecological coastal zone, multiple ecological corridors, and multiple ecological sites as an optimization system. This is of great scientific value and practical significance to provide reference for optimizing the ecological spatial network in Pulandian District of Dalian, to promote coastal ecological protection and construction, and to promote regional construction and sustainable development.

In its search for pathways towards a more sustainable management of natural resources, development oriented research increasingly faces the challenge to develop new concepts and tools based on transdisciplinarity. Transdisciplinarity can, in terms of an idealized goal, be defined as a research approach that identifies and solves problems not only independently of disciplinary boundaries, but also including the knowledge and perceptions of non-scientific actors in a participatory process. In Mozambique, the Centre for Development and Environment (Berne, Switzerland), in partnership with Impacto and Helvetas (Maputo, Mozambique), has elaborated a new transdisciplinary tool to identify indigenous plants with a potential for commercialization. The tool combines methods from applied ethnobotany with participatory research in a social learning process. This approach was devised to support a development project aimed at creating alternative sources of income for rural communities of Matutuíne district, Southern Mozambique, while reducing the pressure on the natural environment. The methodology, which has been applied and tested, is innovative in that it combines important data collection through participatory research with a social learning process involving both local and external actors. This mutual learning process provides a space for complementary forms of knowledge to meet, eventually leading to the adoption of an integrated approach to natural resource management with an understanding of its ecological, socio-economic and cultural aspects; local stakeholders are included in the identification of potentials for sustainable development. Sustainable development itself, as a normative concept, can only be defined through social learning and consensus building between the local and external stakeholders.

In order to promote industrialization and improve the living standards of the population in the Sub-Saharan countries, large-scale investments in power infrastructure development are required. Two key and two secondary long-term objectives for the energy sector development can be distinguished. The first ones are to enable industrial development and to increase its competitiveness, as well as to promote socio-economic development by ensuring universal access to electricity and uninterrupted supply. The latter two are to increase financial sustainability of the energy sector and to meet environmental requirements. Due to lack of financial resources, necessary technologies and professional staff in the Sub-Saharan countries, external players play a crucial role in the power sector development. These external actors include traditional donors such as the World Bank, the EU, the US and the African Development Bank, and new players like China. The purpose of this study is to compare the strategies of key external players in the power sector of the Sub-Saharan countries. The analysis of strategies is carried out at the level of the conceptual framework of the foreign policies toward Africa in general and the power sector development strategies in particular, and at the level of their actual implementation by studying the methods used, priority areas, scale and features of projects. Based on the review, the author provides an assessment of whether the strategies of major external actors for the power sector development serve the vital interests of the Sub-Saharan countries. In conclusion, the author identifies two types of tentative conceptually distinct models, i.e. “equal partnership” and “donor ‒ recipient” strategies.

This study is important because it provides a different understanding of Henri Lefebvre’s concept of the production of space, particularly in Kampung Bekelir, Tangerang City, where negotiation rather than domination becomes more apparent. The development process of Kampung Bekelir involved various actors, including NGOs, the city government, residents, and the private sector. A qualitative approach was employed in this research, utilizing in-depth interviews, field observations, literature reviews, and official government documents. The findings reveal that Lefebvre’s concepts of abstract and social space occur simultaneously during the kampung development process. Abstract space is represented by external actors, such as the Public Policy NGO and the city government, who bring ideas and resources. However, instead of the usual contestation or domination associated with abstract space, the development process was marked by negotiation emphasizing the alignment of abstract space actors with social space. This collaboration illustrates a more participatory and bottom-up approach to development. In addition to supporting the local government’s RPJMD program and city branding efforts, the development of Kampung Bekelir also improved the kampung’s image and boosted residents’ economic conditions. This study demonstrates that abstract space does not always oppress social space, rather, it can synergize under certain contexts through equitable collaboration. The research contributes to the understanding of urban space production based on multi-actor collaboration in urban areas.