Free Republic

Baghdad was a wonder of the world in the year 800 while London was an economic backwater. By 1800, London was the largest city in the world while Arab cities languished. Recent research attributes this ‘trading places’ to institutional differences: Arab cities were tied to the fate of the state while European cities were independent growth poles. Why did the Industrial Revolution begin in northwestern Europe? At the turning of the first millennium, Europe was a backward part of the world economy with low levels of urbanisation and income. But between 1000 and 1800, Europe surged from a backwater of...

Decades ago, when geologists were developing ideas about how water typically flows across land, many of them studied the streams of the Mid-Atlantic States, concluding that they naturally move in ribbonlike channels cut through silty banks. In the years since, ecologists and conservationists have used this model in efforts to restore streams damaged by urbanization. Now, though, researchers at Franklin and Marshall College are challenging it. They say the streams studied by their geological predecessors were not “natural archetypes” but rather the artifacts of 18th- and 19th-century dam building and deforestation. The scientists, Robert C. Walter and Dorothy J. Merritts,...

The real Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is back, and now he’s taking on rural California. Landowners are up in arms over a mostly overlooked provision in last week’s budget revise to terminate a 40-year-old environmental- and agricultural-preservation act, which critics say will negatively affect California’s heartland. The governor has eliminated state funding for the Williamson Act, which leaves California’s farmland and open spaces vulnerable to urbanization. “In my own county, for example, about 65 percent of the land is protected under the Williamson Act,” Assemblywoman Lois Wolk of Davis said. “So unless we want to see more houses instead of crops,...

Chinese Urban Development: Introduction Kenneth A. Small Guest Editor University of California at Irvine For scholars interested in how urban processes affect human welfare, it is hard to think of anything more important than urbanization in China. The sheer numbers of people involved is staggering: roughly one out of every 25 people in the world today is a resident of a Chinese city who arrived, or was born, since the current round of economic reforms began in 1978. This has taken place despite China’s unique hukou system of home registration, which restricts permanent migration to cities but allows a large...

Agriculture employs half the world's population outside the advanced countries, where only one person in 40 still farms. In the United States, the ratio is one in 50. By prevailing standards of technology, 1.25 billion workers are redundant, and nearly 3 billion people (including their dependants) stand to be displaced. [1] The good news is that Chinese and Indian farmers comprise three-fifths of the world's total, and have good prospects of eventual integration into the world economy. But that leaves more than a billion people at risk, mainly in Africa, Latin America and the Middle East.

BEIJING: They are unskilled and unhappy, but China’s hordes of rural migrants are a big reason why China is likely to remain the workshop of the world. Last month’s 2.1 percent revaluation of the yuan, coming on top of labour bottlenecks in southern China that have pushed up employment costs, has given hope to China’s rivals that they might grab a bigger slice of the low-cost manufacturing pie. So they might, especially if producers decide not to put all their eggs in the China basket because of spreading trade rows. But with scores of millions of peasants destined to leave...

Code: ZE04110503Date: 2004-11-05Pope Enumerates Challenges and Resources for Church in AmericaEvaluates Progress of First Synod of Bishops for AmericaVATICAN CITY, NOV. 5, 2004 (Zenit.org).- John Paul II numbered the negative consequences of globalization, anti-family ideologies and the rich-poor divide as some of the most urgent challenges for the Church in the Americas. The Holy Father also analyzed the resources of the Church in those countries in which half of the world's Catholics live when reviewing the progress on the conclusions of the First Synod of Bishops for America, held in Rome from Nov. 16 to Dec. 12, 1997. The conclusions...

Three decades ago, the Jersey City waterfront was a wasteland of abandoned rail yards and decaying brownstones, the worst of which were heroin shooting galleries. Four waves of development later, the downtown historic districts boast some of the nicest brownstone blocks in the Garden State, wholly restored beauties that once couldn't be given away for $7,500 but now sell for up to $1 million. The waterfront has seen so much growth that Jersey City now has more office space than Denver, Cleveland or Kansas City, and young families are starting to rethink flight to the suburbs.

People should be let to live, work where they like Guest perspective: Debate tackles merits of free-range urban planning ___ Participants in an Internet e-mail discussion list recently engaged in a heated debate on the impact of libertarian principles on urban planning in the United States. Here we present an edited version of the original e-mail debate, which centered on the "The Lone Mountain Compact," which appears at the end of this perspective. Kenneth Orski, editor and publisher of Innovation Briefs: The Lone Mountain Compact, of which I am proud to be a signatory, is a collection of principles, the...

Proposed amendment passes easily The Senate on Monday easily approved a change to the state constitution that would protect the tradition of hunting and fishing. Senate President Pro Tem Eric Johnson (R-Savannah), the amendment's author, said hunters and anglers are worried that "activist judges and increased urbanization" could take away their rights. "You may not think this is a big threat, and neither was the right to bear arms 200 years ago," Johnson said. "There is a growing anti-hunting and anti-gun group out there. That's why I think we need to do it now before they get stronger." Johnson said...

<p>WEST MILFORD -- In retrospect, Robert Skrypek said Sunday, jumping on the back of a black bear that was fighting with his golden retriever might not have been the best thing to do. But at the time, there was no other good option.</p>

Within the next five years, half the population of the world will for the first time live in cities, a milestone that has been more than a millennium in the making. Nearly all the world's population growth for the foreseeable future is projected to be concentrated in urban areas, with most of the growth occurring in the poverty-ridden cities of Asia, Africa and Latin America. By 2007 -- some demographers say perhaps sooner -- the number of urban dwellers will equal the number of rural dwellers. The trend toward urbanization is as old as civilization, although it accelerated with the...