Context Of Rapid Economic Growth Research Articles

Education permanente in post-war France, 1945–1960: Circulatory regimes and policy repertoires

The literature regarding the social organisation of ‘adult’ learning opportunities throughout the life course postulates different significations of policy concepts such as ‘lifelong education’, ‘permanent education’, ‘recurrent education’, and ‘lifelong learning’ in the 1970s. This paper examines policy formation processes in France during the 1950s when the development of éducation permanente was characterised by often-conflicting policy repertoires articulating arguments for redistributing opportunities to participate in organised (adult) learning throughout life. In the post-war context of rapid economic growth and technological change, it focuses on the policy repertoires articulated by the state, civil society organisations, and markets regarding individual and collective opportunities to continue to acquire knowledge, skills and sensitivities throughout life. Based upon a critical rereading of primary and secondary published texts, the analysis suggests that éducation permanente constituted a social field of problematic relationships between individual and collective interests regarding the acquisition of knowledge, skills and sensitivities. This constituted the dialectic between economic/vocational, technical reconversion practices in relation to social, cultural, and personal regeneration practices in a rapidly changing capitalist society. The conclusions identify a number of issues calling for further comparative historical research into often-conflicting policy repertoires that propagated policies to promote ‘long lives of learning’.

On-Demand Flexible Transit in Fast-Growing Cities: The Case of Dubai

Increase in city population and size leads to growing transport demand and heterogeneous mobility habits. In turn, this may result in economic and social inequalities within the context of rapid economic growth. Provision of flexible transit in fast-growing cities is a promising strategy to overcome the limits of conventional public transport and avoid the use of private cars, towards better accessibility and social inclusion. This paper presents the case of Dubai (UAE), where a demand responsive transit service called MVMANT (a company based in Italy) has been tested in some low demand districts. The contribution of this work relies on the use of an agent-based model calibrated with Geographic Information System (GIS) real data to reproduce the service and find optimal configurations from both the perspective of the transport operator and the community. Different scenarios were simulated, by changing the vehicle assignment strategy and capacity, and comparing MVMANT with a ride-sharing service with smaller vehicles. Results suggest that route choice strategy is important to find a balance between operator and user costs, and that these types of flexible transit can satisfy transport demand with limited total costs compared to other shared mobility services. They can also be effective in satisfying fluctuating demand by adopting heterogeneous fleets of vehicles. Finally, appropriate planning and evaluation of these services are needed to fully explore their potential in covering the gap between low-quality fixed public transport and unsustainable private transport.

Relations Between Socioeconomic Status, Subjective Social Status, and Health in Shanghai, China

ObjectivesAlthough research has established a strong link between socioeconomic status (SES) and health in Western settings, comparable work in China lags behind. Similarly, studies showing a unique relationship for subjective social status (SSS) and health above and beyond SES have yet to be tested in China. The present study addresses these gaps.MethodsRegression analyses investigated the relationship between SES, SSS, and mental and physical health net of several covariates for 2,282 caregivers in Shanghai, China. Indirect relationships for SES through SSS were also tested.ResultsResults indicate that SES is linked to mental and physical health outcomes, but in complicated ways. SSS, on the other hand, is consistently and robustly linked to health outcomes above and beyond income, education, occupational prestige, andHukoustatus. Further significant indirect effects were found through SSS for income, education, andHukoustatus.ConclusionIn China's context of rapid economic growth, relationships to SES and health appear complicated. However, subjective perceptions of status are consistently linked to health outcomes.

International Society for Environmental Information Sciences 2010 Annual Conference (ISEIS) Scenario simulation of change of forest land in Poyang Lake watershed

Forest land is the largest carbon storage of the terrestrial ecosystem for its giant biomass and plays a very important and irreplaceable role in mitigating and adapting to the global climate change. Much attention has been paid to its function and role in alleviating and adapting to the global climate change, Poyang Lake watershed as one of the most important wetland nature reserve in the world is also one of the regions where forest land is most densely distributed in China. The authors have studied the spatial dynamics of the forest land in this region during the past 20 years based on panel data of four periods (1988, 1995, 2000, 2005), and comprehensively characterized its changing patterns under the macroscopic context of rapid economic growth, social change and technical progress. A simultaneous equations model was established and the significance ranking of various factors was obtained in order to analyze the driving mechanism of the spatial-temporal process of the forest land. Three scenarios, i.e. economic priority, ecologic conservation and constant scenarios were designed according to the driving mechanism and trends of economic, policy and technical progress. The module functions of Dynamic of Land System (DLS) were employed and extended to develop possible scenarios of spatial-temporal explicit expression of the forest land.