| 1. |
- Mishra, A, et al.
(författare)
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Diminishing benefits of urban living for children and adolescents' growth and development
- 2023
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Ingår i: Nature. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1476-4687 .- 0028-0836. ; 615:7954, s. 874-883
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Optimal growth and development in childhood and adolescence is crucial for lifelong health and well-being1–6. Here we used data from 2,325 population-based studies, with measurements of height and weight from 71 million participants, to report the height and body-mass index (BMI) of children and adolescents aged 5–19 years on the basis of rural and urban place of residence in 200 countries and territories from 1990 to 2020. In 1990, children and adolescents residing in cities were taller than their rural counterparts in all but a few high-income countries. By 2020, the urban height advantage became smaller in most countries, and in many high-income western countries it reversed into a small urban-based disadvantage. The exception was for boys in most countries in sub-Saharan Africa and in some countries in Oceania, south Asia and the region of central Asia, Middle East and north Africa. In these countries, successive cohorts of boys from rural places either did not gain height or possibly became shorter, and hence fell further behind their urban peers. The difference between the age-standardized mean BMI of children in urban and rural areas was <1.1 kg m–2 in the vast majority of countries. Within this small range, BMI increased slightly more in cities than in rural areas, except in south Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and some countries in central and eastern Europe. Our results show that in much of the world, the growth and developmental advantages of living in cities have diminished in the twenty-first century, whereas in much of sub-Saharan Africa they have amplified.
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| 2. |
- Bjarnestam, Jesper, 1974-
(författare)
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En hållbar trafiklösning för nya Slussen? : Uppfattningar om hållbarhet och hållbar stadsutveckling i Slussenprojektet
- 2011
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis examines perceptions of sustainability and sustainable urban development among actors involved in the project of rebuilding Slussen in central Stockholm. Views on the suggested new traffic solution and what would make a sustainable solution, the concepts of sustainability and sustainable urban development and how these concepts are interpreted and applied as policy, are especially investigated. A semi-structured qualitative interview study has been carried out and the respondents include city officials, politicians, representatives of interest groups, consultants and researchers. Stockholm, European Green Capital in 2010, sets high goals for sustainability. As concept, sustainability is also frequently used in much of the city´s planning material such as the budget, environmental programme and urban development documents. However, it has not been included in the goals of the Slussen project. Even though, interviewees representing the city view the project as a sustainability project whereas other respondents clearly question this view. The study suggests that a determining factor for this division is how the sustainability concept is defined (or not), also how car traffic is viewed in urban sustainable development. The thesis shows that instead of planning for sustainable transportation, traditional business-as-usual traffic planning has dominated the Slussen project. The main reasons are that the new traffic solution, although including new walking and cycling bridges as well as a new bus terminal, includes planning for increased car traffic, an eight lane bridge to provide for it and a high degree of separation instead of integration of transport modes. Many of the interviewees also perceive of the suggested new main bridge as a motorway and the walking bridge as being both socially and culturally unsustainable in its long and narrow design. The new traffic solution in itself is viewed as unsustainable since it would bring about the abandonment of a more than 300 year old tradition of double and equal bridges at Slussen. Finally, the study suggests that the planned new traffic solution would have both looked different and been perceived of as more sustainable if sustainability had been included in the project goals. However, this would only have been the case if the concept was properly defined and implemented.
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| 3. |
- Wang, Yi-ting, et al.
(författare)
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No democratic transition without women’s rights : A global sequence analysis 1900-2012
- 2015
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Rapport (refereegranskat)abstract
- What determines countries’ successful transition to democracy? Research has focused on socioeconomic and institutional factors, yet the assumption that political liberalization has to precede democratization has not been systematically examined. We explore the impacts of granting civil rights in authoritarian regimes and especially the gendered aspect of this process. We argue that both men’s and women’s liberal rights are essential conditions for democratization to take place: giving both men and women rights reduce an inequality that affects half of the population, thus increasing the costs of repression for authoritarian rulers, and enabling the formation of women’s movements – historically important as a spark of protests in initial phases of democratization. We test this argument empirically using data that cover 160 countries over the years 1900–2012 and contain more nuanced measures than commonly used. Through sequence analysis we obtain results suggesting that liberal rights for both men and women enhance civil society organizations, and then lead to electoral democracy. The results suggest that influential modernization writings – stressing the role of economic development in democratization processes – may partly have been misinformed in their blindness for gender. The reported pattern may be at least part of the explanation of the ‘Arab spring’ failures.
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| 4. |
- Lindenfors, Patrik, 1964-, et al.
(författare)
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Investigating sequences in ordinal data : A new approach with adapted evolutionary models
- 2015
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Rapport (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper presents a new approach for studying sequences across combinations of binary and ordinal variables. The approach involves three novel methodologies (frequency analysis, graphical mapping of changes between “events”, and dependency analysis), as well as an established adaptation based on Bayesian dynamical systems. The frequency analysis and graphical approach work by counting and mapping changes in two variables and then determining which variable, if any, more often has a higher value than the other during transitions. The general reasoning is that when transitioning from low values to high, if one variable commonly assumes higher values before the other, this variable is interpreted to be generally preceding the other while moving upwards. A similar reasoning is applied for decreasing variable values. These approaches assume that the two variables are correlated and change along a comparable scale. The dependency analysis investigates what values of one variable are prerequisites for values in another. We also include an established Bayesian approach that models changes from one event combination to another. We illustrate the proposed methodological bundle by analyzing changes driving electoral democracy using the new V-Dem dataset (Coppedge et al. 2015a, b). Our results indicate that changes in electoral democracy are preceded by changes in freedom of expression and access to alternative sources of information.
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| 5. |
- Lindenfors, Patrik, 1964-, et al.
(författare)
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Investigating Sequences in Ordinal Data : A New Approach With Adapted Evolutionary Models
- 2018
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Ingår i: Political Science Research and Methods. - : Cambridge University Press (CUP). - 2049-8470 .- 2049-8489. ; 6:3, s. 449-466
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper presents a new approach for studying temporal sequences across ordinal variables. It involves three complementary approaches (frequency tables, transitional graphs, and dependency tables), as well as an established adaptation based on Bayesian dynamical systems, inferring a general system of change. The frequency tables count pairs of values in two variables and transitional graphs depict changes, showing which variable tends to attain high values first. The dependency tables investigate which values of one variable are prerequisites for values in another, as a more direct test of causal hypotheses. We illustrate the proposed approaches by analyzing the V-Dem dataset, and show that changes in electoral democracy are preceded by changes in freedom of expression and access to alternative information.
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| 6. |
- Wang, Yi-ting, et al.
(författare)
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Women's rights in democratic transitions : A global sequence analysis, 1900-2012
- 2017
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Ingår i: European Journal of Political Research. - : WILEY. - 0304-4130 .- 1475-6765. ; 56:4, s. 735-756
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- What determines countries' successful transition to democracy? This article explores the impact of granting civil rights in authoritarian regimes and especially the gendered aspect of this process. It argues that both men's and women's liberal rights are essential conditions for democratisation to take place: providing both women and men rights reduces an inequality that affects half of the population, thus increasing the costs of repression and enabling the formation of women's organising - historically important to spark protests in initial phases of democratisation. This argument is tested empirically using data that cover 173 countries over the years 1900-2012 and contain more nuanced measures than commonly used. Through novel sequence analysis methods, the results suggest that in order to gain electoral democracy a country first needs to furnish civil liberties to both women and men.
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| 7. |
- Strimling, Pontus, et al.
(författare)
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The connection between moral positions and moral arguments drives opinion change
- 2019
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Ingår i: Nature Human Behaviour. - : NLM (Medline). - 2397-3374. ; 3:9, s. 922-930
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Liberals and conservatives often take opposing positions on moral issues. But what makes a moral position liberal or conservative? Why does public opinion tend to become more liberal over time? And why does public opinion change especially fast on certain issues, such as gay rights? We offer an explanation based on how different positions connect with different kinds of moral arguments. Based on a formal model of opinion dynamics, we predicted that positions better connected to harm and fairness arguments will be more popular among liberals and will become more popular over time among liberals and conservatives. Finally, the speed of this trend will be faster the better the position connects to harm and fairness arguments. These predictions all held with high accuracy in 44 years of polling on moral opinions. The model explains the connection between ideology and moral opinions, and generates precise predictions for future opinion change.
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| 8. |
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| 9. |
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| 10. |
- Kostela, Johan, Doktor i Fysikalisk kemi, 1975-, et al.
(författare)
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Varför flytta? : En studie av in- och utflyttning för kommunerna i Region Siljan
- 2008
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Demografiskt sett ligger regionen före övriga Sverige när det gäller antalet personer i arbetsför ålder som snart ska gå i ålderspension, detta innebär att behovet av nyrekrytering av arbetskraft kommer att uppstå inom en nära framtid. Detta är positivt ur synvinkeln att regionen kan komma att få ett försprång gentemot andra när det gäller att hantera problematiken. Det negativa är att man snabbare ställs inför utmaningen att få tillräckligt många att arbeta med offentlig service samt att skapa möjligheter för näringslivet att rekrytera arbetskraft så att man även i fortsättningen kan vara konkurrenskraftiga. Kommunernas befolkning är av stor vikt, både för att kunna planera service och tjänster och för att kunna få en hållbar ekonomi i kommunerna. I stort sett alla Sveriges kommuner har ett önskemål om att kunna öka sin befolkning, och därigenom sitt skatteunderlag. Verkligheten ser dock ut på ett annat sätt. Ett antal stora orter ökar i befolkning, samtidigt som de flesta kommunerna minskar sin. Födelsenettot är historiskt sett lågt och den nationella ökning av befolkning som sker, sker framförallt i storstäderna och drivs på med hjälp av invandring. Denna bild ger kommunerna en hel del att tänka på för att på sikt kunna lösa servicen till medborgarna, både ekonomiskt och med tanke på en minskad befolkning i arbetsför ålder.
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