Peopling Prehistoric Coastlines: Identifying Mid-Holocene Forager Settlement Strategies in Northern Norway

In circumpolar regions, coastlines offer rich constellations of diverse resources and have long been a focus of human habitation. Despite the rich archaeological records that are located along many northern coastlines, there is a relatively limited understanding of the range of factors that informed local settlement strategies. Northern Norway has one of the world’s longest and best-preserved archaeological records of coastal habitation due to post-glacial uplift. Occupation begins in the early Holocene and appears to peak in the mid-Holocene. Our aim in this paper is to investigate the constraints and opportunities that informed the mid-Holocene settlement patterns, between c. 5000 and 0 BC. We present new data that were generated by intensive field surveys and undertake a qualitative multi-scalar analysis of site-locational choices, evaluating the influences of geography, topography and seasonal resource availability. Having identified stretches of the rugged coast as uninhabitable, we proceeded with analyses of the rest of the coastline. Our results indicate that all major settlements were sited to provide safe boat landing, good vantage points and shelter from storms. From these habitation sites, boat technology would have provided flexible access to diverse resources that were available throughout the year, and within a limited travel radius. We also demonstrate that these settlement strategies contrast with the way that the same coastlines were inhabited by pioneering groups in the early Holocene but appear to have some similarities with mid-Holocene coastal settlement patterns in Newfoundland and the Aleutian Islands. Overall, our results suggest that the multiple resources available along northern coastlines often enabled populations to occupy relatively localized areas for long periods. Longer-range mobility and interaction may instead have been primarily driven by socio-political factors rather than subsistence needs.

The effect of the COVID-19 on sharing economy: survival analysis of Airbnb listings

This research investigates the survival probability of listings in the Airbnb platform during the COVID-19 period between January-October 2020 in Istanbul. In line with the research aim, Cox's Proportional Hazard Model is adopted to conduct survival analysis, where the physical and spatial attributes of Airbnb listings are used as predictors. Our findings show that while physical attributes show similarity to previous findings, spatial attributes show substantial differences in the Pre-COVID and Post-COVID comparison. The contributions of the study have two facets. Theoretically, this research's findings contribute to the current literature by understanding the changing consumer preferences and identifying the factors that affect Airbnb listings' survival rates during the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings may also help practitioners understand changing customers' preferences during COVID, especially in terms of locational choices. Moreover, customer feedback's quality and quantity might help the Airbnb hosts to improve their service quality, attract more customers, and be more resilient under the changing conditions.

Moving Stuff Around

Starting with the basics of infrastructure, Chapter 2 shows how it un-levels the playing field, making distant places ‘close’ and near places ‘far away’. Digital networks are obviously a focus, but so too are transportation and other less glamorous systems. Networks which ‘equalise’ space exert a centrifugal force on activity and growth, spinning it outward, deconcentrating the urban form. The nodal networks tend to reinforce concentration, pulling growth in a ‘centripetal’ way towards the best-connected central places. So infrastructure networks create a ‘surface’ across which locational choices are made, reflecting the interactions between cost, speed, bandwidth, connectivity and convenience. Firms’ and households’ locational choices emerge from the degree of flexibility they have in terms of the connectivity they rely on. But which connectivity? Not every business needs every network. That leads on to subsequent chapters’ analysis of the specific mix of types of mobility and access that firms need, for the markets they serve and the deals they do.

Locational Choices: Modeling Consumer Preferences for Proximity to Others in Reserved Seating Venues

This article proposes a measurement approach to determine how consumers prefer to locate themselves in proximity to others during consumption experiences, such as when they purchase reserved seating tickets to a performance. Applied to data from locational choice experiments that simulate reserved seating assortments, administered to more than 2,000 participants, this approach reveals the importance of modeling proximity to others when studying locational choices. It also emphasizes the degree to which consumers are heterogeneous in their preferences for proximity to both focal elements (e.g., stage, screen, aisles) and other consumers. Therefore, event operators should collect data beyond purchase ticket logs and also include consumers who did not purchase. Furthermore, this study illustrates how managers can use fitted, individual-level parameters and an optimization model to make more effective seat-level availability decisions. In addition to these recommendations for managers of reserved seating venues, this article offers novel contributions to research related to advance selling, spatial models, and personal space.

Using the Maximal Entropy Modeling Approach to Analyze the Evolution of Sedentary Agricultural Societies in Northeast China

The emergence of agriculture and the evolution of sedentary societies are among the most important processes in human history. However, although archeologists and social scientists have long been studying these processes, our understanding of them is still limited. This article focuses on the Fuxin area in present-day Liaoning province in Northeast China. A systematic archeological survey we conducted in Fuxin in recent years located sites from five successive stages of the evolution of agricultural sedentary society. We used the principles of Maximal Entropy to study changes in settlement patterns during a long-term local trajectory, from the incipient steps toward a sedentary agricultural way of life to the emergence of complex societies. Based on the detailed data collected in the field, we developed a geo-statistical model based on Maximal Entropy (MaxEnt) that characterizes the locational choices of societies during different periods. This combination of high-resolution information on the location and density of archeological remains, along with a maximal entropy-based statistical model, enabled us to chart the long-term trajectory of the interactions between human societies and their natural environment and to better understand the different stages of the transition to developed sedentary agricultural society.

Regional Urbanisation through Accessibility?—The “Zweite Stammstrecke” Express Rail Project in Munich

Transport accessibility is one of the most significant locational factors for both households and firms, and thus a potentially self-reinforcing driver of urban development. The spatial structure and dynamics of accessibility hence have the potential to alter the locational choices of households and firms significantly, leading to concentration and de-concentration processes. In spite of recent innovations in automotive technologies, public transport systems remain crucial for the functioning of metropolises. In this paper, we use the case of public transport in the Munich Metropolitan Region (MMR) in Germany to (1) discuss whether public transport in the past has contributed to regional urbanisation, the blurring of urban and suburban spaces; (2) model future accessibility changes due to the ongoing mega-infrastructure project “second trunk line” (“Zweite Stammstrecke”) for suburban trains and their likely effects on processes of regional development; (3) compare the balance of accessibility and functional density at stations in the MMR and (4) recommend a planning strategy based on an integrated urban and transport planning philosophy. We argue that particularly the monocentric design of the project means that it will intensify and extend the scope of suburbanisation and metropolisation, while planning should aim for a greater regionalisation of economic activity.