Patrick Buckley

A Transportation-Oriented Interregional Computable General Equilibrium Model of the United States

Interregional computable general equilibrium (ICGE) models are useful new tools for investigating questions of spatial equity and efficiency, especially if they consider the explicit costs of movement across space. In this paper, we outline a three-region, five-sector operational ICGE model of the United States which has been calibrated from a 51 region, 124 sector public data base. This model explicitly includes transportation and wholesaling services and the costs of moving products based on origin-destination pairs. Through the use of a counterfactual scenario, the ICGEs explicit specification is compared with a well known implicit method — to observe how the predicted regional production pattern is affected. The proposed explicit method is seen to provide a more focused description of the spatial economic impacts that result from changes in the production of transportation services.

Why people walk: modeling foundational and higher order needs based on latent structure

Abstract Researchers are probing motivational factors influencing individuals’ choice to walk. A review of the literature reveals a great deal of variability in the motivators considered. This study identified 15 motivators commonly associated with walkability for use in a pedestrian-intercept survey to measure their influence on pedestrian mode choice to walk in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood of Vancouver, Canada. The results were analyzed using analytical factor analysis and indicated a hierarchical needs model with four significant factors including lower order (urban planning and policy) and higher order (physical geographic; attractiveness and sociability; and personal) needs considered in their decision. The study suggests that lower order factors, which correspond to the 4 Es of pedestrian planning, provide a foundation for encouraging walking, but in order to achieve high levels of walking, it is necessary to adequately address factors related to higher order needs that are often beyond the attention of pedestrian planning.

Democracy and the Space of Energy Flows: The Practice of Bordered Transnationalism in the Pacific Northwest

Abstract This article presents an empirical analysis of border place-making in the Fraser Lowland cross-border region (CBR) of southwest British Columbia, northwest Washington, often referred to as the Pacific Northwest. For five years, beginning in 1999, a protracted legal battle over the construction of a power plant, Sumas Energy 2 (SE2), on the Washington side of the border forced regulatory agencies in the US and Canada to define a regional public vis-à-vis energy provision and its impacts. Their decisions on jurisdiction were mixed and, in some cases, unprecedented. Taken together with the implicit pursuit by the North American Free Trade Agreement of a borderless trade in energy, we explore the nature of border space that came to be applied to this CBR.

Environmental Resource Management in Borderlands: Evolution from Competing Interests to Common Aversions

Great enthusiasm is attached to the emergence of cross-border regions (CBRs) as a new institutional arrangement for dealing with local cross-border environmental resource management and other issues that remain too distant from national capitals and/or too expensive to be addressed in the traditional topocratic manner requiring instead local adhocratic methods. This study briefly discusses the perceived value of CBRs and necessary and sufficient conditions for the successful and sustainable development of such places. Then, assuming that necessary conditions can be met, the study investigates an intriguing hypothesis concerning the catalyzing of sustainable consensus for cross-border resource management based on a game theoretical approach that employs the use of dilemma of common aversion rather than the more traditional dilemma of competing common interests. Using this lens to investigate a series of events on the Pacific northwestern Canadian-American border in a part of the Fraser Lowland, we look for evidence of the emergence of an active and sustainable CBR to address local trans-border resource management issues. Although our micro-level scale fails to conclusively demonstrate such evidence, it does demonstrate the value of using this approach and suggests a number of avenues for further research.

Silenced Rivers: The Ecology and Politics of Large Dams.

enlightening even to an advanced reader (me) who thought she knew all about these things. He describes the contributions of key figures from Joseph Hooker to Ernst Mayr and uses wonderful examples, such as the discovery of the dawn redwood, a living fossil. Throughout the book, he seems able to present these ‘‘textbook’’ illustrations of biogeographic principles (the dodo, the passenger pigeon, the Hawaiian fruit flies) without making them seem ho-hum. It is mainly in the final chapters that I found a few errors of explanation or fact (being a typical academic, I can not let these nitpicky things go without mention). For example, humans established permanent settlements first, and then, over time, domesticated plants and animals (not the other way around, as it is usually taught). Also, the Polynesians did not arrive and settle the Pacific islands after the Lapita peoples— they descended from them. But these are small points. More central to the book’s subject, I wish MacDonald had been more critical of vicariance biogeography, or at least spent more time on phylogeography and on tying the topic of evolutionary history back to the chapter on dispersal (another one of my favorite topics). I was glad that he accorded the equilibrium theory of biogeography (ETB) a small section in the penultimate chapter, ‘‘The Geography of Biological Diversity,’’ which is where I think it belongs. Some folks seem to equate the ETB with biogeography, so I am pleased that MacDonald wrote 427 pages about biogeography (and talked about islands several times in the context of dispersal, evolution, endemism, and extinction) before he mentioned island biogeography. Even then, he talks about Darwin, Wallace, Carlquist, Hooker, Gleason, and Mayr before MacArthur and Wilson. He accurately describes the ETM as perhaps the most well-known theoretical concept to arise from biogeography in the twentieth century, and he goes on to outline the theory, its evidence, and the growing body of evidence that does not support it—lack of species turnover or extinction on islands that cannot be attributed to humans, and lack of equilibrium between species immigration and extinction. He reviews the biotic and historic factors that lead to nonequilibrium—all species are not equivalent, humans cause waves of extinctions when they occupy islands, evolution and speciation also generate biodiversity on islands. He concludes on a decidedly historical note: species additions and extinctions on islands are best examined over thousands to millions of years, species turnover may be very slow (if it occurs), and equilibrium may never be achieved in the life of an island. He proposes these as ‘‘modifications’’ to the ETB—probably a fitting tribute to the theory’s brilliant authors, and consistent with his even-handed treatment of controversies in the subdiscipline throughout this textbook. Perhaps by the time MacDonald writes the second edition someone will have noticed that the emperor has no equilibrium, and the ETB will have been replaced by something more useful and for which there is empirical evidence. MacDonald’s final chapter, on biogeography and conservation, provides a brief overview of geographical approaches to conservation planning and includes topics from GIS, gap analysis, and population-viability analysis to ecological restoration and the challenge of global warming. This is a lot to cover in one short chapter; hopefully, it provides some nice links to the rest of the geography or biology student’s curriculum. Glen, I’m sure your family is happy to have you back, but thank you for writing this book.

Teaching Geography in an International Region: Challenges of the Pacific Northwest Borderland

Abstract Offering a course across an international border, where students and faculty physically travel to both countries throughout the term, raises a host of pedagogical, cartographic, logistic, and cultural challenges. At the same time, two initial classes find the experience rewarding and evaluate the course positively. This paper reviews the offering of a unique cross-border course, outlining its structure, methodology, and outcomes. Major hurdles and issues in this venture into cross-border education are outlined. Directions and expectations for future offerings are suggested.

The Role of Sister Cities' Staff Exchanges in Developing "Learning Cities": Exploring Necessary and Sufficient Conditions in Social Capital Development Utilizing Proportional Odds Modeling

In the last half century former international adversaries have become cooperators through networking and knowledge sharing for decision making aimed at improving quality of life and sustainability; nowhere has this been more striking then at the urban level where such activity is seen as a key component in building “learning cities” through the development of social capital. Although mega-cities have been leaders in such efforts, mid-sized cities with lesser resource endowments have striven to follow by focusing on more frugal sister city type exchanges. The underlying thesis of our research is that great value can be derived from city-to-city exchanges through social capital development. However, such a study must differentiate between necessary and sufficient conditions. Past studies assumed necessary conditions were met and immediately jumped to demonstrating the existence of structural relationships by measuring networking while further assuming that the existence of such demonstrated a parallel development of cognitive social capital. Our research addresses this lacuna by stepping back and critically examining these assumptions. To accomplish this goal we use a Proportional Odds Modeling with a Cumulative Logit Link approach to demonstrate the existence of a common latent structure, hence asserting that necessary conditions are met.

A multiple-criteria group decision support system for risk reduction and community resilience in the fraser lowlands eco-region

As population pressures and energy demands continue to mount on both sides of the Canada-US border, advances in group decision making can help to enhance power plant selection and siting processes, to mitigate hazards, and to promote more sustainable and resilient societies. Multiple-criteria, multiple-participant decision making strategies are used herein to investigate a number of critical trans-border energy, social, and environmental issues including co-management of a shared airshed in the Fraser lowlands eco-region. Sumas Energy 2 (SE2), a contentious power plant project proposed for the US side of the international border between the city of Abbotsford, British Columbia and town of Sumas, Washington is considered. We provide a geographic and historic overview of the Fraser lowlands eco-region region followed by an outline of events related to the regulation of the controversial SE2 project. A decision support system is developed to automate the Nemawashi decision process, which involves a coordinator seeking to achieve group consensus. The recommended power plant decision alternative involved not constructing the SE2 power plant facility. This coincides with the real-world outcome of the conflict: opposed by the Canadian courts and the National Energy Board (NEB), the Kirkland, Washington-based National Energy Systems Corporation (NESCO) formally withdrew its proposed plan in 2006.