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Largest Metropolitan Areas (largest + metropolitan_area)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	80%

Selected Abstracts

New York's nature: a review of the status and trends in species richness across the metropolitan region

DIVERSITY AND DISTRIBUTIONS, Issue 1 2009
Linda M. Puth
ABSTRACT Aim, The world's population is urbanizing, yet relatively little is known about the ecology of urban areas. As the largest metropolitan area in the USA, New York City is an ideal location to study the effects of urbanization. Here, we aim to produce a better understanding of the state of the research for species richness of flora and fauna across the New York metropolitan region. Location, New York metropolitan region, USA. Methods, We conducted a review of the published and grey literature, in which we targeted studies of species richness, and categorized each study by habitat, location and taxonomic group. Results, We found 79 studies reporting location-specific species richness data, resulting in 261 location-taxonomic group records. Of these, 26 records had data from multiple time periods; 17 showed decreases in species richness, six reported increases and three showed stable species richness. Of these 26 records, most declines were attributed to anthropogenic causes, such as habitat loss/degradation and invasive species, while most increases reflected recovery from major habitat loss or increases in exotic species. Overall, most records (84) were terrestrial, followed by those in freshwater (72) and mixed habitats (61). When parsed by taxonomic group, the most commonly studied groups were plants (76) and mammals (48). Main conclusions, In general, we discovered fewer studies than expected reporting species richness, especially studies reporting species richness for more than one point in time. Most studies that did contain data over time reported declines in species richness, while several studies reporting increasing or stable species richness reflected increases in exotic species. This survey provides a crucial first step in establishing baseline ecological knowledge for the New York metropolitan region that should help prioritize areas for protection, research and development. Furthermore, this research provides insights into the impacts of urbanization across the USA and beyond and should help establish similar frameworks for ecological understanding for other metropolitan regions throughout the world. [source]

Immigrants working with co-ethnics: Who are they and how do they fare?

INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION, Issue 2 2009
Feng Hou
Participation in ethnic economies has been regarded as an alternative avenue of economic adaptation for immigrants and minorities in major immigrant-receiving countries. This study examines one important dimension of ethnic economies: co-ethnic concentration at the workplace. Using a large national representative sample from Statistics Canada's 2002 Ethnic Diversity Survey, this study addresses four questions: (1) what is the level of co-ethnic concentration at the workplace for Canada's minority groups? (2) How do workers who share the same ethnicity with most of their co-workers differ from other workers in socio-demographic characteristics? (3) Is higher level of co-ethnic concentration at the workplace associated with lower earnings? (4) Is higher level of co-ethnic concentration at the workplace associated with higher levels of life satisfaction? The results show that only a small proportion of immigrants and the Canadian-born work in ethnically homogeneous settings. In Canada's eight largest metropolitan areas about 10 per cent of non-British/French immigrants share a same ethnic origin with the majority of their co-workers. The level is as high as 20 per cent among Chinese immigrants and 18 per cent among Portuguese immigrants. Among Canadian-born minority groups, the level of co-ethnic workplace concentration is about half the level for immigrants. Immigrant workers in ethnically concentrated settings have much lower educational levels and proficiency in English/French. Immigrant men who work mostly with co-ethnics on average earn about 33 per cent less than workers with few or none co-ethnic coworkers. About two thirds of this gap is attributable to differences in demographic and job characteristics. Meanwhile, immigrant workers in ethnically homogenous settings are less likely to report low levels of life satisfaction than other immigrant workers. Among the Canadian-born, co-ethnic concentration is not consistently associated with earnings and life satisfaction. [source]

The Role of Social Networks in Immigrant Women's Political Incorporation

INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW, Issue 4 2009
Elisabeth Gidengil
This article examines how immigrant women's social networks affect their propensity to vote and to participate in unconventional political activities, as well as their knowledge of politics and government services and programs. Our primary source of data is a telephone survey of women living in Canada's two largest metropolitan areas. Our findings show that contrary to the social capital literature, bonding ties do not exert strong negative effects on political incorporation, while bridging ties are not as helpful as hypothesized. What is important for immigrant women are the resources that are embedded in their social networks. [source]

Becoming American/Becoming New Yorkers: Immigrant Incorporation in a Majority Minority City,

INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW, Issue 4 2002
Philip Kasinitz
Many observers have noted that immigrants to the United States are highly concentrated in the largest metropolitan areas of a relatively few states. Though immigrants diffused into many places that had previously seen relatively few immigrants during the 1990s, as of the 2000 census, 77 percent of the nation's 31.1 million foreign born residents still lived in six states , California, New York, Texas, Florida, New Jersey, and Illinois. According to the 2000 census, the two largest metropolitan areas, Los Angeles and New York, accounted for one third of all immigrants (http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/2002/demoprofiles.html). While immigrants moved into many new areas during the 1990s, making the challenge of incorporating their children a national issue, their concentration in our largest cities remained pronounced. [source]

Balancing Regionalism and Localism: How Institutions and Incentives Shape American Transportation Policy

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, Issue 3 2009
Elisabeth R. Gerber
Public policy decisions are increasingly made by regional governance efforts that involve diverse decision makers from multiple government units within a geographic region. These decision-making bodies face competing pressures to represent regional and local interests. We study how decision makers balance preferences for regionalism and localism within metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs), the policymaking entities that are responsible for implementing U.S. federal surface transportation policy at the regional level. Our model of regional governance relates variation in regional policy outcomes to the incentives of MPO decision makers and the institutional environments in which they interact. Analyzing data from a sample of the nation's largest metropolitan areas, we find that MPOs dominated by elected officials produce more locally focused policies, holding other factors constant, while MPOs dominated by nonelected public managers produce more regionally oriented policies. Contextual factors, as well as the regional governance institutions themselves, further shape the balance between regionalism and localism. [source]