Focus articles from December 1993

Focus archives from December 1993

Havana by bicycle during Cuba's 'special period,' (the period after the breakup of the USSR during which the US has increased its opposition)
December 22, 1993... As a Latin Americanist geographer, I have an interest in visiting virtually all of the western hemisphere's countries. I must confess, however, to a particular fascination with Cuba that goes beyond the "forbidden fruit" aspect imposed by...

Battlement Mesa: new life for a Colorado mining town. (former ghost town rejuvenated)
December 22, 1993... Although this article may appear to read like a promotion for Battlement Mesa, that is not its purpose. Rather, it illustrates how one group of individuals has been able to use the existing resources of a new Rocky Mountain ghost town to...

Women travellers at fins de siecles. (comparing Victorian and modern female travellers from the western world)
December 22, 1993... I would like to argue that an important motivation for women to travel abroad a century ago - that of escaping the restrictive conventions of patriachial societies - no longer applies. in the past, the few women who left their European or North...

The Rockies. (many Americans can not pinpoint just where these mountains are)(Geography in the News)
December 22, 1993... North Americans (and John Denver) wax romantic about the Rocky Mountains, a favorite winter and summer vacation destination. When pressed for more details about the exact location and characteristics of this physical region, however, many...

The Great Plains: from bust to bust. (planner-geographers Deborah and Frank Popper propose a return of the abandoned prairies to short grass and buffalo)(The Great Buffalo Commons Debate)
December 22, 1993... In December 1987, Deborah and Frank Popper, planner-geographers at Rutgers University, published an article in Planning Magazine, stating that much of the American Great Plains are losing people. They suggested that government planning is...

Comment on the future of the Great Plains: not a buffalo commons. (opposition to the ideas of Deborah and Frank Popper on land usage in the prairie states)(The Great Buffalo Commons Debate)
December 22, 1993... The Buffalo Commons Proposal, whether offered in this issue of FOCUS or in its original 1987 version, has served a useful function in alerting the nation to the environmental, economic and social problems long acknowledged in the Great Plains....

The evolution of an idea.(The Great Buffalo Commons Debate)
December 22, 1993... In 1985 I published a short article in a journal called Landscape. The article was called "The Return of the Prairie," and in it I argued that our problem of crop surpluses - I was thinking particularly of wheat - would grow increasingly severe...

The buffalo commons, then and now. (land use in the Midwestern states: includes samples of public reaction to the idea of buffalo commons)(The Great Buffalo Commons Debate)
December 22, 1993... In 1987 we wrote in Planning Magazine about the development of the Great Plains and were surprised that anyone cared. We described Plains history in quite conventional terms as a series of boom-and-bust cycles, each largely the result of...

The spread of natural decrease. (approaching zero-population growth in the US - ZPG)(Research in Geography)
December 22, 1993... Not too long into the future, perhaps by 2040 or 2050, the United States will reach ZPG - zero population growth - when the number of deaths exceeds the number of births. When the vast Baby Boom generation - those Americans born between 1945...

The many faces of Pakistan.
December 22, 1993... Janusz Czejdo is a professor o Russian language and culture. An avid traveller he travelled to Pakistan and Nepal to expand his understanding of these opaque cultures. Czejdo is of Polish heritage and has had limited exposure to non-western...