Large, open-source, and API-mined data have revolutionized the analysis of urban and suburban city neighborhoods with respect to their innovation capacities. Such data complements traditional census and government data collection methods and sources to help explain significant variations in invention activity across neighborhoods within a city. This paper combines diverse data sources to assess urban-suburban capacities and divides in the generation of patent-based innovation. First, it identifies patterns in innovation outcomes using USPTO patent records and illustrates spillovers across all ZIP codes in New York and Massachusetts and compares them with data from Google Maps to obtain a more granular and broader understanding of the concentration of innovation spaces. The findings reveal variations in the distribution of activity when comparing traditional patent records and API-mined data. Second, the study examines how economic, social, and spatial characteristics are associated with high levels of granted patents across neighborhoods in New York and Massachusetts. Drawing on a composite dataset assembled from multiple sources, the research interrogates the density of correlations between neighborhood variables and patent activity. Third, a comparative design spanning the two US states with distinct urban contexts deploys difference-in-means testing to systematically identify both shared patterns and divergences in how place-level conditions relate to high patent performance. Beyond the empirical findings, the study contributes a replicable methodology for assembling neighborhood asset indicators from heterogeneous data sources and offers a grounded interpretation of results for planning practice and innovation policy. The findings suggest that while traditional datasets provide long-term insights for formal study, alternative data-driven approaches reveal dynamic information that is important for understanding the evolving nature of innovation landscapes and informal innovation activities. Ultimately, this study advocates for a hybrid model that integrates both traditional and API-mined data paradigms to promote urban intelligence and equity. It advocates considering alternative innovation measures when designing innovation policies.
This study investigates the spatial and socio-economic transformation of the labour market in the Kostanay Region of Kazakhstan through the application of foresight and scenario modelling. The research aims to construct a conceptual and predictive framework of regional employment transformation that integrates statistical indicators, expert judgments, and technological trajectories within a spatial foresight perspective. A mixed quantitative–qualitative design was employed, combining regression modelling, SWOT analysis, and expert foresight sessions. Empirical data were derived from official statistics for 2018–2023 and complemented by ILO, OECD, and WEF reports. Expert panels (n = 42) from academia, business, and public administration contributed to validating the scenario assumptions. Multiple regression analysis revealed that Gross Regional Product, investment in fixed assets, and digitalization exert positive effects on employment, whereas migration balance negatively influences labour potential. Three alternative development scenarios were modelled up to 2039: Baseline, Innovation-Driven, and Green Growth. The innovation-driven trajectory ensures the highest productivity and export potential through technological modernization, while the green scenario emphasizes ecological efficiency and sustainability. The findings underscore that the integration of investment, technological, and human capital policies is critical for enhancing regional competitiveness and achieving sustainable socio-economic development under demographic constraints.
This paper aims to review the cultural reasons behind the different water access across the regions of India using the data from National Family Health Survey for the years 2019-2021 and combining it with the cultural data from the Survey on Literacy and Culture of India for the year 2014. I compiles the dataset that allows me to test the working hypothesis that is in the presence of economic controls. The local cultural capital plays a significant role in explaining which type of water source is predominantly used by households. In order to quantify the local cultural capital, the current study employs the Culture Based Development (CBD) paradigm and obtains the cultural heritage (CH) and living culture (LC) components for every region. In addition, cultural heritage and living culture are next used to calculate the local cultural entropy (CE). The results show that the cultural variables always matter yet using only CH and LC have inconclusive directions, while cultural entropy has a persistent positive association with the use of higher quality of sources of water.
Holding a bank account represents access to an important bank service for achieving the formal financial inclusion of an individual. Unfortunately, at present, people living in different regions of India seem to experience a different level of access to this basic bank service and are therefore experiencing different levels of financial market exclusion. This paper studies to what extent social and cultural barriers hinder this effective banking access across the regions of India. Normative caste-based exclusion can be modified by the rigidity of the local context in following inherited norms. This overall cultural rigidity of the context can be termed cultural openness. The Culture Based Development (CBD) approach to quantify cultural openness through the Cultural Entropy measure is employed here. Using data from the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) and National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO), I conduct a probit model estimation to test how Cultural Entropy (CE) modifies the caste discrimination effect in access to bank services. I find that the there is strong evidence that regional Cultural Entropy modifies significantly the individual caste discrimination experience across the regions of the country.
This study contributes to a deeper understanding of the complex relationship between migration, integration, and self-employment across European Union countries. Migration presents multifaceted challenges for host societies, particularly in terms of social cohesion and inclusive development. The Action Plan on Integration and Inclusion (2021-2027) emphasises the importance of migrant entrepreneurship in enhancing livelihoods and promoting sustained economic growth. However, empirical evidence on how integration shapes migrant entrepreneurship remains scarce, especially concerning the role of ethnic diversity. This research aims to fill this gap by examining the link between self-employment, integration, and ethnic concentration, distinguishing between migrants originating from European Union and non-European Union countries and further disaggregating the analysis by gender. It also investigates whether ethnic concentration mediates the effects of integration on migrant self-employment. Findings suggest that the relationship between integration and self-employment is multifaceted, with ethnic concentration having a significant influence and sometimes reversing this correlation.
Contemporary cities are increasingly exposed to cascading shocks that propagate through complex and interconnected urban networks, challenging the explanatory power of traditional risk models. This study introduces the General Urban Distortion Propagation Law (GUDPL), an innovative dynamic mathematical framework that integrates functional connectivity, effective distance, time delays, structural vulnerability, recovery dynamics, and irreducible residual effects. The model provides a unified representation of how urban shocks emerge, spread, and attenuate across interconnected systems, and can, in principle, support the identification of vulnerable urban nodes and resilience-oriented planning. To illustrate the operational behavior of the proposed framework, a proof-of-concept simulation based on a stylized cascading power outage scenario is conducted, highlighting delayed propagation, heterogeneous impacts, and recovery processes. GUDPL is adaptable to different crisis types and compatible with time-dependent and real-time modeling contexts, offering a flexible analytical foundation for urban resilience, sustainability, and crisis management research.
Quality of Life in urban settings is intricately tied to active transportation, public health, and physical activity, capturing the growing societal emphasis on sustainable mobility and well-being. This study develops a composite indicator to evaluate regional Quality of Life across Italy, utilizing data from the 2021 ISTAT (Italian National Institute of Statistics) survey “Aspects of Daily Life.” Employing Principal Component Analysis for weighting, the indicator identifies key dimensions of urban well-being, including active transportation, physical activity, and general health. The results reveal pronounced disparities between central-northern and southern Italy, driven by differences in infrastructure, access to health resources, and socio-economic conditions. Northern regions consistently outperform southern counterparts, where structural challenges hinder improvements in Quality of Life. These findings underscore the urgent need for targeted, equity-focused policies to address regional disparities and enhance urban environments, with a particular focus on improving accessibility and public health in underperforming regions. The study provides valuable insights for policymakers aiming to promote sustainable and inclusive urban development.
An increasing number of studies focus on the impact of firm location on firm productivity. Here, location refers to localised resources or externalities available to firms. These studies have become possible due to advancements in firm-level data availability and productivity estimation methods. There is a growing need to better identify the effects of localised externalities -- "the firm-region nexus" -- on firms, which are the primary targets of many regional development policies. However, relying solely on administrative regions risks committing the ecological fallacy: attributing to all firms in a region the effects observed for a region as a whole. This article presents the state of the art as of 2025, highlighting key issues in this area of research. A total of 165 articles were selected, mainly published in the past decade. From a methodological perspective, there is no real consensus on the models utilised, whether to estimate productivity or to investigate the relationships between the "firm-region nexus" and firm productivity. Spatial integration is still not adequately taken into account: (a) Total Factor Productivity estimations do not account for spatial dependence among methodological concerns; (b) 70\% of the articles do not discuss methodological issues linked to the use of firm locations. A deeper grasp of firm location, particularly the "head office bias", emerges as critical to improving the robustness of analyses. Quantifying the "firm-region nexus" remains heterogeneous across national and local contexts (diverging points of interest, data availability, etc.). Comparing the effects of various types of externalities across countries therefore appears ambitious. Some articles focus on the effect of one category of localised externalities, aiming not only to identify a relationship but also its type: spatial or temporal effect, linear or non-linear relationships, and threshold effects.
This article examines the emerging migration corridor between Uzbekistan and Sweden based on interviews, focus groups, and data from a survey conducted in both countries in 2024. Although small in scale, this corridor is analytically significant for understanding the diversification of Uzbek migration beyond Russia and Turkey. Findings show that demographic pressures, limited employment, and environmental stressors in Uzbekistan drive out-migration, while Sweden attracts migrants with higher wages, safer working conditions, and a reputation for fairness. Yet, restrictive asylum and work permit regimes, combined with tightened identity systems, channel many into irregularity. In this context, kinship ties, brokers, and digital platforms such as Telegram function as critical infrastructures of survival, enabling migrants to access jobs and housing but also exposing them to exploitation. The study highlights the contradictions of contemporary migration governance: between aspiration and exclusion and between restrictive regulation and persistent migrant resilience.
This study examines how perceptions of deservingness influence the integration outcomes of Ukrainian and Russian refugees in Germany. To evaluate perceptions, we conducted research employing Wim van Oorschot's CARIN framework,1 which comprises five criteria: Control, Attitude, Reciprocity, Identity, and Need. While the European Union reinitiated its Temporary Protection Directive to expedite the integration of Ukrainian refugees, Russian political emigrants have experienced fragmented asylum processes and uncertainty. Employing nearly 200 secondary data units from policy documents, humanitarian statistics, media coverage, and civil society reports between 2022 and 2025, we conducted a two-stage coding method to uncover thematic differences in legal status, civic engagement, public perception, and institutional accessibility. The research results indicate that Ukrainians are perceived as more "deserving" due to cultural ties, political alignment, and victimhood during wartime, whereas Russians faced suspicion and were viewed as a security threat due to their nationality. These findings highlight that deservingness is a socially constructed concept shaped by public opinion and institutional narratives.
This article examines the professional trajectories of highly educated female "Russian math education" in the United States. Moving beyond dominant narratives in migration literature that portray immigrant women primarily as constrained by gender norms, this study foregrounds gendered agency to on the concepts of gendered agency and the aspiration-capability framework, the study identifies two primary sources of agency: parental aspirations to secure high-quality mathematics education for their children, and professional ambitions grounded in a passion for teaching. The analysis reveals that tracentrality of motherhood-had an ambivalent impact: while they could limit responsibilities and professional goals into entrepreneurial educational initiatives. By centering gendered agency, the study contributes to migration scholarship on the role of gender in shaping immigrant experiences and illuminates the complex ways in which traditional gender roles can simultaneously constrain and inspire professional trajectories.
This article examines the trajectories and identity transformations of Russian migrants who relocated to Latin America following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Based on original survey data and interviews, it argues that this wave-driven by fear of repression, conscription, and moral opposition to the war-constitutes a form of crisis migration centered on autonomy and ethical refusal. Unlike earlier movements of Russians to the region, this new migration is not guided by ideology or economic opportunity but by the need to escape an authoritarian state and redefine belonging. The article conceptualizes these migrants as "escapees" who reject the political authority of the Russian state while maintaining cultural and linguistic ties that sustain a reimagined sense of Russianness. In Latin America-marked by its neutrality, histories of exile, and openness to newcomers-Russian migrants experiment with hybrid and postnational identities detached from state frameworks yet rooted in language, memory, and civic agency.
Since early 2022, the escalating geopolitical conflict between Russia and Ukraine has markedly reshaped perceptions of "Russianness" and prompted heightened securitization measures targeting Russians in their receiving societies. This has resulted in increasing stigmatization and redefinition of Russians' own sense of cultural and linguistic belonging. For many Russians living outside of Russia, post-2022 their "Russianness" has become both a site of tension and a catalyst for introspection: Some distance themselves from Russia, others experience identity conflict and reimagine their place within civic, cultural, and political frames. Across these trajectories, language and culture function as psychological anchors amid polarization. Drawing on indepth interviews conducted in Finland and Latvia, we analyze the changes in Russian identities abroad since February 2022 and explore the reasons behind these shifts, proposing a theory-informed lens with implications for diaspora and identity studies.
This paper demonstrates the application of sequence analysis to develop a typology of racial and ethnic trajectories in New York City neighborhoods from 1980 to 2020 using a reproducible R workflow. Our workflow begins with using an unsupervised classification method, k-means, at each decennial cross-section to derive 6 classes describing the racial and ethnic makeup of neighborhoods during the study period. These classes include four that depict a majority of Black, White, Hispanic, and Asian residents, and two mixed-race classes, Black and Hispanic, and a White majority with a mixture of other races. We then develop a sequence of classes for each census tract over the 5 decennial time stamps. Finally, we derive a longitudinal typology describing the predominant pathways of change using sequence analysis. This resulted in 14 distinct pathways including transitions to Hispanic and Asian majorities emerging from historically White or Black neighborhoods. The findings underscore the gradual nature of neighborhood racial transformations. Our approach is reproducible for researchers wanting to explore and visualize multidimensional neighborhood dynamics.
Studies on factors that influence subjective well-being have mushroomed. The factors influencing subjective well-being differ from society to society. Studies show that social capital is an important factor affecting subjective well-being in collectivist societies. This paper examines the links between social capital and subjective well-being in Uzbekistan. Using the World Values Survey, I estimated a regression model, which included socioeconomic variables and data related to networks and trust. These findings reinforce the general belief that there is a positive relationship between social capital and subjective well-being in Uzbekistan.
This study covers the history of the Soviet Chinese and Koreans of the RFE from 1860 to 1939. It will demonstrate that the Russian Empire and the USSR continually viewed its East Asians as an excellent colonizing element, industrious, clever but as dubious citizenship material. One might ask, "How is this possible when the Soviet East Asians distinguished themselves to the Soviet state as NKVD agents, kolkhoz leaders, Soviet cadres, farmers who vociferously supported state collectivization of land, teachers, and informants?" This was because the USSR prioritized Russians (including Belorussians and Ukrainians) as their core people (primus inter pares)1 despite the avowals to build "real socialism" and a class-based society. In the 1930s, as the tension of war and political intrigue mounted, Stalin began a campaign through various Soviet media (radio, newspaper, and official pronouncements) that warned of Japanese spies infiltrating the RFE in all of the most common occupations held by RFE Chinese and Koreans. This is a short history of the tsarist and Soviet creation of the "yellow peril" leading to the deportation of the Soviet Chinese.
This study examines the formation, structure, and linguistic practices of Russian-speaking digital communities in South Korea, with a particular focus on the integration of Korean words into Russian-language communication. Through web crawling and natural language processing techniques, the research analyzes a large-scale dataset collected from online platforms such as Telegram. Findings reveal that these migrant communities, formed primarily out of economic necessity, rely heavily on self-organized digital networks for employment information, housing, and social adaptation. Linguistically, while Russian remains the primary medium of communication, Korean words are widely adopted and systematically integrated into Russian grammar and semantics. The words undergo phonological adaptation, morphological inflection, and semantic shifts, reflecting migrants' practical needs and lived experiences within Korean society. Terms related to work, administrative procedures, and geographic locations are particularly prominent. Semantic reconfigurations-such as apaty 'apartment', denoting highrise or luxury housing, shchipun '10 minutes', referring to break time, and andzhon 'safety', indicating safety boots-show how borrowed terms evolve in meaning. Such shifts often coincide with grammatical innovations like pluralization, especially when abstract or collective concepts become concrete and countable. These patterns reveal how contact-induced language change is shaped by the interplay of grammar and semantics, driven by the sociocultural realities of migration. The study demonstrates that digital platforms not only facilitate the spread of borrowings but also foster the emergence of hybrid linguistic practices. Korean words have become embedded elements of migrant Russian, signaling broader processes of cultural negotiation and linguistic innovation. This research contributes to understanding how language contact evolves in digitally mediated diasporic settings and highlights the dynamic interaction among migration, technology, and language change.
This article examines the emergence of Q-pop, a Kazakhstani music genre influenced by K-pop yet uniquely adapted to reflect Kazakh identity. It explores how K-pop's global success and the Korean Wave shaped Q-pop's development, particularly through artists like Ninety One, who blend international trends with the Kazakh language, values, and traditions. Using media content analysis and industry interviews, this study highlights Q-pop's integration into Kazakhstan's cultural landscape, its societal impact, and the challenges it faces, including conservative resistance. It further examines how Q-pop has adapted K-pop's training systems and fan culture while maintaining its linguistic and cultural distinctiveness. The emergence of INKI, a Kazakhstani group formed in Russia, signals Q-pop's regional expansion and influence in the post-Soviet space. This development underscores Q-pop's transition into a broader Eurasian cultural force, shaping regional musical trends and fostering new forms of cultural exchange in Greater Eurasia.
In Germany, the identification of logistics land is rarely done, among other things due to the anonymization of employment and building data. The paper at hand gives an overview of data sources used for the identification of spatial patterns of logistics facilities and presents a method for identifying logistics land based on publicly available data, to present an image of the existing spatial structure of logistics land. Identified spatial hotspots are mostly located in Metropolises/Regiopolises and their suburbs, along highways in areas with flat relief, and in the vicinity of large inland terminals/inland harbors.
