A Brief Reading of American Urban Culture in Post-Industrialization Era

In the wake of great expansion of cities as centers of production,the post-industrialization era saw American urban tran-sitions and transformations with cultural diversification highlighting consumption,service,marketing and cultural integration.Cul-tural variations in cities,under the influence of non-material production,constantly worked for urban re-invention and urban re-newal,facilitating and expediting a high-level urban development.

Investigation of soil and groundwater environment in urban area during post-industrial era: A case study of brownfield in Zhenjiang, Jiangsu Province, China

With the adjustment of industrial structure,many high pollution enterprises will gradually shut down.This process will produce a large number of high-risk pollution plots and cause a series of environmental problems.In this study,geophysical detection and direct push technology were applied to investigate soil and groundwater pollution in a typical brownfield in Zhenjiang,Jiangsu province,China.The results showed that Chlorotoluene and its ramification were the main pollutants for the brownfield.Pollution decreased with depth and was quite uneven in the brownfield.Production and wastewater treatment areas were heavily polluted,where volatile organic compounds contaminated and semi-volatile organic compounds were found 12 m and 15 m below the land surface,respectively.About 18880 m3 groundwater was contaminated.This study is significant to develop a geological survey work mode for the postindustrial era.

Post-industrial Economic Restructuring and Wage Inequality in Urban China, 2003-2015: A Sectoral Perspective

Income inequality in urban China has attracted growing attention from China’s urban researchers and policy makers. Whereas many studies have interrogated the pattern and process of the income gap in Chinese cities undergoing the institutional transformation from plan to market, relatively little is known about how such unequal distribution of income is related to China’s ongoing structural transformation toward a post-industrial economy. Drawing on a decomposition methodology based on the Theil index, this study aimed to address this lacuna through an empirical investigation of China’s urban wage inequality from a sectoral perspective. Our empirical study identified the low-wage manufacturing sector and the high-wage producer services sector as the two biggest contributors to urban wage inequality in China. Urban wage inequality within the producer services was found to be caused by the spatial concentration of a disproportionate number of high-paying jobs in a few developed, high-tier city-regions on the eastern coast. Our empirical findings have important implications for the formulation of policies to address the income inequality that plagues China’s continuing urbanization.

＂The Closest Thing to God＂： Post-industrialization and Postmodernism in Tawni O＇Dell＇s Coal Run

A growing body of American literature examines the conditions in towns from the Midwest to the Northeast that have been drastically affected by the condition of what has been termed ＂deindustrialization＂. These towns have witnessed the employee downsizing and the eventual collapse of their major industries, such as automobile manufacturing and coal mining, and the fiction about them--termed ＂deindustrialization literature＂ by Sherry Lee Linkon--explores how the affected generations cope with these changed circumstances. The novel Coal Run, written in 2004 by Tawni O＇Dell＇s, herself a native of a coal mining region in Western Pennsylvania, is one such example of deindustrialization literature and the focus of this essay. Set in a coal mining town that has been shut down because of a Centralia-like uncontrolled mine fire that opens fissures to a literal kind of hell, the protagonist, Ivan the Great, a former Penn State football star, and other characters attempt to re-orient themselves after the mine---described by Ivan as ＂the closest thing I had to God＂--closes and the effects of that closing are felt. This paper discusses the motifs of ecological ruin, economic disruption, and personal, familial, and community disorientation in the novel. In doing so, the paper considers connections between de- or post-industrialization and postmodernism, particularly as discussed by cultural geographer David Harvey in The Condition of Postmodernity in terms of ＂the crisis tendency＂ of capitalism toward ＂overaccumulation＂ and the ＂link between postmodernism and...more flexible modes of capital accumulation＂. The paper goes on to consider the experiences through which the novel＇s characters learn to look to the future in ways that may be said to coincide with the ethos of much postmodern American fiction that sets less ambitious but nonetheless still meaningful expectations for human being.

Contemporary Marxism and Post-industrial Economy

Karl Marx （1973） scientifically predicted the appearance of some extraordinary tendencies of social development in the second half of the 20th century was given a common name of post-industrial or informational society and interpreted as post-bourgeois, post-capitalist, post-business society, and late capitalism. Autonomist Marxism and Perm philosophy school had separately come to a conclusion that all the phenomena noticed by the post-industrial theory could be adequately explained if we consider the historically new form of material labour appearing now. Marx （1973）, who predicted this new form, named it automated, scientific, or universal labour. With the appearance of the universal labour, the wealth of the society depends on the universal human powers that help to involve the extensive powers of nature into the production process. Universal labour can not be averaged or measured by the labour time as the abstract labour; it implies high complexity and creativity. Involving increasingly powerful forces of nature and human society, it appears to be the labour of another essence and by its essence, it does not create value.

The Inner Link Between Economic Globalization and the Formation of American Post-industrial Economy

Economic globalization has a very important impact on the world economic development.The economic globalization,especially after the 1970s,not only promoted the global industry division of labor,but also changed the economic structure of the world.From the perspective of global industrial division,many counties have entered post-industrial process,the United States is a case in point.However,economic globalization is an abstract conception,which it consists of trade liberalization,capital globalization,and production decentralization.Therefore,trade liberalization,capital globalization,and production decentralization are important factors for the formation of the post-industrial economy in the United States.

Development and actualization of brownfields database with the use of unmanned aerial vehicles-the case of Upper Silesia,Poland

This paper presents the assumptions and the preliminary results of the project entitled"Extension of the system for man-agement of post-mining areas in the Silesian province-OPI TPP 2.0".The overall objective of the project is to develop and implement a new e-service in the form of an open-access information system on post-mining areas in the Silesia Voivodeship.The range of information and tools planned to be made available is dedicated to assessing the possibilities and potential for economic and social reuse of these areas.The basic and extremely important stage of the project was to identify and collect data on post-industrial sites located in the Silesia Province.The information contained in this article illustrates the activities that were carried out in the initial phase of the project in which unmanned aerial vehicles(UAV)were used to identify and acquire information on brownfields(including post-mining sites)entered into the developed common database.The article assesses the possibility of using drones in an enterprise of such a large scale and also points out the advantages of using this method.The article describes the methodology and scope of work related to the acquisition of data that can be collected using unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV)covering surface infrastructure and land use of brownfields,allowing for the identification of negative phenomena on their site as well as monitoring of naturally occurring processes.Based on fieldworks experience and the results of numerous analyses carried out for different types of brownfields(e.g.post-mining areas,former transport bases,settling ponds,etc.),paper presents the advantages and benefits of drones(UAN)over other data sources used to monitor changes in an area.The article is based on the results of an inventory of over 600 brownfields located in Upper Silesia region(Silesia Voivodeship,Poland).