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Conservation of green space is crucial to the sustainable urban development of China. Nanjing is a central city in the Yangtze River Delta cluster in eastern China. Owing to urbanization, the green spaces in this city have been affected significantly in terms of their scale and structure. Assessing such changes can provide a basis for environmental protection measures and sustainable development. Using Landsat remote-sensing image data from 1998 and 2007, we constructed a distribution map of the patches of green spaces in Nanjing, and analyzed and assessed the changes in scale and spatial layout of the green spaces using various landscape metrics including CA, PLAND, PD, MPS, LPI, NP, PD, TE, ED, MPI, and LSI. Coinciding with a sharp increase in urban population, the area of green spaces in Nanjing decreased by 27.06% between 1998 and 2007. The patches of green space increased by 39%, and the average area per patch decreased by about 47.52%. Green space patches were found to be unevenly distributed among the districts of Nanjing. In urban areas, significant numbers of such patches were found primarily in various types of parks, while in suburban areas, they were concentrated mainly in the hilly forestlands. Green spaces exhibited tendencies towards fragmentation, miniaturization, and discretization.

The fact that the world is becoming increasingly urbanized is recognized by the United Nations (UNFPA, 2007) in the State of the World Population Report as the “The Urban Millennium.” In year 1950, 30% of the world's population lived in cities and as of recently, the population has reached up to 50%, making year 2007 a turning point in the history of urban population growth (Bigio, 2003; Kreimer, Arnold, & Caitlin, 2003; UN-HABITAT, 2007). By year 2030, the United Nations expects more than 60% of population to be living in cities (Munich Re, 2005). And as shown by Surjan and Shaw (2009), by year 2050, the world's urban population is expected to grow by 3 billion people. Most of this growth will take place in developing countries, with the urban population in cities and towns doubling. As it has been summarized, from 1991 to 2005, more than 3.5 billion people were affected by disasters; more than 950,000 people have taken their lives unwillingly and damages have reached nearly 1,193 billion US dollars. Developing countries will suffer the most from climate change, since they are disproportionally affected and have intrinsic vulnerabilities to hazards and so far have struggled in increasing the capacity for risk reduction measures (Wahlström, 2009). Nevertheless, by contrast, even in the largest and wealthiest countries, which have diversified economies and risk transfer mechanisms, the loss has topped an amount of billions of US dollars, as was the case with Hurricane Katrina in USA in 2005. It has been confirmed with facts over the last two decades (1988–2007) that 76% of all disaster events were hydrological, meteorological, or climatological in nature, whether it occurred in urban or in rural areas.

The cardinal point to note here is that the development (and unfortunately the likely potential) of area policy is intimately related to the actual character of British social policy. Whilst area policy has been strongly influenced by Pigou's welfare economics, by the rise of scientific management in the delivery of social services (cf Jaques 1976; Whittington and Bellamy 1979), by the accompanying development of operational analyses and by the creation of social economics (see Pigou 1938; Sandford 1977), social policy continues to be enmeshed with the flavours of Benthamite utilitatianism and Social Darwinism (see, above all, the Beveridge Report 1942; Booth 1889; Rowntree 1922, 1946; Webb 1926). Consequently, for their entire history area policies have been coloured by the principles of a national minimum for the many and giving poorer areas a hand up, rather than a hand out. The preceived need to save money (C.S.E. State Apparatus and Expenditure Group 1979; Klein 1974) and the (supposed) ennobling effects of self help have been the twin marching orders for area policy for decades. Private industry is inadvertently called upon to plug the resulting gaps in public provision. The conjunction of a reluctant state and a meandering private sector has fashioned the decaying urban areas of today. Whilst a large degree of party politics and commitment has characterised the general debate over the removal of poverty (Holman 1973; MacGregor 1981), this has for the most part bypassed the ‘marginal’ poorer areas (cf Green forthcoming). Their inhabitants are not usually numerically significant enough to sway general, party policies (cf Boulding 1967) and the problems of most notably the inner cities has been underplayed.

Retailers' new product acceptance in base of pyramid (BoP) markets is crucial to marketers in this segment. This paper seeks to develop propositions for research on factors that affect retailers in new product introduction. The propositions also aim to make a distinction between urban and rural BoP markets.

The paper provides a broad description of India's BoP market (one of the world's largest BoP markets) to better understand context. It uses literature from developed country context to BoP markets to arrive at research propositions for further research.

The key research propositions derived relate to exogenous and endogenous factors. Exogenous factors relate to store trading area, competitive environment, shopper characteristics and product diversity. The endogenous factors include store atmosphere, assortment and shelf space allocation, price and promotion. The differences across rural and urban BoP markets are highlighted for each proposition.

Understanding differences between rural and urban BoP retailers can help make crucial new product introduction decisions. Considering endogenous and exogenous factors that influence retailer acceptance decisions will make product introduction decisions successful.

BoP literature has been replete with research on marketers and products but less on retailing. This paper addresses that gap. In addition, very few papers make the distinction between urban and rural BoP markets and mostly across countries but not within a country. This paper places the distinction within the country. Finally, explaining how various factors influencing retailing differ in urban and rural contexts and developing propositions is a major original contribution of this paper.