Dislocation, Disconnection, Dilemma: Exploring Urban | Rural Disparity in Contemporary Mongolia
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Informal settlements present thorny challenges for environmental designers, politicians, civil servants and, most directly, residents. Mongolia’s ger (felt-lined tent/yurt) districts, unique manifestations of slums, provided the focus for the present ethnographic and environmental design research. Problems of the ger districts, and difficulties of finding innovative and potent vehicles with which to improve quality of life therein, are many and complex. Mongolia’s informal settlements are most notably found in Ulaan Baatar (UB), the capital city of over one million inhabitants. Upwards of sixty percent of UB’s population live in the sub-standard conditions of ger districts. The current research analyzed context and conditions in Mongolia, including comparative ethnographic study of residents of city (urbandwellers) and country (pastoral nomads). Mongolia’s long history includes rich traditions of nomadic life – an existence which sees herdsmen move regularly with their animals and which deeply respects the environment, celebrates spirituality and demonstrates sustainability. Upon migration to the city many values, behaviors and conditions shift dramatically. In sharp contrast to the environmentally-oriented and ecologically-respectful existence of the herdsmen, ger district living highlights serious concerns including hygiene, health, security, comfort and happiness. The researcher, through immersion within the various sub-cultures, developed thick descriptions and colorful narratives aimed at characterizing lifestyles, values, obstacles and opportunities. For over a decade the author has ethnographically researched and extensively delineated the lives of both urban ger district dwellers and rural nomadic herdsmen. This work has been a fundamental aspect of, and necessary complement to, ongoing design and planning work aimed at improving quality of life in Mongolia including and urgently within the perplexing urban ethos. The present paper presents compelling narratives documenting life in city and country, considers the immense challenges of the status quo and explores ideas, innovations and opportunities for moving in new and promising directions.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.010 | 0.006 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".