Sustainability for Retail is an important international overview of the role of retail in the worldwide climate crisis. Its focus is on apparel and related retail products, from supply chain to the selling floor. The retail industry is identified as the source of 10 percent of the world's carbon emissions.This book presents the notable successes that have been achieved in the private sector. Interviews with leaders ranging from multi-nationals to specialty collections, to reports on innovative technological advancements. Behind each story and report is the strong determination of an individual or the commitment of organizational management to establish and uphold practices that cut the energy use, c, support providers of raw materials with living wages and lifestyles, and mount campaigns to educate the consumer on supporting products and the overall circular economy. Resale, reuse, and remake comprise an escalating movement that didn't exist even a decade ago to extend the life cycle of products that previously had a high potential of becoming landfill. It has become big business, sanctioned with promotions across the retail board, from icons of mass merchandising to small local workshops. Sustainability for Retail offers businesses and consumers insight into beneficial decision-making for themselves and for the greater environment. The authors provide a comprehensive guide to the forces driving the retail sustainability movement.

Journey without End chronicles the years-long journey of extracontinentales-African and South Asian migrants moving through Latin America toward the United States. Based on five years of collaborative research between a journalist and an anthropologist, this book makes an engrossing, sometimes surreal, narrative-driven critique of how state-level immigration policy fails extracontinental migrants. The book begins with Kidane, an Eritrean migrant who has left his pregnant wife behind to make the four-year trip to North America; it then picks up the natural disaster-riddled voyage of Roshan and Kamala Dhakal from Nepal to Ecuador; and it continues to the trials of Cameroonian exile Jane Mtebe, who becomes trapped in a bizarre beachside resort town on the edge of the DariEn Gap-the gateway from South to Central America. Journey without End follows these migrants as their fitful voyages put them in a semi-permanent state of legal and existential liminality as mercurial policy creates profit opportunities that transform migration bottlenecks-Quito's tourist district, a Colombian beachside resort, Panama's DariEn Gap, and a Mexican border town-into spontaneous migration-oriented spaces rife with race, gender, and class exploitation. Even then, migrant solidarity allows for occasional glimpses of subaltern cosmopolitanism and the possibility of mobile futures.

Investing in Water and Growth: Recent Developments and Perspectives addresses this conundrum in a cohesive and practical way. It is a one-stop shop for understanding why the financing of water-related expenditures matters, what is at stake, and the options available to ensure water-related investment needs are properly financed in ways that generate benefits for communities and contribute to sustainable growth. The book combines the perspectives of policymakers, economists and financiers in a unique, multidimensional and multidisciplinary approach. The book is structured into four distinct parts that target a specific set of questions and content development. Each section of the book has a multidisciplinary approach that provides a robust overview of key issues. The book combines different types of knowledge - from theory to practice, providing a full view of the topics discussed.

Artificial Intelligence in Urban Planning and Design: Technologies, Implementation, and Impacts is the most comprehensive resource available on the state of Artificial Intelligence (AI) as it relates to smart city planning and urban design. The book explains nascent applications of AI technologies in urban design and city planning, providing a thorough overview of AI-based solutions. It offers a framework for discussion of theoretical foundations of AI, AI applications in the urban design, AI-based research and information systems, and AI-based generative design systems. The concept of AI generates unprecedented city planning solutions without defined rules in advance, a development raising important questions issues for urban design and city planning. This book articulates current theoretical and practical methods, offering critical views on tools and techniques and suggests future directions for the meaningful use of AI technology.

Collective Intelligence for Smart Cities begins with an overview of the fundamental issues and concepts of smart cities. Surveying the current state-of-the-art research in the field, the book delves deeply into key smart city developments such as health and well-being, transportation, safety, energy, environment and sustainability. In addition, the book focuses on the role of IoT cloud computing and big data, specifically in smart city development. Users will find a unique, overarching perspective that ties together these concepts based on collective intelligence, a concept for quantifying mass activity familiar to many social science and life science researchers. Sections explore how group decision-making emerges from the consensus of the collective, collaborative and competitive activities of many individuals, along with future perspectives.

The digital transformation of the 21st century has affected all facets of society and has been highly advantageous in many industries, including urban planning and regional development. The practices, strategies, and developments surrounding urban e-planning in particular have been constantly shifting and adapting to new innovations as they arrive. Trends and Innovations in Urban E-Planning provides an updated panorama of the main trends, challenges, and recent innovations in the field of e-planning through the critical perspectives of diverse experts. This book adds new and updated evidence on recent changes in this field and provides critical insights on these innovations. Covering topics such as citizen engagement, land property management, and spatial planning, this book is an essential resource for students and educators of higher education, researchers, urban planners, engineers, public officials, community groups, and academicians.

Mapping the Epidemic: A Systemic Geography of COVID-19 in Italy provides a theoretical-methodological framework based on space-time analysis to map and interpret the set of factors that could have contributed to the spread of COVID-19, as well as a reflexive cartographic mapping visualizing the virus's dynamics. After an introduction that constitutes the theoretical anchor of the work carried out both with respect to territorial analysis and the use of reflexive cartography, the book discusses the role played by reflexive cartography in research on the COVID-19 pandemic conducted by an Italian university working group dealing with reticularity and the territorial fragilities that have influenced the spread. The data, subjected to analysis, are translated into reflexive cartography as a tool for restitution and investigation of the territorial dynamics. Each chapter consists of detailed information in which the European context of data analysis is illustrated, to then investigate the Italian territory and focus on the case of Lombardy and, in particular, of Bergamo as the epicenter. The book addresses the theoretical and methodological approaches of mapping the epidemic in Italy and the importance of cartography in the outbreak response, as well as including data accounting for contributing factors such as atmospheric pollution and infection rate, population distribution and major mobility corridors, and measures adopted to contain the outbreak, by implementing mapping at the regional Lombard, national, and European levels. Mapping the Epidemic: A Systemic Geography of COVID-19 in Italy uses an interdisciplinary approach that highlights the key role of geography and cartography in providing usable data and conclusions on the virus outbreak and will be valuable for researchers and professionals in the fields of geography, GIS, and spatial mapping, as well as statisticians working on mapping outbreaks and epidemiological scientists needing mapping data on the virus.

Walking and cycling are becoming a fashionable lifestyle choice - both as a low-impact exercise and a healthy means of travel. There is ever-growing demand for the construction of pedestrian and cyclist paths internationally, and it's the rate of growth that highlights new challenges as well as opportunities for landscape designers. This book showcases several exciting design projects of pedestrian and cyclist paths across a range of environments, from cities to local communities, urban to larger national parks. The book includes an informative design guide and a set of criteria that should provide strong reference materials for professionals and students in related design fields.

Emerging Plant Growth Regulators in Agriculture: Roles in Stress Tolerance presents current PGR discoveries and advances for agricultural applications, providing a comprehensive reference for those seeking to apply these tools for improved plant health and crop yield. As demand for agricultural crops and improved nutritional requirement continue to escalate in response to increasing population, plant researchers have focused on identifying scientific approaches to minimize the negative impacts of climate change on agriculture crops. Among the various applied approaches, the application of plant growth regulators (PGRs) have gained significant attention for their ability to enhance stress tolerance mechanisms. This book was developed to provide foundational and emerging information to advance the discovery of novel, cost-competitive, specific and effective PGRs for applications in agriculture.

Precipitation: Earth Surface Responses and Processes provides readers with a general and indispensable overview of processing rainfall processes through radar techniques, numerical models, geostatistical tools, photogrammetric methods, plots, indexes of connectivity or rainfall simulations. The handbook follows a clear and consistent format, and is structured as follows: Introduction (State-of-the-Art); Part 1. Rainfall and climate/atmosphere; Part 2. Models and applications; Part 3. Rainfall as a key actor playing the main role affecting different ecosystems. Part 3: Rainfall affecting the earth surface from different scales and landforms; Part 4: Rainfall and stormwater quality management in urban and rural areas. Precipitation is a key factor needed for understanding landscape evolution and ecosystem services. Knowing the main precipitation composition, mechanisms and processes allows for efficient land management plans and ecosystem restoration activities. However, precipitation shows different responses under specific environments depending on the climate (from the arid to the polar areas), parent material, scale (from the raindrops to catchment scale), intensity, landscape morphologies (soil sealing, rills, gullies or rivers) or human activities (agriculture or urban areas). Precipitation: Earth Surface Responses and Processes bring this information together and provides indispensable material in a holistic manner for students, scientists and lecturers from different environmental disciplines such as climatology, meteorology, geomorphology, hydrology, soil science, geography, engineering, or ecology.

Water Productivity and Food Security: Global Trends and Regional Patterns, Volume Three reviews the need for water productivity improvements in agriculture, addressing three distinct questions pertaining to agricultural water productivity improvement in developing countries, including what are the regions where water is a limiting factor for raising agricultural outputs and water productivity improvements, what are the technological measures in irrigation that can raise agricultural water productivity and result in water saving at various scales, and what opportunities exist in the developing economies of South Asia and Africa for raising water productivity and improving water economy at basin scale. This book provides a framework to characterize river basins based on water availability, water supplies, water uses and water demands to ascertain the need and measures available for improving crop water productivity that would be effective at various scales, i.e., plant-level, plot-level, irrigation system level and basin level. This is an essential reference for anyone interested in water management and agriculture.

The Future of Agricultural Landscapes, Part III, Volume 65 in the Advances in Ecological Research serial, highlights new advances in the field, with this update including contributions from an international board of authors who cover Designing farmer-acceptable rotations that assure ecosystem service provision in the face of climate change, Building a shared vision of the future for multifunctional agricultural landscapes: Lessons from a Long Term Socio-Ecological Research site in south-western France, Vineyard landscapes and biocontrol, Pollinators, Next generation biomonitoring, Diversification of botanical resources in landscapes, Conflict resolution in agricultural landscapes, Addressing the Unanswered Questions in landscape-moderated biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, and more.

"Hubbard and Kane synthesize economics, politics, and psychology to develop a new audacious theory of why countries decline. Compulsory reading for anyone who wants to understand the major issues that America now faces" (James Robinson, coauthor of "Why Nations Fail").
From the Ming Dynasty to Ottoman Turkey to imperial Spain, the Great Powers of the world emerged as the supreme economic, political, and military forces of their time--only to collapse into rubble and memory. What is at the root of their demise, and how can the United States stop it from happening again?
A quarter century after Paul Kennedy's "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers," Glenn Hubbard and Tim Kane present a bold, sweeping account of why powerful nations and civilizations break down under the heavy burden of economic imbalance. Introducing a profound new measure of economic power, "Balance" traces the triumphs and mistakes of imperial Britain, the paradox of superstate California, the long collapse of Rome, and the limits of the Japanese model of growth. Most importantly, Hubbard and Kane compare the twenty-first-century United States to the empires of old and challenge Americans to address the real problems of our country's fiscal imbalance. If there is not a new economics and politics of balance, they portend that inevitable demise is ahead.
This is more than another analysis of our nation's economy; it is a groundbreaking look at the patterns of the past and a "thought-provoking analysis that has compelling relevance for America's future" (Nobel Peace Prize-winner Henry A. Kissinger).