"Best of the Web - Geography" is the first title in a new series of evaluative guides, which guide the reader through the best web sites within a subject area. The book is compiled with the reader in mind and has a very clear, consistent and systematic layout.

A large number of sites have been evaluated. The book contains information on geographical sites around the world. Only sites, which are considered to be informative, reliable and stable have been included. All the sites listed will provide valuable information within this subject area.

The information given for each site includes: title, URL, owner/maintainer, server location, and a full description.

This is an excellent guide, which will be invaluable to anyone seeking geographical information on the Web. It is an essential reference source for librarians and information officers, students and library users in the academic, public and commercial sectors.

Today cities of the Arab world are subject to many of the same problems as other world cities, yet too often they are ignored in studies of urbanisation.

This collection reveals the contrasts and similarities between older, traditional Arab cities and the newer oil-stimulated cities of the Gulf in their search for development and a place in the world order. The eight cities which form the core of the book a " Rabat, Amman, Beirut, Kuwait, Manama, Doha, Abu Dhabi and Riyadh a " provide a unique insight into todaya (TM)s Middle Eastern city.

Winner of The International Planning History Society (IPHS) Book Prize.

Geotechnical and Geophysical Site Characterization collects the papers presented at the Third International Conference on Site Characterization (ISCa (TM)3) that took place in Taipei from April 1-4, 2008. The subjects covered include new developments in mechanical in-situ testing and interpretation techniques, statistical analysis of test data, geo-environmental site characterization, soil sampling methods, multi-dimensional geophysical imaging techniques, residual/unsaturated soil characterization, and case histories that involve major construction projects or disaster investigations. Over 200 papers, twelve keynote lectures and the third Mitchell lecture were presented at the conference. Geotechnical and Geophysical Site Characterization provides a wealth of valuable information for practicing engineers as well as researchers worldwide.

Regional Planning provides a comprehensive introduction to the concepts and theory of regional planning in the UK. Drawing on examples from throughout the UK, it provides students and practitioners with a descriptive and analytical foundation for understanding this rapidly changing area of planning. The book includes four main sections covering the: context and history of regional planning, theoretical approaches, evolving practice, and future prospects. New questions and methods of theorizing are explored, and new connections made with contemporary debates in geography, political science and planning theory. The elements of critical analysis allow both practitioners and more advanced students to reflect upon their activities in a contemporary context. Regional Planning is the essential, up-to-date text for students interested in all aspects of this increasingly influential subject.

Ireland offers a concise synthesis of globalization's dramatic impact on Ireland. In the past fifteen years, Ireland has transformed from a sleepy and depressed European backwater to the emerald tiger, a country with a booming economy based on knowledge and high tech industries. Not long ago it was one of the poorest and most traditional countries in Europe, yet now it is one of the wealthiest and most cosmopolitan. Using a number of case studies of Ireland's transition, Tom Inglis explains what this means for traditional Irish culture and society and offers an incisive social portrait of globalizing Ireland. Books in Globalzing Regions series look at how nations and regions across the world are navigating the tumultuous currents of globalization. Concise, descriptive, interdisciplinary, and theoretically informed, they serve as ideal introductions to the peoples and places of our increasingly globalized world.

The perceptibly changing climate has resulted in more precipitation in a small number of short periods. As most urban water management systems were developed at a time when precipitation was distributed more evenly throughout the year, they cannot deal properly with the new circumstances, and high groundwater levels and excess water are the result. In practice, many urban dwellers are consequently confronted with flooded cellars and inaccessible urban infrastructure. To solve these phenomena in the future, a major part of the urban water programmes for the next few decades consists of restructuring and transformation of the existing urban areas, in which water management is considered as an integral part of urban renewal activities and in which its capacity is compliant with the urban area scale. With an integral approach, this book treats the relation of urbanism and water management in Dutch water cities. It also treats the financial aspects of the adjustment of existing water systems to meet the changes in the urban hydrological cycle. It presents the typology of typical current and future Dutch water cities, their urban function and the ecological and technical aspects. Separate chapters deal with the transformation of the historical city, the consolidation of the inter-war city and the restructuring of the post-war city to meet future conditions. The final chapter presents a comparison of the Dutch situation with South Korean (Seoul), Japanese (Tokyo) and German (Ruhr area) urban areas.

Economic geography has long been a key branch of human geography as a whole, but in recent years the subject has undergone considerable theoretical, empirical and public growth. It has become a highly vibrant sphere of academic enquiry amongst the social sciences, and an increasingly prominent arena of political discourse and policy action. Reflecting this, Economic Geography: Critical Concepts in the Social Sciences is a comprehensive five-volume set covering the following key areas: the evolving project of economic geography realms of wealth creation in a globalizing economy changing worlds of work and welfare the cultural economy regulating the economic landscape. With a new introduction by the editors, this fascinating collection captures the essential elements involved in the intellectual development of the field, making it an indispensable resource for both student and scholar alike.

As demonstrated in New Orleans, the vast human and financial costs of natural and human-induced disasters are often needlessly high as a result of poor planning and response stemming from inadequate disaster policy. This new handbook, from two top global authorities in the field, shows how to construct a coherent, relevant and effective policy framework. It is a vital read for all disaster policy makers, planners, managers and governments. From the Asian tsunami to hurricanes Katrina and Rita to the recent earthquake in Pakistan, disasters both natural and human-induced are leading to spiralling costs in terms of human lives, the destruction of homes, businesses, public buildings and infrastructure and the resulting financial and human crises that inevitably follow in the wake of such catastrophes. Yet the failures in planning for, and responding to, such disasters can often be traced to poor disaster policies that are unsuited to the emerging scales of the problems they confront and the lack of institutional capacity to implement plans and manage disasters when they happen.This handbook, written by two top authorities on disaster policy and management, seeks to overcome this mismatch and to guide the examination and development of a policy and institutional framework and associated strategies. In particular, for the first time it brings together into a coherent framework the insights of public policy, institutional design and emergency and disaster management, stressing the cognate nature of policy and institutional challenges between disasters and sustainability. This is indispensable reading for all disaster planners, policy makers and managers across the world seeking to improve the quality, robustness and capacity of their disaster management.

Overland flow modelling has been an active field of research for some years, but developments in numerical methods and computational resources have recently accelerated progress, producing models for different geometries and types of flows, such as simulations of canal and river networks. Flow in canals has traditionally been described using one-dimensional, depth-averaged, shallow water models; but a variety of simulation techniques now facilitate the management of hydrodynamic systems, providing models which incorporate complex geometry and diverse flows. Much effort has gone into elaborating canal operational rules based on decision support systems, with the dual aim of assuring water delivery and meeting flow control constraints. In natural water courses, water management problems are associated with the need to meet quality standards. Numerical modelling of advection-diffusion can be used to manage problems related to the movement of solutes in rivers and aquifers. The analysis of solute transport is used to safeguard the quality of surface and ground water and to help prevent eutrophication. Solute flow through the soil can be dynamically linked to overland flow for hydrological and agricultural applications. Advances in modelling also cast new light on sediment transport in rivers, exploring the complex dynamics of river bed erosion and deposition and assist in thee analysis of river-reservoir systems. All these issues are discussed in Numerical Modelling of Hydrodynamics for Water Resources, which will be useful to civil engineers, applied mathematicians, hydrologists, and physicists.

Introduction to Geography is written to clearly and concisely convey the nature of the field of geography, its intellectual challenges, and the logical interconnections of its parts. Even if students take no further work in geography, they will have come into contact with the richness and breadth of Geography and have new insights and understandings for their present and future roles as informed adults. This new edition provides students content and scope of the subfields of geography, emphasizes its unifying themes, and provides the foundation for further work in their areas of interest.

Georges Benko "Societies are much messier than our theories of them" Michael Mann The Sources of Social Power 1 Towards a unified social theory Why are there communication problems between the different disciplines of the social sciences? And why should there be so much misunderstanding? Most probably because the encounter of several disciplines is in fact the encounter of several different histories, and therefore of several different cultures, each interpreting the other according to the code dictated by its own culture. Inevitably geographers view other disciplines through their own cultural filter, and even a benevolent view remains 'ethnocentric'. It was in order to avoid such ethnocentricity that Femand Braudel called for more unity among the social sciences in 1958 : "l wish the social sciences . . . would stop discussing their respective differences so much . . . and instead look for common ground . . . on which to reach their first agreement. Personally I would call these ways : quantification, spatial awareness and 'longue duree'". In its place at the center of the social sciences, geography reduces all social reality to its spatial dimensions. Unfortunately, as a discipline, it considers itself all too often to be in a world of its own. There is a need in France for a figure like Vidal de la Blanche who could refocus attention away from issues of time and space, towards space and social reality. Geographic research will only take a step forward once it learns to address the problems facing all the sciences.

Most geographical studies of the 'Third World' - or the Global South - focus their attention on the challenge of promoting development and explaining why the Third World is also the Poor World. This text extracts the Global South from the shadow of development and examines people's lives and livelihoods in their own terms. It takes as its point of departure the need to reveal the myriad ways that people 'get by' in the day-to-day sense of the term and how modernization is re-working the human landscape.

An Everyday Geography of the Global South focuses on local spaces, individual experiences, household strategies and the power and role of agency over structure in terms of explanation. Taking a broad perspective of livelihoods, it draws on more than 90 case studies from 36 countries across Asia, Africa and Latin America to examine how people are engaging and living with modernity. This extends from changes in the ways that households operate, to how and why people take on new work and acquire new skills, how migration and mobility are become increasingly common features of existence, and how aspirations and expectations are being reworked under the influence of modernisation.

To date, there is no book which takes such an approach to building an understanding of the Global South. In focusing on the Global South but not on development, in beginning with the personal and the everyday, in using the experience of the non-Western world to illuminate and inform mainstream debates in geography, and in beginning from the lived experiences of 'ordinary' people, this book will provide an alternative and different insight into a range of geographical debates. For students, theusefulness of the book will lie in its clarity of argument, its use of detailed case studies to inform and substantiate the general argument and in providing a geography text which engages with the majority world that is the Global South.

Most geographical studies of the 'Third World' - or the Global South - focus their attention on the challenge of promoting development and explaining why the Third World is also the Poor World. This text extracts the Global South from the shadow of development and examines people's lives and livelihoods in their own terms. It takes as its point of departure the need to reveal the myriad ways that people 'get by' in the day-to-day sense of the term and how modernization is re-working the human landscape.

An Everyday Geography of the Global South focuses on local spaces, individual experiences, household strategies and the power and role of agency over structure in terms of explanation. Taking a broad perspective of livelihoods, it draws on more than 90 case studies from 36 countries across Asia, Africa and Latin America to examine how people are engaging and living with modernity. This extends from changes in the ways that households operate, to how and why people take on new work and acquire new skills, how migration and mobility are become increasingly common features of existence, and how aspirations and expectations are being reworked under the influence of modernisation.

To date, there is no book which takes such an approach to building an understanding of the Global South. In focusing on the Global South but not on development, in beginning with the personal and the everyday, in using the experience of the non-Western world to illuminate and inform mainstream debates in geography, and in beginning from the lived experiences of 'ordinary' people, this book will provide an alternative and different insight into a range of geographical debates. For students, theusefulness of the book will lie in its clarity of argument, its use of detailed case studies to inform and substantiate the general argument and in providing a geography text which engages with the majority world that is the Global South.

This book contains a collection of cutting-edge chapters that explore various connections between urban living, sexuality and sexual desire around the world. The key themes featured address a number of topical issues including: the controversies and debates raging around the evolution, defining patterns and appropriate regulation of commercial sex zones and markets in the urban landscape how gay public spaces, districts and 'gay villages' emerged and developed in various towns and cities around the world how changing attitudes to, and the usage of urban sexual spaces, as depicted in iconic television series such as Sex and the City and Queer as Folk, reflect the reality of working women's or gay men's changing life experiences. With detailed case studies, and a strong interdisciplinary appeal, this book will be a valuable reference for postgraduates and advanced students in the fields of cultural studies as well as human, urban and social geography. This book was previously published as a special issue of the journal Urban Studies.

This book is divided into three parts. The first deals with typical settelements in each of the seven continents, the early stages of settlements, land surveys and general phases of town evolution. The second part discusses changes in site and patter, from Neolithic to modern times. The third part specializes in topographic and functional controls in modern towns. Chapters on Planning, Regional Surveys and Classification of towns close the book. There are about 300 specially drawn plans and diagrams of towns - which should appeal to the sociologist and town planner as well as to every serious student of geography.

This book was first published in 1949.

During the past three decades, urban groundwater has emerged as one of the world's most pressing issues. Explosive population growth, most prevalent in cities, has placed an inordinate demand on groundwater supply, prompting concerns for its long-term sustainability at a time when the quality of available groundwater resources is being increasingly degraded by anthropogenic activity. Cities less reliant on groundwater for potable supply are equally obliged to manage subsurface water with cautious respect since rising groundwater levels can generate a myriad of problems such as unstable land slopes, flooded basements, tunnels and electrical utilities, and the release of polluted water to urban wetlands, springs and streams.Challenges in Urban Groundwater is premised on a growing recognition that most urban groundwater problems are not uniquely associated with any particular region or hydrogeological environment, and much can be learned by understanding the successes and failures of others. It showcases the best urban groundwater papers presented at the International Geological Congress held in Florence, Italy in 2004, and is supplemented by contributions solicited from other world experts active in urban groundwater research. Topics covered range from the urban water balance and rising groundwater levels to groundwater contamination and the role of aquifer modelling.

Since the 1960s, public attention has been drawn increasingly towards the thematic link between historic preservation and urban planning. Nowadays, the organized historic preservation movement in the USA is more than a mere "yearning for history": it represents an active and integral part of urban planning in US cities. In order to approach these planning, economic, and social issues in the field of historic preservation, this book analyzes a variety of interdisciplinary methods, focusing on four selected historic districts within the central business districts of Philadelphia and Boston (in the north) and Charleston and Savannah (in the south).

The turn of the century has seen a proliferation of concepts and models in relation to the development of new residential environments in the UK. "Housing Transformations "describes these concepts and models and accounts for their emergence at the present time, at the conjuncture of a particular set of cultural, social, economic and political circumstances. Franklin explains the variety and nature of the built form, and tries to achieve a greater insight into how and why we build places and dwell in spaces that are at once contradictory, confining, liberating and illuminating. The shaping and re-shaping of the built environment derives from the intersection of locality and timing: the structural context, the mediating role of institutions and organizations, and the actions and proclivities of individuals. The author includes numerous case studies to show the background to provide specific examples of contemporary conditions. Housing Transformations will appeal to all those in the built environmentdisciplines, as well as to those in other social science fields with an interest in housing and residential environments.

This book explores how migrant construction workers in Southern Europe faced unemployment and precarious work conditions during and after the Great Recession. By drawing on rich qualitative data, it investigates the experiences of Albanian men within and beyond the workplace, and sheds light on the capacity of migrant builders to deal with economic hardships and the role of their families and masculine identities in shaping their coping practices. This book suggests a new framework for the study of coping practices among migrant (construction) workers, and adds to the study of integration processes in Southern European countries by comparing the narratives of settled migrants in Italy and Greece. This book also looks at the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on migrant builders' lives in Southern Europe. By adopting an interdisciplinary approach, this book is of interest both to students and researchers in the field of migration studies and those working in the fields of sociology, geography, anthropology, political science and economics.

Aviation noise remains the primary hindrance to expansion of airport and airspace capacity in the United States. This book describes the development and practice of U.S. aircraft noise regulation, as well as the practical consequences of regulatory policy. Starting in the pre-jet transport era, the book traces the development of the modern framework for characterizing, standardizing, predicting, disclosing, and mitigating aircraft noise and its effects on airport-vicinity communities. Among other matters, the book treats noise-related consequences of the 1978 deregulation of the airline industry; prediction and mitigation of community reaction to airport noise; land use compatibility planning; recent research and industry trends; and some suggestions for potential improvements to current policy. Initial chapters describe the assumptions underlying aircraft noise regulation, and lay out the chronology of U.S. aircraft noise regulatory practice. Later chapters provide overviews of population-level effects of aviation noise, including health effects, speech and sleep interference, and annoyance. Readers will learn why predictions of the prevalence of aircraft noise-induced annoyance have systematically underestimated adverse community response to aircraft noise, and how such underestimation has complicated approval and funding of airport and airspace improvement projects. They will also learn why attempts at noise-compatible land use planning are seldom fully successful.

This book contains the most recent progress in data assimilation in meteorology, oceanography and hydrology including land surface. It spans both theoretical and applicative aspects with various methodologies such as variational, Kalman filter, ensemble, Monte Carlo and artificial intelligence methods. Besides data assimilation, other important topics are also covered including targeting observation, sensitivity analysis, and parameter estimation. The book will be useful to individual researchers as well as graduate students for a reference in the field of data assimilation.

Collaborative working and partnering between the public and private sectors has been fairly standard practice in some form or other for over 100 years, but it is only in recent years that it has become more prevalent. In the UK, it is little more than 10 years since the most widely known Public Private Partnership, the Private Finance Initiative, was launched and yet it has already been described by some as 'the new economic paradigm'. PFI has now become the preferred method of procurement for many UK Government agencies such as the NHS building programme, whereas other bodies oppose the introduction of the private sector into the provision of traditional public sector services. Although the use of PPPs is the most controversial procurement strategy now used by the UK government, it currently accounts for approximately 11 per cent of government expenditure and there is no doubt that it is here to stay.