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Books > Earth & environment > Regional & area planning > General
The first worldwide overview of Planning Support Systems (PSS) and their application in practice. PSS are geo-technology related instruments consisting of theories, information, methods, tools, et cetera for support of unique professional public or private planning tasks at any spatial scale. The aim is to advance progress in the development of PSS, which are far from being effectively integrated into the planning practice. The text provides an Internet-based worldwide inventory of innovative examples and successful applications of PSS in a number of different planning contexts. In-depth insights into the purposes, content, workings, and applications of a very wide diversity of PSS are given.
European Regional Growth is the result of three major influences. First, the ongoing integration of the European regional economies and the need to understand what this means for European economic and social cohesion. Second, the development of geo-economic theories. Third, the development of techniques of spatial data analysis, simulation, data visualization and spatial econometrics. The outcome is a collection of chapters that apply these methods, motivated by a variety of theoretical positions. The book provides powerful and detailed analyses of the causes of income, productivity and employment variations across Europe's regions, and insights into their future prospects.
New demands on landscapes and natural resources call for multifunctional approaches to land development. Tools are required to identify the effects of land management on landscape sustainability and to support the decision-making process on the multipurpose utilisation of landscape resources. Scientists from across Europe installed the "Landscape Tomorrow" network to be prepared for new challenges in research to sustainable land development in an international perspective. This publication analyses general principles of landscape multifunctionality, develops methods to assess the sustainability of agricultural and forestry land management and identifies strategies of sustainable land management. Moreover, it contributes to the scientific basis for future land development strategies and helps support land use decision-making on the political, planning and management level.
The 1990s have seen some remarkable changes in geographical information (GI) provision and computer technology that have impacted on many of the activities that constitute planning in all its different forms. However, relatively few texts in the field of geographical information systems (GIS) and planning have been published since Henk Scholten and John Stillwell edited Geographical Information Systems for Urban and Regional Planning in 1990. This volume seeks to redress the balance by showing how GI of various types is being used in urban, physical, environmental, socio-economic and business planning contexts at local, regional and national scales with the assistance of GIS and modelling methods, and how the uses of GI and GI technologies have evolved over the last decade. During this period, a number of meetings took place in Europe in different locations organised initially by European Geographical Information Systems (EGIS, 1990- 94) and more recently by the Joint European Conference and Exhibition (JEC) on Geographical Information (1995-97). These meetings brought together members of the GI community from across the world to discuss GI research and GIS applications. One of the Special Interest Groups associated with the JEC gatherings was that on 'Geographical Information and Planning' and several of the contributions in this book have their origins in papers presented to the group's meetings.
The technological developments as well as urban future of an information age where the development of ICT sets the pace and options is explored in this book. The text examines the current state of daily travelling, and highlights the achievable impact and acceptability of transport policy measures. Freight transport is discussed from an industry viewpoint. In addition, the text presents various innovative approaches to rearranging current freight transport networks. Methods to evaluate the societal consensus related to the spatial development - linked to transport infrastructures - are also described. Still further, the text discuses methods for assessing spatial planning policies.
The book's aim is to present recommendations for sustainable land use and management. The authors follow a hierarchical approach that is inherent in landscape structures and processes as well as in planning practice. During the last decades, landscape ecology has developed tremendously. Future research tendencies are also covered. All methodological approaches are explained with examples from different regions.
This volume is the result of an invited symposium titled "Integrated Land-Use and Environmental Models: A Survey of Current Applications and Research" that was held in October 2000 at Arizona State University. The idea for the symposium arose from a belief held by many academics that we are at the watershed of a new generation of models that are more dynamic, more pragmatic, more interdiscipli nary, and more amenable to collaborative decision making. Several academics and professionals engaged in urban research had long realized that domain-specific knowledge was inadequate for understanding and managing urban growth. While interdisciplinary approaches have become critical in most social research, one general area of knowledge that stands out as having the most wide-ranging impact on current urban modeling efforts is the field comprised of environmental sciences and ecology. The symposium offered a forum for academics and professionals engaged in urban and ecological modeling to exchange ideas and experiences, specifically in areas that overlapped urban and environmental issues. The contri butions to this volume highlight the progress made in the various efforts to build integrated urban and environmental models. More importantly, each chapter shows how ideas have diffused across disciplinary boundaries to create better policy-relevant models. In addition, this book outlines some promising areas of research that could make important contributions to the field of urban and envi ronmental modeling. Integrated thinking about urban and environmental issues has been fundamental to the concept of sustainability."
The Real and Virtual Worlds of Spatial Planning brings together contributions from leaders in landscape, transportation, and urban planning. They present case studies - from North America, Europe, Australia, Asia and Africa - that ground the exploration of ideas in the realities of sustainable urban and regional planning, landscape planning and present the prospects for using virtual worlds for modeling spatial environments and their application in planning. The first part explores the challenges for planning in the real world that are caused by the dynamics of socio-spatial systems as well as by the contradictions of their evolutionary trends related to their spatial layout. The second part presents diverse concepts to model, analyze, visualize, monitor and control socio-spatial systems by using virtual worlds
Building forth upon recent developments in democracy theory that have identified multiple forms of legitimacy, this volume observes a EU-wide shift from output legitimacy to input and throughput legitimacy. Top down policy making is increasingly meeting local resistance. As a result, the importance for policy makers of enhancing the democratic legitimacy of their policy plans has increased. In this volume, nine case studies are presented, seven case studies of protected areas in different countries (Belgium, Germany, Poland, Spain, Finland, France and the UK), and two case studies of protected species (the geese in the Netherlands, and the great Cormorant in Denmark and Italy). These case studies are followed by extensive comments. The volume opens with an introductory chapter on the problematic production of legitimacy in current European nature policy. It concludes with a chapter that situates the case studies within the wider EU environmental policy and political context.
This book integrates the theories of complex self-organizing systems with the rich body of discourse and literature developed in what might be called social theory of cities and urbanism . It uses techniques from dynamical complexity and synergetics to successfully tackle open social science questions.
During the last two decades a new growth theory has emerged - often labelled "endogenous economic growth." The contributions in the book develop these advances into a theoretical framework for endogenous regional economic growth and explain the implications for regional economic policies in the perspective of the new century. Endogenous growth models can reflect increasing returns and hence refer more adequately to empirical observations than earlier models, and the models become policy relevant, because in endogenous growth models policy matters. Such policies comprise efforts to stimulate the growth of knowledge intensity of the labour supply and knowledge production in the form of R&D.
Fuzzy logic enables people preparing environmental impact statements to quantify complex environmental, economic and social conditions. This reduces the time and cost of assessments, while producing justifiable results.
The concept for the Water Environment of Cities arose from a workshop "Green 1 Cities, Blue Waters" workshop held in 2006. The workshop assembled experts from engineering, planning, economics, law, hydrology, aquatic ecology, geom- phology, and other disciplines to present research ?ndings and identify key new ideas on the urban water environment. At a lunch discussion near the end of the workshop, several of us came to the recognition that despite having considerable expertise in a narrow discipline, none of us had a vision of the "urban water en- ronment" as a whole. We were, as in the parable, blind men at opposite ends of the elephant, knowinga great deal about the parts, but notunderstandingthe whole. We quickly recognized the need to develop a book that would integrate this knowledge to create this vision. The goal was to develop a book that could be used to teach a complete, multidisciplinary course, "The Urban Water Environment," but could also be used as a supplemental text for courses on urban ecosystems, urban design, landscapearchitecture, water policy, waterqualitymanagement andwatershed m- agement. The book is also valuable as a reference source for water professionals stepping outside their arena of disciplinary expertise. The Water Environment of Cities is the ?rst book to use a holistic, interdis- plinary approach to examine the urban water environment. We have attempted to portrayaholisticvisionbuiltaround theconcept of water as a coreelement ofcities. Water has multipleroles: municipalwatersupply, aquatichabitat, landscapeaesth- ics, and recreation. Increasingly, urban water is reused, serving multiple purposes.
Both "land-use regulation" and "territorial collective services" have traditionally been accomplished in cities through coercive efforts of public administrations. Recently, land-use regulation and collective service provision regimes have emerged within "contractual communities: " territory-based organisations (usually, but not exclusively residential) such as homeowners' associations. This book examines the problems and opportunities of contractual communities, avoiding both the alarmism and unwarranted apologies found in much of the literature on contractual communities. The central notion is that cases in which coercive action by a public agency was deemed indispensable have been unjustly overstated, while the potential benefits of voluntary self-organising processes have been seriously understated. The authors propose a revised notion of the state role that allows ample leeway for contractual communities of all forms.
Design of water control structures, reservoir management, economic evaluation of flood protection projects, land use planning and management, flood insurance assessment, and other projects rely on knowledge of magnitude and frequency of floods. Often, estimation of floods is not easy because of lack of flood records at the target sites. Regional flood frequency analysis (RFFA) alleviates this problem by utilizing flood records pooled from other watersheds, which are similar to the watershed of the target site in flood characteristics. Clustering techniques are used to identify group(s) of watersheds which have similar flood characteristics. This book is a comprehensive reference on how to use these techniques for RFFA and is the first of its kind. It provides a detailed account of several recently developed clustering techniques, including those based on fuzzy set theory and artificial neural networks. It also documents research findings on application of clustering techniques to RFFA that remain scattered in various hydrology and water resources journals. The optimal number of groups defined in an area is based on cluster validation measures and L-moment based homogeneity tests. These form the bases to check the regions for homogeneity. The subjectivity involved and the effort needed to identify homogeneous groups of watersheds with conventional approaches are greatly reduced by using efficient clustering techniques discussed in this book. Furthermore, better flood estimates with smaller confidence intervals are obtained by analysis of data from homogeneous watersheds. Consequently, the problem of over- or under-designing by using these flood estimates is reduced. This leads to optimal economic design of structures. The advantages of better regionalization of watersheds and their utility are entering into hydrologic practice. Audience
As an annual of the five leading German institutes working in the field of the analysis of spatial development and policies, this book will present discussions about the guiding principles for spatial development being a virulent new approach to the future development of Germany in spatial differentiation. The papers will discuss these guiding principles theoretically and empirically.
This book presents the fmdings of a comparative study of three European metropolitan regions: Vienna, Barcelona and Stockholm. The heart of the work consists of empirical studies carefully designed and developed in order to identify the main actors and mechanisms supporting technological innovation in each of the metropolitan regions. The authors have also highlighted the similarities and differences across regions and countries, investigating how these came to be, and discussing the possible implications. The introductory as well as the concluding Chapter was written by Manfred M. Fischer who, assisted by Attila Varga, was also responsible for Chapter 2 on the Metropolitan Region of Vienna. Javier Revilla Diez contributed Chapter 3 on the Barcelona Metropolitan Region. Folke Snickars has provided Chapter 4 which examines the Metropolitan Region of Stockholm and. All authors have reviewed and commented on the whole contents so that the volume represents a collective endeavour which has been rendered as homogeneous as possible. A particular effort has been made to ensure that the study is based on a common conceptual framework.
National and European transport models become increasingly important. The broadening of national transport policy from strategic infrastructure investments to infrastructure management strengthens the need for advanced and more policy sensitive tools of analysis. The increase of interregional and international mobility requires forecasting tools that go beyond the urban or regional level. The competition for national infrastructure investments among regions and for Trans-European investments among nations has to be resolved by decisions and decision support systems at the appropriate spatial level. Environmental impacts transcend regional and national boundaries and transport policies affecting these environmental impacts involve all spatial levels. This volume presents the state of the art and prospects of a sample of the most advanced national and European transport models within a comparative framework.
In this book, the author's strong commitment to the multi-disciplinary field of regional science emerges to provide a unifying framework between spatial modelling traditions from quantitative geography and those from spatial economics, whereby each is enhanced. Starting with a detailed discussion of each field illustrated with numerical examples, the two traditions are brought together by either making the economic models probabilistic or transforming the objectives of the geographic models to reflect both utility theory and production theory. The ideas are applied to develop urban models of activity analysis, face-to-face contacts and housing supply, as well as regional models in the areas of input-output analysis, imperfect competition and interregional migration.
1 2 Daniel Felsenstein and Boris A. Portnov 1 Department of Geography, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel 2 Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Management, University of Haifa, Israel During the Candiot War of 1645-1669, the Ottoman Sultan Ibrahim I ordered his chief admiral to attack Malta. Fearing imminent defeat by the superior Venetian forces stationed on the island, the admiral decided to trick the sultan out of the idea. As the story goes, he placed a candle on his naval map, allowing the wax to drip on the tiny island until it was completely covered. Then he exclaimed in false surprise, "Malta Yok " (There is no Malta ), and convinced the sultan to sail his fleet to the Island of Crete instead. Although Malta is not featured in this volume, most of the countries it covers are of "wax drip" size. Intuitively, it may be expected that everything in small countries is diminutive: distances, population, economies, and even regional inequalities. Thus, at a symposium on "The Challenge of Development" convened in Israel in 1957 to mark the inauguration of a new building for the Department of Economics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the eminent US economist Simon Kuznets stated that "developed small states seem to have succeeded in spreading the fruits of economic growth more widely among their populations than the larger states at comparable levels of income per capita."
This book presents an overview of inter-municipal cooperation in eight European countries. Each country study sketches its attendant forms, their institutional design, the tasks and competencies attributed to joint authorities of municipalities and the way inter-municipal cooperation operates in practice. Both performance and democratic aspects of cooperation are recurring topics.
Public Participation and Better Environmental Decisions is about a specific 'promise' that participation holds for environmental decision-making. Many of the arguments for public participation in (inter)national environmental policy documents are functional, that is to say they see public participation as a means to an end. Sound solutions to environmental problems require participation beyond experts and political elites. Neglecting information from the public leads to legitimacy questions and potential conflicts. There is a discourse in the literature and in policy practice as to whether decision-making improves in quality as additional relevant information by the public is considered. The promise that public participation holds has to be weighed against the limitations of public participation in terms of costs and interest conflicts. The question that Public Participation and Better Environmental Decisions seeks to answer for academics, planners and civil servants in all environmental relevant policy fields is: What restricts and what enables information to hold the 'promise' that public participation lead to better environmental decision-making and better outcomes?
In the course of the tremendous political and economic upheaval starting in 1989/1990 many industrial cities and regions in Central and Eastern Europe have been confronted with profound problems. This book presents eleven detailed national reports which describe the situation in such cities and regions as well as the strategies which have been employed to cope with structural change. The country reports are complemented by short case studies of selected cities and regions. An introduction gives background to such topics as structural change and the ramifications of EU enlargement. Finally some conclusions are drawn and recommendations offered for future policy.
Nearly thirty years after creation of the most advanced and expensive hazardous waste cleanup infrastructure in the world, this book provides a much-needed lens through which the Superfund program should be assessed and reshaped. Focusing on the lessons of adaptive management, it explores new concepts and tools for the cleanup and reuse of contaminated sites, and for dealing with the uncertainty inherent in long-term site stewardship.
This, the second edition of the hugely practical reference and handbook describes kinematic, static and dynamic Global Positioning System theory and applications. It is primarily based upon source-code descriptions of the KSGSoft program developed by the author and his colleagues and used in the AGMASCO project of the EU. This is the first book to report the unified GPS data processing method and algorithm that uses equations for selectively eliminated equivalent observations. |
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