Researchers are retiring conventional paper-and-pencil research methods and embracing an expanded array of online methodological options. In urban and planning studies, new digital tools, data accessibility, and online applications are changing how urban planning research is conducted. Online Research Methods in Urban and Planning Studies: Design and Outcomes provides an overview of online research methods in urban and planning studies, exploring and discussing new digital tools and Web-based research methods, as well as the scholarly, legal, and ethical challenges associated with their use. Chapters from academics and professionals give an informed overview of groundbreaking online resources, review their strengths and shortcomings, and provide practical guidance on how to apply these new methods, online tools, and evolving data acquisition techniques.

The unprecedented housing and homelessness crisis in Ireland is having profound impacts on Generation Rent, the wellbeing of children, worsening wider inequality and threatening the economy. Hearne contextualises the Irish housing crisis within the broader global housing situation by examining the origins of the crisis in terms of austerity, marketisation and the new era of financialisation, where global investors are making housing unaffordable and turning it into an asset for the wealthy. He brings to the fore the perspectives of those most affected, new housing activists and protesters whilst providing innovative global solutions for a new vision for affordable, sustainable homes for all.

This book presents current developments in smart city research and application regarding the management of manufacturing systems, Industry 4.0, transportation, and business management. It suggests approaches to incorporating smart city innovations into manufacturing systems, with an eye towards competitiveness in a global environment. The same pro-innovative approach is then applied to business and cooperation management. The authors also present smart city transportation solutions including vehicle data processing/reporting system, mobile application for fleet managers, bus drivers, bus passengers and special applications for smart city buses like passenger counting system, IP cameras, GPS system etc. The goal of the book is to establish channels of communication and disseminate knowledge among researchers and professionals working on smart city research and application. Features contributions on a variety of topics related to smart cities from global researchers and professionals in a wide range of sectors; Presents topics relating to smart cities such as manufacturing, business, and transportation; Includes expanded selected papers from EAI International Conference on Management of Manufacturing Systems (MMS 2016), EAI Industry of Things and Future Technologies Conference - Mobility IoT 2016 and International Conference on Smart Electric Vehicles and Vehicular Ad-hoc NETworks (SEVNET).

"The first edition of Municipal finance and accounting was published in 2007, and was the first comprehensive text on the principles and best practice of municipal finance and accounting to appear since Dr Jack Cowden's 1968 treatment of more or less the same subject matter. The first edition was revised in 2011, the main changes being the inclusion of considerable additional material on the legislative framework governing municipalities, an extensive revision of the chapter on municipal budgets in order to incorporate the approaches introduced by the 2009 regulations on budgets and reporting requirements, and various amendments to chapters 3 and 4 to reflect the advent of further GRAP standards and changes in important local government statutes. The example of the annual financial statements contained in Chapter 5 was entirely redone to accord with the requirements of GRAP, and the chapter itself amended to include summaries of most of the prescribed GRAP standards. The many changes in municipal finance that occurred since 2011 have now necessitated a second revision. All new enacted legislation and amendments to existing legislation have been included, as well as important impending legislation and new regulations, particularly those issued in terms of the Municipal Systems Act and Municipal Finance Management Act. Important MFMA circulars are also covered, as are other significant guidelines issued by the National Treasury. Various other matters of importance in relation to the financial administration and governance of municipalities are also dealt with, including municipal public accounts committees (MPACs), new approaches to grants, the supply chain management reporting framework and several significant court cases. An updated version of the annual financial statements has also been prepared. As with the original edition, this revised version deals holistically with all the key features of municipal finance and accountancy, with emphasis on the principles of sound financial governance in municipalities. It is designed for use in tertiary education and also for regular consultation by accounting officers, financial and non-financial officials and councillors in the performance of their duties. Municipal finance and accounting should be useful to anyone involved with, or interested in, the financial administration and governance of municipalities."

Assisted by globalization and the rapid application of advanced technologies, the transformative power of urbanization is being felt around the world. The scale and the speed of existing and projected urbanization poses several challenges to researchers in multiple disciplines, such as computer science, engineering, and the social sciences. Optimizing Regional Development Through Transformative Urbanization provides emerging research exploring the theoretical and practical aspects of applications within urban growth interventions. It also explores the strategies for new urban development tools such as the rise of new platforms for digital activities, concepts of sharing economy, collaborative economy, crowdsourcing, and crowdfunding. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics such as cryptocurrencies, public-private partnership, and urban governance, this book is a vital reference for city development planners, decision makers, policymakers, academicians, researchers, and professionals seeking current research on the delivery of transformative urbanization changes.

Nowhere on Earth is the challenge for ecological understanding greater, and yet more urgent, than in those parts of the globe where human activity is most intense - cities. People need to understand how cities work as ecological systems so they can take control of the vital links between human actions and environmental quality, and work for an ecologically and economically sustainable future. An ecosystem approach integrates biological, physical and social factors and embraces historical and geographical dimensions, providing our best hope for coping with the complexity of cities. This book is the first of its kind to bring together leaders in the biological, physical and social dimensions of urban ecosystem research with leading education researchers, administrators and practitioners, to show how an understanding of urban ecosystems is vital for urban dwellers to grasp the fundamentals of ecological and environmental science, and to understand their own environment.

This is a history of the cultural biases undergirding housing segregation. This history of the idea of 'neighborhood' in a major American city examines the transition of Atlanta, Georgia, from a place little concerned with residential segregation, tasteful surroundings, and property control to one marked by extreme concentrations of poverty and racial and class exclusion. Using Atlanta as a lens to view the wider nation, LeeAnn Lands shows how assumptions about race and class have coalesced with attitudes toward residential landscape aesthetics and home ownership to shape public policies that promote and protect white privilege. Lands studies the diffusion of property ideologies on two separate but related levels: within academic, professional, and bureaucratic circles and within circles comprising civic elites and rank-and-file residents. By the 1920s, following the establishment of park neighborhoods such as Druid Hills and Ansley Park, white home owners approached housing and neighborhoods with a particular collection of desires and sensibilities: architectural and landscape continuity, a narrow range of housing values, orderliness, and separation from undesirable land uses - and undesirable people. By the 1950s, these desires and sensibilities had been codified in federal, state, and local standards, practices, and laws. Today, Lands argues, far more is at stake than issues of access to particular neighborhoods, because housing location is tied to the allocation of a broad range of resources, including school funding, infrastructure, and law enforcement. Long after racial segregation has been outlawed, white privilege remains embedded in our culture of home ownership.

Professionals in the construction industry must respond quickly to meet the increasing pressures of heightened urban migration, and provide sustainable alternatives to resource scarcity in established cities - Smart Cities offers solutions to the demands of rising urban populations. The smartness of a city stems from the relationship between construction stakeholders and the citizens, with the shared goal to improve all standards and support social, physical, and economic growth. Surplus and reusable are key terminologies when striving towards sustainable development. Smart Cities aims to provide necessary information on the adoption of smart cities concepts towards achieving sustainable development, with a view to ensuring socially cohesive and resilient urban districts for both the current and future generations.

Can transportation problems be fixed by the right neighborhood design? The tremendous popularity of the 'new urbanism' and 'livable communities' initiatives suggests that many persons think so. As a systematic assessment of attempts to solve transportation problems through urban design, this book asks and answers three questions: Can such efforts work? Will they be put into practice? Are they a good idea?

The book embarks on the tasks to systematically analyze the macro background of the spatial patterns of China's urban development, the theoretical foundations and framework, and its changing trajectory. From a quantitative perspective, we attempt to evaluate the rationale behind the spatial patterns of China's urban development and systematically simulate the various scenarios. From the simulation results, we propose the optimizing goals, priorities, models, and strategies for the spatial patterns of China's urban development. The work in this book attempts to provide constructive suggestions and potential strategies to support the effort to optimize the spatial patterns of China's urban development. It would be a valuable reference for planning departments, development and reform committees, and science and technology administrative departments at various governmental levels. It could also be a valuable addition to graduate students of urban planning, urban development, urban geography and relevant disciplines.

From Yellowstone to the Great Smoky Mountains, America's national parks are sprawling tracts of serenity, most of them carved out of public land for recreation and preservation around the turn of the last century. America has changed dramatically since then, and so has its conceptions of what parkland ought to be.

In this book, one of our premier environmental historians looks at the new phenomenon of urban parks, focusing on San Francisco's Golden Gate National Recreation Area as a prototype for the twenty-first century. Cobbled together from public and private lands in a politically charged arena, the GGNRA represents a new direction for parks as it highlights the long-standing tension within the National Park Service between preservation and recreation.

Long a center of conservation, the Bay Area was well positioned for such an innovative concept. Writing with insight and wit, Rothman reveals the many complex challenges that local leaders, politicians, and the NPS faced as they attempted to administer sites in this area. He tells how Representative Phillip Burton guided a comprehensive bill through Congress to establish the park and how he and others expanded the acreage of the GGNRA, redefined its mission to the public, forged an identity for interconnected parks, and struggled against formidable odds to obtain the San Francisco Presidio and convert it into a national park.

Engagingly written, "The New Urban Park" offers a balanced examination of grassroots politics and its effect on municipal, state, and federal policy. While most national parks dominate the economies of their regions, GGNRA was from the start tied to the multifaceted needs of its public and political constituents-including neighborhood, ethnic, and labor interests as well as the usual supporters from the conservation movement.

As a national recreation area, GGNRA helped redefine that category in the public mind. By the dawn of the new century, it had already become one of the premier national park areas in terms of visitation. Now as public lands become increasingly scarce, GGNRA may well represent the future of national parks in America. Rothman shows that this model works, and his book will be an invaluable resource for planning tomorrow's parks.

Implementing Automated Road Transport Systems in Urban Settings provides valuable, objective, often difficult-to-obtain data, gleaned from the largest demonstration project on automated road transport systems (ARTS) in the world to date. The book features chapters authored by those deeply involved in CityMobil2-providing an easily accessible, cross-referenced resource for data and information on each aspect of the project. Chapters cover vehicle technical specifications, infrastructure analysis, operating systems, future scenario analysis, automated and conventional vehicle comparisons, and legal frameworks for system implementation. The book examines project field tests, showing the technology's adaptability and different requirements based on geographic location. Government officials, researchers, and transportation practitioners require real-world data and analysis in their efforts to bring automated and intelligent transport systems into the mainstream. The CityMobil2 demonstration transported more than 60,000 passengers in seven European cities, providing immense amounts of feedback and data to be analyzed. The book provides international expert opinion on this real-world data, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of the project, as well as providing comparisons to both past and planned ARTS demonstration initiatives. The technical specifications developed from the project will help cities considering similar ARTS initiatives.

Sustainable development helps undo the havoc that has been created by human beings in the last few years in the name of development and growth. It helps to promote a more social, environmental, and economical way of living. There are many ways in which we all can practice sustainable development in our daily lives and further study is required. Multidisciplinary Approaches to Sustainable Human Development focuses on all agendas of sustainable development goals and offers approaches to develop a transdisciplinary perspective that encompasses the natural, social, and human sciences in the search for a sustainable society. Covering topics such as green economy, social innovation, and climate change, this premier reference work is ideal for environmentalists, government officials, policymakers, researchers, scholars, academicians, practitioners, instructors, and students.

The worldwide consumption of resources is causing environmental damage at a rate that cannot be sustained. Apart from the resulting environmental and health problems, this trend could threaten economic growth due to rapidly decreasing natural resources and costly solutions. The public sector has a responsibility to stimulate the marketplace in favor of the provision of more resource-efficient and less polluting goods, services, and works in order to support environmental and wider sustainable development objectives. Developing Eco-Cities Through Policy, Planning, and Innovation: Can It Really Work? examines the economic, political, social, and environmental objectives essential to the planning and support of future communities. Highlighting a range of topics such as environmental sustainability, waste management, and green cities, this publication is an ideal reference source for environmental engineers, environmentalists, city development planners, urban planners, technology developers, policymakers, industrialists, academicians, and researchers interested in solving environmental issues.

What's the difference between a group of houses and a real community? Author Lola L. Lucas explores this question in "At Home in the Park: Loving a Neighborhood Back to Life."

Lucas chronicles the rebirth of Enos Park, a section of Springfield, Illinois, just north of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum. Like many cities, the area went through a period of urban decay before rebounding. The Enos Park Neighborhood Improvement Association (EPNIA) was largely responsible for this change.

Lucas's columns about Enos Park have appeared in the "EPNIA Banner" since 1992. With wisdom and wry humor, she shows why it's worth the effort to reweave a neighborhood's social fabric in order for residents to once again enjoy their homes. Lucas writes about community policing, ice cream socials, neighborhood patrols, and evening strolls on tree-lined sidewalks. Through the efforts of the EPNIA, the citizens of Enos Park reclaimed their streets and loved their neighborhood back to life.

This contributed volume collects cutting-edge research in Geographic Information Science & Technologies, Location Modeling, and Spatial Analysis of Urban and Regional Systems. The contributions emphasize methodological innovations or substantive breakthroughs on many facets of the socio-economic and environmental reality of urban and regional contexts.

This book presents multi-sector practical cases based on the author's own research. It also includes the best practice, which could serve as a benchmark for the creation of smart cities. The global urbanisation index, i.e., the ratio of city dwellers to the total population, has been steadily increasing in recent years. It is highest in the Americas, followed by Europe, Asia and Africa. The city of the future will combine the intelligent use of IT systems with the potential of institutions, companies and committed, creative inhabitants. The administrative boundaries of today's cities put certain constraints on their further growth, but in the future these boundaries will no longer be as relevant. Cities in Europe face the challenge of reconciling sustainable urban development and competitiveness - a challenge that will likely influence issues of urban quality such as the economy, culture, social and environmental conditions, changing a given city's profile as well as urban quality in terms of its composition and characteristics.

As the population of the greater Las Vegas area grows and the climate warms, the threat of a water shortage looms over southern Nevada. But as Christian S. Harrison demonstrates in All the Water the Law Allows, the threat of shortage arises not from the local environment but from the American legal system, specifically the Law of the River that governs water allocation from the Colorado River. In this political and legal history of the Las Vegas water supply, Harrison focuses on the creation and actions of the Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA) to tell a story with profound implications and important lessons for water politics and natural resource policy in the twenty-first century. In the state with the smallest allocation of the Colorado's water supply, Las Vegas faces the twin challenges of aridity and federal law to obtain water for its ever-expanding population. All the Water the Law Allows describes how the impending threat of shortage in the 1980s compelled the five metropolitan water agencies of greater Las Vegas to unify into a single entity. Harrison relates the circumstances of the SNWA's evolution and reveals how the unification of local, county, and state interests allowed the compact to address regional water policy with greater force and focus than any of its peers in the Colorado River Basin. Most notably, the SNWA has mapped conservation plans that have drastically reduced local water consumption; and, in the interstate realm, it has been at the center of groundbreaking, water-sharing agreements. Yet these achievements do not challenge the fundamental primacy of the Law of the River. If current trends continue and the Basin States are compelled to reassess the river's distribution, the SNWA will be a force and a model for the Basin as a whole.

Sustainable Communities Design Handbook: Green Engineering, Architecture, and Technology, Second Edition, brings together the major players responsible for sustainable development at both community and metropolitan scales. The book aims to explain and demonstrate the practice, planning, design, building and managing of the engineering, architectural and economic development of cities and communities to meet sustainable development objectives. Offering a holistic approach to creating sustainable communities, the book includes a 40 percent increase in new methods and technology over the last edition, and 50 percent more case studies from around the world to illustrate how common sustainability problems are solved. As the concept and practices of a sustainable built environment have evolved over the years, it is increasingly recognized that the scope should be expanded beyond individual buildings to the community scale. Written by an international team of engineers, architects, and environmental experts this second edition includes new HVAC technologies for heating and cooling, energy effect technologies for lighting, and new construction materials which improve heating and cooling efficiencies. This new edition will also include critical updates on international codes: LEED, BREEAM, and Green Globes.

GNSS can detect the seismic atmospheric-ionospheric variations, which can be used to investigate the seismo-atmospheric disturbance characteristics and provide insights on the earthquake. This book presents the theory, methods, results, and modeling of GNSS atmospheric seismology. Sesimo-tropospheric anomalies, Pre-/Co-/Post-seismic ionospheric disturbances, epicenter estimation, tsunami and volcano ionospheric disturbances, and volcanic plumes detection with GNSS will be presented and discussed per chapter in the book.

This book focuses on interdisciplinary issues of human health in the changing urban environments of India's largest megacities-Delhi and Mumbai. The authors explore human health concerns related to increased temperatures and air pollution in these cities in a study based on primary data collected through interviews, as well as secondary data on causes of mortality from 2001 to 2012. During this period, the surface temperatures for both megacities were mapped using Landsat Images. The rapidly increasing populations of cities and urban centers alter ecosystem services such as water, air and land cover, with disastrous impacts on health and wellbeing, particularly in megacities. In 2015, polluted air was estimated to have been responsible for 6.4 million deaths worldwide, and it is projected that it will cause between 6 and 9 million deaths per year by 2060. In 2017, outdoor air pollution resulted in 1.2 million deaths in India and brought about a 3% loss in GDP. The increase in population, vehicles, and industries has led to changes in land use and land cover and a rise in city temperatures and air pollution, creating urban heat islands (UHIs). Together, UHIs and air pollution have damaging impacts on human health that range from stress and headache to asthma, bronchitis, and chronic diseases, and even to death. Delhi has been experiencing emergency conditions in terms of environmental health over the past two years. At the same time, both the Delhi and Mumbai urban agglomerations are growing at a rapid pace, and the United Nations has projected that they will be the second and third most populous cities in the world by 2025. In this context, the book offers significant insights into the past patterns and responses to the present global urban health emergencies, and explores sustainable means of combating the problem to enable college and university researchers to develop innovative solutions. Further. It presents trans-disciplinary research that cuts across the WHO Action Plan, the Sustainable Development Goals, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, and Habitat III to help policymakers gain a better understanding of the global challenges of urban health and wellbeing. The book is especially useful for students and researchers in geography, urban demography, urban studies, environmental studies, health sciences, and policy studies.