This book is a collection of texts on one of China's boldest social experiments in recent years: the rural reconstruction project in Bishan. The Bishan Project (2011-2016) was a rural reconstruction project in a small village Bishan, Anhui Province, China. The writings describe and criticize the social problems caused by China's over-loading urbanization process and starts a a contemporary agrarianism and agritopianism discourse to resist the modernism and developmentalism doctrine which dominated China for more than a century, answering a global desire for the theory and action of the alternative social solution for today's environmental and political crises.This practical utopian commune project ran for 6 years and caused a national debate on rural issues in China, when it was invited to be exhibited and presented abroad. This collection of writing will be of interest to artists, China scholars, architects, and the cultural community at large.

The seventh edition of the highly successful The City Reader juxtaposes the very best classic and contemporary writings on the city. Sixty-three selections are included: forty-five from the sixth edition and eighteen new selections, including three newly written exclusively for The City Reader. The anthology features a Prologue essay on "How to Study Cities", eight part introductions as well as individual introductions to each of the selected articles. The new edition has been extensively updated and expanded to reflect the latest thinking in each of the disciplinary and topical areas included, such as sustainable urban development, globalization, the impact of technology on cities, resilient cities, and urban theory. The seventh edition places greater emphasis on cities in the developing world, the global city system, and the future of cities in the digital transformation age. While retaining classic writings from authors such as Lewis Mumford, Jane Jacobs, and Louis Wirth, this edition also includes the best contemporary writings of, among others, Peter Hall, Manuel Castells, and Saskia Sassen. New material has been added on compact cities, urban history, placemaking, climate change, the world city network, smart cities, the new social exclusion, ordinary cities, gentrification, gender perspectives, regime theory, comparative urbanization, and the impact of technology on cities. Bibliographic material has been completely updated and strengthened so that the seventh edition can serve as a reference volume orienting faculty and students to the most important writings of all the key topics in urban studies and planning. The City Reader provides the comprehensive mapping of the terrain of Urban Studies, old and new. It is essential reading for anyone interested in studying cities and city life.

Cities are becoming the wealth producing centers of national economies. Increasing the operational efficiency of the city will bring a competitive edge to the whole system. Yet, many city subsystems cannot work together, creating significant problems and inefficiencies. City Competitiveness and Improving Urban Subsystems: Technologies and Applications uses information science perspectives to improve working subsystems in transportation, sewage, electricity, water, communication, education, health, governance, and infrastructure since their efficient and synchronized operation is vital for a competitive city. This pioneering approach will interest researchers, professionals, and policymakers in urban economy, regional planning, and information science disciplines who wish to improve the competitiveness of their cities.

The relationship between citizens and city governments is gradually transforming due to the utilization of advanced information and communication technologies in order to inform, consult, and engage citizens. Citizen E-Participation in Urban Governance: Crowdsourcing and Collaborative Creativity explores the nature of the new challenges confronting citizens and local governments in the field of urban governance. This comprehensive reference source explores the role that Web 2.0 technologies play in promoting citizen participation and empowerment in the city government and is intended for scholars, researchers, students, and practitioners in the field of urban studies, urban planning, political science, public administration, and more.

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.

"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."

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).

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.

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 efficient usage, investigation, and promotion of new methods, tools, and technologies within the field of architecture, particularly in urban planning and design, is becoming more critical as innovation holds the key to cities becoming smarter and ultimately more sustainable. In response to this need, strategies that can potentially yield more realistic results are continually being sought. The Handbook of Research on Digital Research Methods and Architectural Tools in Urban Planning and Design is a critical reference source that comprehensively covers the concepts and processes of more than 20 new methods in both planning and design in the field of architecture and aims to explain the ways for researchers to apply these methods in their works. Pairing innovative approaches alongside traditional research methods, the physical dimensions of traditional and new cities are addressed in addition to the non-physical aspects and applied models that are currently under development in new settlements such as sustainable cities, smart cities, creative cities, and intercultural cities. Featuring a wide range of topics such as built environment, urban morphology, and city information modeling, this book is essential for researchers, academicians, professionals, technology developers, architects, engineers, and policymakers.

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.

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.

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.

This book examines the active role of urban citizens in constructing alternative urban spaces as tangible resistance towards capitalist production of urban spaces that continue to encroach various neighborhoods, lanes, commons, public land and other spaces of community life and livelihoods. The collection of narratives presented here brings together research from ten different Asian cities and re-theorises the city from the perspective of ordinary people facing moments of crisis, contestations, and cooperative quests to create alternative spaces to those being produced under prevailing urban processes. The chapters accent the exercise of human agency through daily practices in the production of urban space and the intention is not one of creating a romantic or utopian vision of what a city "by and for the people" ought to be. Rather, it is to place people in the centre as mediators of city-making with discontents about current conditions and desires for a better life.

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.

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.