This book highlights the recent research works on sustainable construction, people behavior and built environment which were presented virtually during the 2021 AUA and ICSGS Academic Conference, Global Strategies for a Resilient and Sustainable Post Pandemic World Towards a Better Future for All which was conducted on 26-27 October 2021.

The Political Philosophy of the European City is a courageous and wide-ranging panorama of the political life and thought of the European city. Its novel hypothesis is that modern Western political thought, since the time of Hobbes and Locke, underestimated the political significance and value of the community of urban citizens, called 'civitas', united by local customs, or even a formal or informal urban constitution at a certain location, which had a recognizable countenance, with natural and man-made, architectural marks, called 'urbs'. Recalling the golden age of the European city in ancient Greece and Rome, and offering a detailed description of its turbulent life in the Renaissance Italian city-states, it makes a case for the city not only as a hotbed of modern democracy, but also as a remedy for some of the distortions of political life in the alienated contemporary, centralized, Weberian bureaucratic state. Overcoming the north-south divide, or the core and periphery partition, the book's material is particularly rich in Central European case studies. All in all, it is an enjoyable read which offers sound arguments to revisit the offer of the small and middle-sized European town, in search of a more sustainable future for Europe.

This is the first textbook to provide a focused, subject specific guide to planning practice and law. It gives students essential background and contextual information to planning's statutory basis, supported by practical and applied discussion, enabling students with little or no planning law knowledge to engage in the subject and develop the necessary level of understanding required for both professionally accredited and non-accredited qualifications.

With a unique focus on middle-range theory, this book details the application of spatial analysis to demographic research as a way of integrating and better understanding the different transitional components of the overall demographic transition. This book first details key concepts and measures in modern spatial demography and shows how they can be applied to middle-range theory to better understand people, places, communities and relationships throughout the world. Next, it shows middle-range theory in practice, from using spatial data as a proxy for social science statistics to examining the effect of "fracking" in Pennsylvania on the formation of new coalitions among environmental advocacy organizations. The book also traces future developments and offers some potential solutions to promoting and facilitating instruction in spatial demography. This volume is an ideal resource for advanced undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in courses involving spatial analyses in the social sciences, from sociology and political science to economics and educational research. In addition, scholars and others interested in the role that geographic context plays in relation to their research will find this book a helpful guide in further developing their work.

From the 1940s to the 1990s From New Towns to Green Politics charts the course of successive issues and campaigns - from the reconstruction of Britain's war-torn cities, to the introduction of green belts and new towns, to regional and community planning, and so to the inner cities and most recently, green politics.

The present book highlights studies that show how smart cities promote urban economic development. The book surveys the state of the art of Smart City Economic Development through a literature survey. The book uses 13 in depth city research case studies in 10 countries such as the North America, Europe, Africa and Asia to explain how a smart economy changes the urban spatial system and vice versa. This book focuses on exploratory city studies in different countries, which investigate how urban spatial systems adapt to the specific needs of smart urban economy. The theory of smart city economic development is not yet entirely understood and applied in metropolitan regional plans. Smart urban economies are largely the result of the influence of ICT applications on all aspects of urban economy, which in turn changes the land-use system. It points out that the dynamics of smart city GDP creation takes 'different paths,' which need further empirical study, hypothesis testing and mathematical modelling. Although there are hypotheses on how smart cities generate wealth and social benefits for nations, there are no significant empirical studies available on how they generate urban economic development through urban spatial adaptation. This book with 13 cities research studies is one attempt to fill in the gap in knowledge base.

Often portrayed as an apolitical space, this book demonstrates that home is in fact a highly political concept, with a range of groups in society excluded from a 'right to home' under current UK policies. Drawing on resident interviews and analysis of political and media attitudes across three case studies - the criminalisation of squatting, the bedroom tax, and family homelessness - it explores the ways in which legislative and policy changes dismantle people's rights to secure, decent and affordable housing by framing them as undeserving. The book includes practical lessons for housing academics, activists and policymakers.

This book offers an interdisciplinary and comparative study of the complex interplay between private versus public forms of organization and governance in urban residential developments. Bringing together top experts from numerous disciplines, including law, economics, geography, political science, sociology, and planning, this book identifies the current trends in constructing the physical, economic, and social infrastructure of residential communities across the world. It challenges much of the conventional wisdom about the division of labor between market-driven private action and public policy in regulating residential developments and the urban space, and offers a new research agenda for dealing with the future of cities in the twenty-first century. It represents a unique ongoing academic dialogue between the members of an exceptional group of scholars, underscoring the essentially of an interdisciplinary and comparative approach to the study of private communities and urban governance. As such, the book will appeal to a broad audience consisting of policy-makers, practitioners, scholars, and students across the world, especially in developing countries and transitional and emerging economies.

This book uses new ideas and language for understanding how self-organization and complexity trend toward increased efficiency. Different measures for efficiency from multiple disciplines are used to probe the ones that provide the most insight. One major goal is to seek a common framework to trace the increase of efficiency as a measure of the level of organization and evolutionary stage of a complex system. The chapters come from a satellite meeting hosted at the Conference on Complex Systems, in Cancun, 2017. The contributions will be peer-reviewed and contributors from outside the conference will be invited to submit chapters to ensure full coverage of the topics. This text will appeal to students and researchers working on complex systems and efficiency.

New institutions don't come into being by themselves: They have to be organized. On the basis of research from a decade-long, multi-site study of efforts to transform freshwater management in Brazil, Practical Authority asks how new institutional arrangements established by law become operational in practice. The book explores how this happens by putting both agency and structures in motion. It looks at what actors in complex policy environments actually do to get new institutions off the ground. New configurations of authority in a policy area very often have to be produced relationally, on the ground, in practice. New organizations have to acquire problem-solving capabilities and recognition from others, what the authors call "practical authority." The story told here has a multiplicity of protagonists, many of whom are normally invisible in political studies, such as the state officials and university professors who struggled to move water reform forward. The book explores the interaction between their efforts to influence the design and passage of new legislation and the hard labor of creating the new water management organizations the laws called for. It follows three decades of law making at the national and state level and examines the creation of sixteen river basin committees throughout the country. By bringing together state and society actors around territorially specific problems, these committees were expected to promote a new vision of integrated water management. But none of the ones examined here followed the trajectory their organizers expected. Some adapted creatively to challenges, circumventing roadblocks encountered along the way; others never got off the ground. Rather than explain these differences on the basis of the varying conditions actors faced, the authors propose a focus on the process, and practice, of institution building.

Eye-opening and thoroughly engaging, this is an indispensible look at American urban/suburban society and its future.
In "The Great Inversion, "Alan Ehrenhalt, one of our leading urbanologists, reveals how the roles of America's cities and suburbs are changing places--young adults and affluent retirees moving in, while immigrants and the less affluent are moving out--and addresses the implications of these shifts for the future of our society.
Ehrenhalt shows us how the commercial canyons of lower Manhattan are becoming residential neighborhoods, and how mass transit has revitalized inner-city communities in Chicago and Brooklyn. He explains why car-dominated cities like Phoenix and Charlotte have sought to build twenty-first-century downtowns from scratch, while sprawling postwar suburbs are seeking to attract young people with their own form of urbanized experience.

This book is the second Volume of the INPUT2020 Conference Proceedings on 'Innovation in Urban and Regional Planning'. The 11th International Conference INPUT was held at the University of Catania (Italy) on September 8-10th 2021 and allowed gathering international scholars in the fields of planning, civil engineering and architecture, ecology and social science, to strengthen the knowledge on nature-based solutions and to enhance the implementation and replication of these solutions in different contexts. INPUT2020 Conference stressed the basic idea that using components that mimic natural processes in the built environment can generate a wide number of benefits in cities, and produced more equal, safe and livable urban environment. The book provides additional reflections and proposals on empirical frameworks for nature-based solutions. Computational tools, technologies, data and hybrid models are explored for providing innovative spatial planning modeling methodologies. Furthermore, prospective roles of nature-based solutions in planning science and practice are investigated in the light of peripheralisation risks, rural landscapes and innovation in cultural heritage.

The book addresses the sustainability of cities in the context of sustainability science and its application to the city boundary. In doing so it investigates all the components of a city on the basis of sustainability criteria. To achieve sustainability it is essential to adopt an integrated strategy that reflects all sectors within the city boundary and also address the four key normative concepts: the right to develop for all sections, social inclusion, convergence in living standards and shared responsibility and opportunities among sectors and sections. In this book, the individual chapters examine the nodes of sustainability of a city and thus essentially present a large canvas wherein all sustainability-relevant issues are interwoven. This integrative approach is at the heart of the book and offers an extensive, innovative framework for future research on cities and sustainability alike. The book also includes selected case studies that add to the reading and comprehension value of the concepts presented, ensuring a blend of theory and practical case studies to help readers better comprehend the principle of sustainability and its application.

Rethinking Wilderness and the Wild: Conflict, Conservation and Co-existence examines the complexities surrounding the concept of wilderness. Contemporary wilderness scholarship has tended to fall into two categories: the so-called 'fortress conservation' and 'co-existence' schools of thought. This book, contending that this polarisation has led to a silencing and concealment of alternative perspectives and lines of enquiry, extends beyond these confines and in particular steers away from the dilemmas of paradise or paradox in order to advance an intellectual and policy agenda of plurality and diversity rather than of prescription and definition. Drawing on case studies from Australia, Aoteoroa/New Zealand, the United States and Iceland, and explorations of embodied experience, creative practice, philosophy, and First Nations land management approaches, the assembled chapters examine wilderness ideals, conflicts and human-nature dualities afresh, and examine co-existence and conservation in the Anthropocene in diverse ontological and multidisciplinary ways. By demonstrating a strong commitment to respecting the knowledge and perspectives of Indigenous peoples, this work delivers a more nuanced, ethical and decolonising approach to issues arising from relationships with wilderness. Such a collection is immediately appropriate given the political challenges and social complexities of our time, and the mounting threats to life across the globe. The abiding and uniting logic of the book is to offer a unique and innovative contribution to engender transformations of wilderness scholarship, activism and conservation policy. This text refutes the inherent privileging and exclusionary tactics of dominant modes of enquiry that too often serve to silence non-human and contrary positions. It reveals a multi-faceted and contingent wilderness alive with agency, diversity and possibility. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of conservation, environmental and natural resource management, Indigenous studies and environmental policy and planning. It will also be of interest to practitioners, policymakers and NGOs involved in conservation, protected environments and environmental governance.

Concern for more open, participative, devolved and integrated government has led many, including the UK Labour government, to re-examine the importance of place, space and territory. Applying an institutionalist approach, and deploying substantial original empirical evidence, this book makes a major contribution to understanding the emergence of more localised governance in England in the 1990s, with particular reference to the role of spatial planning systems.

This volume intends to summarize the most important changes in the Central European countries and their settlement network emphasizing the last 20 years since the collapse of the Iron Curtain.

First published in 1990. The options and probabilities for the future of cities are issues of outstanding contemporary importance, both in the developed and developing worlds. The Living City draws together both current mainstream ideas on their futures and various alternative views to enliven the debate and put forward an agenda for sustainable urban development, emphasizing ideas that question the economic imperatives of that development. Certain aspects of city life - the economy of the city, city-countryside relationships, the city as a cultural centre - are selected for study, as the book looks at the historical past and current experiences to speculate on the likely condition of cities in the future. In addition, the book investigates whether the Third World experience of city life is a separate experience or whether there are lessons to be learnt relating to all cities. The book will appeal to professionals in the surveying, planning and architectural fields, as well as students and academics in Planning, Geography, Economics, Architecture, Development Studies and Sociology and anyone interested in issues concerning the city and the environment.

Balancing the Commons in Switzerland outlines continuity and change in the management of common-pool resources such as pastures and forests in Switzerland. The book focuses on the differences and similarities between local institutions (rules and regulations) and forms of commoners' organisations (corporations of citizens and corporations) which have managed common property for several centuries and have shaped the cultural landscapes of Switzerland. At the core of the book are five case studies from the German, French and Italian speaking regions of Switzerland. Beginning in the Late Middle Ages and focusing on the transformative periods in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it traces the internal and external political, economic and societal changes and examines what impact these changes had on commoners. It goes beyond the work of Robert Netting and Elinor Ostrom, who discussed Swiss commons as a unique case of robustness, by analysing how local commoners reacted to, but also shaped, changes by adapting and transforming common property institutions. Thus, the volume highlights how institutional changes in the management of the commons at the local level are embedded in the public policies of the respective cantons, and the state, which generates a high heterogeneity and an actual laboratory situation. It shows the power relations and very different routes that local collective organisations and their members have followed in order to cope with the loss of value of the commons and the increased workload for maintaining common property management. Providing insightful case studies of commons management, this volume delivers theoretical contributions and lessons to be learned for the commons worldwide. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of the commons, natural resource management and agricultural development.

This book considers technical, economic, and policy aspects of application of microelectronics to gas distribution problems. It is based on the first and second IGT symposia on microelectronics in the gas industry to disseminate information on rapidly evolving topics of gas distribution automation.

One of the main problems and aims of nature conservation in Europe is to protect semi-open landscapes. The development during the past decades is characterized by an ongoing intensivation of land use on the one hand, and an increasing number of former meadows and pastures lying fallow caused by changing economic conditions on the other hand. In several countries the estabishment of larger "pasture landscapes" with a mixed character of open grassland combined with shrubs and forests has been recognized as one solution to this problem. The book gives an overview of the European projects concerning to this topic - nature conservation policy and strategies, scientific results and practical experiences creating large scale grazing systems.

In Draining New Orleans, the first full-length book devoted to "the world's toughest drainage problem," renowned geographer Richard Campanella recounts the epic challenges and ingenious efforts to dewater the Crescent City. With forays into geography, public health, engineering, architecture, politics, sociology, race relations, and disaster response, he chronicles the herculean attempts to "reclaim" the city's swamps and marshes and install subsurface drainage for massive urban expansion. The study begins with a vivid description of a festive event on Mardi Gras weekend 1915, which attracted an entourage of elite New Orleanians to the edge of Bayou Barataria to witness the christening of giant water pumps. President Woodrow Wilson, connected via phoneline from the White House, planned to activate the station with the push of a button, effectively draining the West Bank of New Orleans. What transpired in the years and decades that followed can only be understood by examining the large swath of history dating back two centuries earlier-to the geological formation and indigenous occupation of this delta-and extending through the colonial, antebellum, postbellum, and Progressive eras to modern times. The consequences of dewatering New Orleans proved both triumphant and tragic. The city's engineering prowess transformed it into a world leader in drainage technology, yet the municipality also fell victim to its own success. Rather than a story about mud and machinery, this is a history of people, power, and the making of place. Campanella emphasizes the role of determined and sometimes unsavory individuals who spearheaded projects to separate water from dirt, creating lucrative opportunities in the process not only for the community but also for themselves.

This book explores the dynamics of the interaction between the development of creative industries and urban land use in Nanjing, a metropolis and a growth pole in the Yangtze River Delta. In the last two decades, China's economy has been undergoing dramatic growth. Yet, accompanying with China's economic success is the disturbing environmental deterioration and energy concerns. These issues together with the diminution of the advantage of low-cost labour force present many Chinese cities, particularly big cities specialising in manufacturing in the most developed regions, the urgency to find new approaches to "creative China". As an ancient city featured by abundance of cultural heritages and legacies of heavy industries, Nanjing has been striving for a decade to transform its economy towards a creative economy by cultivating creative industries. In parallel with the flourishing of creative industries are contest for land resources among different interest parties and restructuring of urban land use. Both are new challenges for urban planning. This complex process is examined in this book by an interdisciplinary approach which integrates GIS, ABM, questionnaire investigation and interview.