Implementing Data-Driven Strategies in Smart Cities is a guidebook and roadmap for practitioners seeking to operationalize data-driven urban interventions. The book opens by exploring the revolution that big data, data science, and the Internet of Things are making feasible for the city. It explores alternate topologies, typologies, and approaches to operationalize data science in cities, drawn from global examples including top-down, bottom-up, greenfield, brownfield, issue-based, and data-driven. It channels and expands on the classic data science model for data-driven urban interventions - data capture, data quality, cleansing and curation, data analysis, visualization and modeling, and data governance, privacy, and confidentiality. Throughout, illustrative case studies demonstrate successes realized in such diverse cities as Barcelona, Cologne, Manila, Miami, New York, Nancy, Nice, Sao Paulo, Seoul, Singapore, Stockholm, and Zurich. Given the heavy emphasis on global case studies, this work is particularly suitable for any urban manager, policymaker, or practitioner responsible for delivering technological services for the public sector from sectors as diverse as energy, transportation, pollution, and waste management.

Describes the development of one of the first cohousing communities in the U.S. offering a social understanding of its commons. Cohousing, a form of communal living that clusters around shared common space, began about a half century ago in Denmark. We Built a Village describes the process of planning and building of an early cohousing community in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the way the people involved simultaneously built their homes and their social structure. As both a memoir and a sociological analysis that probes the differences between commons and markets, it is unique among books about cohousing. When this group of people began in the late 1990s to construct their cohousing community, they set in motion a counterpoint between the physical spaces and the social configurations that would guide their lives together, even up to creative responses to the recent pandemic.

Aging and Creativity examines the effects of aging on creative functioning, including age-related changes in cognition, personality, and motivation that affect performance or output. The book reviews and summarizes both lab-based and real-world-based studies. Changes in working memory, speed of processing, learning efficiency, and retrieval from long-term memory are all discussed as factors influencing creativity, as are health changes and changes in social roles with later age. The book concludes with practical implications of age effects on creativity for older people in work and everyday life.

This collection of essays explores the complex relationship between religion and multiculturalism and the role of the state and law in the creation of boundaries. Western secular democracies are composed of increasingly religiously diverse populations. The idea of "multiculturalism" was formed as a constructive response to this phenomenon, but, in many areas of the globe, support for multiculturalism is challenged by attempts to preserve the cultural and legal norms of the majority.
The State of Israel offers a particularly pertinent case study, and is a central focus of this collection. The contributors to this volume address the concepts of religious difference and diversity, as well as the various ways in which states and legal systems understand and respond to them. Mappingthe Legal Boundaries of Belonging shows that, as a consequence of a purportedly secular human rights perspective, state laws may appear to define religious identity in a way that contradicts the definition found within a particular religion. Both state and religion make the same mistake, however, if they take a court decision that emphasizes individual belief and practice as a direct modification of a religious norm: the court lacks the power to change the internal authoritative definition of who belongs to a particular faith. Similarly, in the pursuit of a particular model of social diversity, the state may adopt policies that imply a particular private/public distinction foreign to some religious traditions.
This volume, which includes contributions from leading scholars in the field, will be an invaluable resource to anyone seeking to understand the legal meaning and impact of religious diversity.

What would happen if I accepted an invitation to Bible Study from Jehovah's Witnesses? What would attending a Kingdom Hall meeting involve? And if I invited door-knocking Witnesses into my home? This book introduces Jehovah's Witnesses without assuming prior knowledge of the Watch Tower organization. After outlining the Society's origins and history, the book explains their key beliefs and practices by taking the reader through the process of the seeker who makes initial contact with Witnesses, and progresses to take instruction and become a baptized member. The book then explores what is involved in being a Witness - congregational life, lifestyle, rites of passage, their understanding of the Bible and prophetic expectations. It examines the various processes and consequences of leaving the organization, controversies that have arisen in the course of its history, and popular criticisms. Discussion is given to the likelihood of reforms within the organization, such as its stance on blood transfusions, the role of women and new methods of meeting and evangelizing in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Global Trends of Smart Cities provides integrated analysis of 135 cities that participated in the IBM's Smarter Cities Challenge in 2010-2017. It establishes evidence-based benchmarking of city geographies, city sizes, governance structures, and local planning contexts in smart cities. This book uses a combination of descriptive statistical analysis and real-world case study narratives to evaluate the ways in which each individual urban variable or their combination matter in the diversity of smart city approaches around the globe. It is acknowledged that the Smarter Cities Challenge offers a particular set of smart initiatives and is not representative of all smart cities around the world. Nevertheless, the global presence of the Challenge across five continents and its involvement with 135 cities of all size and socioeconomic status provides a solid foundation to conduct comparative research on smart cities. Considering limited comparative research available in the smart city debate, this book makes significant contribution in understanding the state of smart city development in urban governments worldwide.

Disasters undermine societal well-being, causing loss of lives and damage to social and economic infrastructures. Disaster resilience is central to achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, especially in regions where extreme inequality combines with the increasing frequency and intensity of natural disasters. Disaster risk reduction and resilience requires participation of wide array of stakeholders ranging from academicians to policy makers to disaster managers. Disaster Resilient Cities: Adaptation for Sustainable Development offers evidence-based, problem-solving techniques from social, natural, engineering and other disciplinary perspectives. It connects data, research, conceptual work with practical cases on disaster risk management, capturing the multi-sectoral aspects of disaster resilience, adaptation strategy and sustainability. The book links disaster risk management with sustainable development under a common umbrella, showing that effective disaster resilience strategies and practices lead to achieving broader sustainable development goals.