Global Urban Analysis provides a unique insight into the contemporary world economy through a focus on cities. It is based upon a large-scale customised data collection on how leading businesses use cities across the world: as headquarter locations, for finance, for professional and creative services, for media. These data - involving up to 2000 firms and over 500 cities - provide evidence for both how the leading cities, sometimes called global cities, are coming to dominate the world economy, and how hundreds of other cities are faring in this brave new urban world. Thus can the likes of London, New York and Hong Kong be tracked as well as Manchester, Cleveland and Guangzhou, and even Plymouth, Chattanooga and Xi'an. Cities are assessed and ranked in terms of their importance for various functions such as for financial services, legal services and advertising, plus novel findings are reported for the geographical orientations of their connections. This is truly a comprehensive survey of cities in globalization covering global, world-regional, and national scales of analysis: - 4 key chapters outline the global structure of the world economy featuring the leading cities; - 9 regional chapters covering the whole world also feature the level of services provided by 'medium' cities; - 22 chapters on selected countries and sub-regions indicate global-ness and local-ness and feature an even wider range of cities. Written in an easy to understand style, this book is a must read for anybody interested in their own city in the world and how it relates to other cities.

Global Urban Analysis provides a unique insight into the contemporary world economy through a focus on cities. It is based upon a large-scale customised data collection on how leading businesses use cities across the world: as headquarter locations, for finance, for professional and creative services, for media. These data - involving up to 2000 firms and over 500 cities - provide evidence for both how the leading cities, sometimes called global cities, are coming to dominate the world economy, and how hundreds of other cities are faring in this brave new urban world. Thus can the likes of London, New York and Hong Kong be tracked as well as Manchester, Cleveland and Guangzhou, and even Plymouth, Chattanooga and Xi'an. Cities are assessed and ranked in terms of their importance for various functions such as for financial services, legal services and advertising, plus novel findings are reported for the geographical orientations of their connections. This is truly a comprehensive survey of cities in globalization covering global, world-regional, and national scales of analysis: - 4 key chapters outline the global structure of the world economy featuring the leading cities; - 9 regional chapters covering the whole world also feature the level of services provided by 'medium' cities; - 22 chapters on selected countries and sub-regions indicate global-ness and local-ness and feature an even wider range of cities. Written in an easy to understand style, this book is a must read for anybody interested in their own city in the world and how it relates to other cities.

Inclusive Child Development Accounts showcases the global context of emerging asset-building policies and programmes around Child Development Accounts. Child Development Accounts (CDAs) are subsidized accounts that enable families to accumulate assets to invest in children's development and life goals, such as postsecondary education, homeownership, business development, and retirement security. The vision for CDAs is to be universal (meaning everyone participates), progressive (meaning greater subsidies for the poor), and lifelong (meaning from the cradle to the grave). Since 1991, schools, communities, states, provinces, and entire countries have launched various CDA programs and policies. In the first part of the volume, scholars highlight the core feature of "inclusiveness" of CDAs in Singapore, Israel, and the United States. In the second part, scholars report on CDA policies and projects in Taiwan, Uganda, Korea, and mainland China. Showing how asset building can be effective in diverse cultural and social contexts, and that all these contexts emphasize the investing in children early in life and empowering of them to achieve their potential as productive citizens, Inclusive Child Development Accounts will be of great interest to scholars of social work, policy, investment, and development, as well as financial inclusivity. It originally published as a special issue of the Asia Pacific Journal of Social Work and Development.

This book addresses the needs of students, researchers, as well as engineers and other professionals or readers interested in recent advances of biofuel and efficient waste management. In the context of energy consumption, over 85% of the total consumed energy comes from non-renewable fossil resources. Developing new renewable energy resources, especially biofuel production from wastes, has received increasing attention. The book is organized into three sections, namely Section I: Conventional waste management; Section II: From waste to green energy; and Section III: Case studies and future perspectives. Each section presents topic-specific chapters, which contain comprehensive and advanced knowledge of the subjects. Overall, the book covers the recent advances, breakthroughs, challenges, and future perspectives of waste-to-energy approach using different kinds of wastes as a feedstock for alternative biofuels and other integrated approaches such as wastewater treatment, plastic degradation, and CO2 sequestration in a cost-effective and eco-friendly way. In addition, different routes of waste recycling for enhanced biofuel production and case studies are presented with environmental and economic analysis. The presented case studies and future perspectives under Section III complement the chapters as they are authored by experts from bioenergy businesses who actually encounter real-world problems.

Lignin Chemistry and Application systematically discusses the structure, physical and chemical modification of lignin, along with its application in the field of chemicals and materials. It presents the history of lignin chemistry and lignin-modified materials, describes recent progresses, applications and studies, and prospects the development direction of high value applications of lignin in the field of material science. In addition to covering the basic theories and technologies relating to the research and application of lignin in polymer chemistry and materials science, the book also summarizes the latest applications in rubber, engineering plastics, adhesives, films and hydrogels.