This book focuses on peri-urban development processes in Africa, with special emphasis on Zimbabwe. The debates included highlight a number of issues in the peri-urban context, such as access to water, appropriate technologies and land management, political economy in the peri-urban space, peri-urban agriculture, and place marketing in peri-urban development, among others. The debates raised by the authors in this book revolve around locating the peri-urban space within the context of sustainability, in which key issues are addressed.

The book essentially examines peri-urban...

The book outlines how cooperatives can be used as a tool for development and reconciliation in post-conflict contexts. This book also examines the successes and challenges for emerging and existing cooperatives in Africa, while delivering both practical lessons and insights into the theory. It presents completely new materials on the cooperative movement, against a backdrop of increasing global recognition of the roles of cooperatives and collective action in socio-economic development. Readers are invited to consider how, as an economic model that seeks to advance member collective...

Many people in the Western world are concerned that the social fabric of societies is fraying. This book constitutes the first-of-its-kind systematic account of social cohesion, from theory through methodology to empirical evidence. Readers are introduced to the academically developed Social Cohesion Radar of Bertelsmann Stiftung, a globally active non-governmental organization. The Social Cohesion Radar defines and measures cohesion as characterized by three core aspects: resilient social relations, positive emotional connectedness between people and the community, and a pronounced focus...

This book offers a European perspective on urban planning and spatial design by outlining housing policies in Southern Europe and their evolution. Through a unique case study on the city of Turin it explores social innovation and the relationship between the urban regeneration process and housing practices. The case study is a useful example in the debate about changing welfare arrangements in Europe and the emerging rhetoric of social innovation in housing. The book encourages debate about the tools needed to address housing needs, exploring current practices. Chapters look at the spatial...

This book aims to present implications for China s urban development through international comparison of urbanization process from the perspective of spatio-temporal pattern, driving factors, rural-urban interactions, development trends and economic-ecological-social synergic development. Followed the research hotspot of the international urban studies, this book identifies challenges and opportunities in the process of urban development through analyzing and comparing urbanization pathways of several Asian countries as for representatives. It provides both decision support for...

Climate change-related effects and aftermaths of natural disasters, such as Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, have wreaked havoc on local peoples lives and livelihoods, especially in impoverished coastal communities. This book looks at local-level responses to the effects of climate change from the perspective of ecological theology and feminism, which provides a solution-based and gender-equitable approach to some of the problems of climate change. It examines how local social and religious action workers are partnering with local communities to transform and reconstruct their lives and...

This volume applies the science of complexity to study coupled human-environment systems (CHES) and integrates ideas from the social sciences of climate change into a study of rural development amid flooding and urbanization in the Poyang Lake Region (PLR) of China. Author Qing Tian operationalizes the concept of sustainability and provides useful scientific analyses for sustainable development in less developed rural areas that are vulnerable to climatic hazards.

The book uses a new sustainability framework that is centered on the concept of well-being to study rural development in...

This work offers a nuanced perspective based on empirical evidence of the role of talent and creativity for economic growth, prosperity, social and spatial inequality, and precarity in creative cities by arguing that creativity and talent need to be valued and eventually rewarded to achieve sufficient conditions for individual economic success. Shedding light on the recent momentum of a growing convergence of cultural and economic spheres in post industrial societies by building on a case study of contemporary visual art from interviews with commercial gallerists. Written from an economic...

This brief is based on an analysis that was performed on the 2010 winter storms that caused considerable damage to coastal communities in Atlantic Canada. The hazards that occurred were associated with storm surge, high waves, coastal erosion, and flooding. The analysis covered a large multisite longitudinal project, where a participatory action research (PAR) approach was used to understand how people in 10 coastal communities perceive and experience extreme weather events and to enhance their capacity to adapt and improve their resilience. This brief exposes the outcome of two series of...