Kategoria BISAC: Political Science >> Public Policy - City Planning & Urban Development

This study compares urban planning mechanisms that operate within Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. The political economy of Hong Kong is in a state of flux. While the power of the government and the corporate interests remain largely intact, they are challenged by pro-China interests and a democratizing civil society. The land use planning system reflects this power contest. In the face of both strong resistance from the development industry and China's eagerness to perpetuate a market-led society in post-1997 Hong Kong, the outcome of the power contest remains uncertain. The state-centred...

This essay is based on Kenneth Arrow's celebrated impossibility theorem stating that under a few quite reasonable assumptions, collective choice cannot be simultaneously logical and fair. The purpose here is to argue that planning procedures can reduce the likelihood that decision cycles will arise when democracy is pursued. It is examined whether some of Arrow's assumptions can be relaxed under widespread and participatory planning, since planning and public debate may force a minimum of conformity on the stated individual preferences. However, collective choices have to be made in spite...

In this book, the author's strong commitment to the multi-disciplinary field of regional science emerges to provide a unifying framework between spatial modelling traditions from quantitative geography and those from spatial economics, whereby each is enhanced. Starting with a detailed discussion of each field illustrated with numerical examples, the two traditions are brought together by either making the economic models probabilistic or transforming the objectives of the geographic models to reflect both utility theory and production theory. The ideas are applied to develop urban models...

Seismic early warning is being recognized as a methodology which offers the biggest potential for real time seismic risk mitigation, particularly in towns and industrial areas. In order to be effectively applied it requires close cooperation between seismologists, communication experts and seismic engineers. The added value of this book is to offer an overview of frontier problems related to all aspects of the seismic early warning chain, from basic seismological issues to engineering problems and system reliability. Early warning seismic networks also provide near real time shake maps for...

This book creates a scientific base for the development and testing of sustainable production and land use systems in ecologically fragile and economically disadvantaged mountainous regions in Southeast Asia; to develop concepts for rural institutions that can reduce rural poverty and food insecurity, and improve livelihoods in mountainous regions in Southeast Asia; and to explore methods for analyzing complex ecosystems and their interactions with the socio-cultural, economic and institutional environment.

The People's Property? is the first book-length scholarly examination of how negotiations over the ownership, control, and peopling of public space are central to the development of publicity, citizenship, and democracy in urban areas. The book asks the questions: Why does it matter who owns public property? Who controls it? Who is in it? Donald Mitchell and Lynn A. Staeheli answer the questions by focusing on the interplay between property (in its geographical sense, as a parcel of owned space) and people. Property rights are often defined as the "right to exclude." It is...

Symbolic Landscapes presents a definitive collection of landscape/place studies that explores symbolic, cultural levels of geographical meanings. Essays written by philosophers, geographers, architects, social scientists, art historians, and literati, bring specific modes of expertise and perspectives to this transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary study of the symbolic level human existential spatiality. Placing emphasis on the pre-cognitive genesis of symbolic meaning, as well as embodied, experiential (lived) geography, the volume offers a fresh, quasi-phenomenological...

Land use and land cover changes associated with increased urbanization have led to landscape and environmental changes throughout the world. Remote Sensing Applications for the Urban Environment places emphasis on the rapid development of worldwide urbanization and its impact on the environment, and reviews the assessment of urban land cover conditions using remote sensing data. The book examines current satellite observation capacities, the use of remote sensing data to characterize urban extent and urban land cover, and the applications of satellite-derived data for...

Computer-mediated participation is at the crossroads. In the early heady days of the digital revolution, access to "high" technologies such as GIS promised the empowerment of marginalized communities by providing data and information that was previously hidden away from public view. To a great extent, this goal has been achieved at least in the U.S. and Western Europe - data about a range of government initiatives and raw data about different aspects of spatial planning such as land use, community facilities, property ownership are available a mouse-click away. Now, that we, the public,...