Pollution Reduction and Economic Growth —A Small Town’s Journey to Sustainable Development

It’s commonly believed that one can do well by doing good. When applied to business, the concept means that an environmentally friendly and responsible business can also do well in regards to profit. Or, if a state or region devotes resources to improving the environment, the economic growth will be strengthened. This concept echoes the essential meaning of the famous quote by China’s leader Xi Jinping, “Clean waters and green mountains mean mountains of gold and silver.” Is this theory true in the real world? We intend to investigate the case of a small rural town from northern China which went from a heavily polluted town with small businesses scattered around, to today’s paradise with clean waters, green parks, and sustainable agro-farms. The town went from a poor rural town with low GDP before the 1990s to boomed economy in early 2000s, when the heavy pollution imposed a threat to the health of local residents. After almost two decades of government intervention, the town has transformed into a clean and sustainable community with public parks and agro-tourism based farms.Our paper intends to take a close look at the transformation process, and describe key factors of success, and identify areas for improvement. We also attempt to provide implications for future research, and recommendations for policy makers

Floating on a Sea of Funny Money: An Analysis of Money Laundering Through Miami Real Estate and the Federal Government’s Attempt to Stop it

Miami is experiencing a money laundering controversy the likes of which have not been seen since the “Cocaine Cowboys” era of 1980’s Miami. Condominiums and other mega developments are popping up at an unprecedented pace, immediately after the housing market crash that caused the Great Recession. Adding to this questionable boom in development is the fact that the vast majority of Miami’s population cannot afford to live in places like these. So, the question presented is who is fueling this explosion in development? Criminals, that’s who. Federal agents believe criminals are buying coveted Miami real estate through shell companies to launder their ill–gotten money. In response to this crisis, the Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) issued a Geographic Targeting Order (GTO) that requires Miami title insurers to report information about the identities of those hiding behind shell companies to buy real estate in cash purchases. Through the order, FinCEN aims to gain information about and deter potential money launderers. The GTO places Miami squarely in the cross–hairs of FinCEN’s anti–money laundering regime. However, there is a problem: the GTO will not actually prevent money laundering. There are fundamental issues with the GTO: it is underinclusive and riddled with loopholes and ambiguities. These issues are easily resolved by a more inclusive, detailed drafting of the GTO that eliminates the many loopholes and clarifies the latent ambiguities inherent in it. However, as currently written, the GTO’s many issues prevent it from effectively fighting money laundering in Miami, but they also shelter Miami’s real estate market from the potential negative effects that many feared the GTO would cause

IDENTIFICATION OF AGRICULTURAL LAND USE IN CALIFORNIA THROUGH REMOTE SENSING

Ground truthing actual crop types in an area can be expensive and time-consuming. The California Department of Water Resources attempts to ground truth land use in each county in California every five years. However, this is limited by budgetary constraints and often results in infrequent (more than every ten years) surveying of many counties. An accurate accounting of crops growing in a region is important for a variety of purposes including farm production estimates, groundwater and surface water modeling, evapotranspiration estimation, water planning, research applications, etc. Agricultural land use is continually changing due to development and environmental factors. Currently, USDA NASS provides georeferenced land use maps of regions throughout the U.S. While these are beneficial, the accuracy is not very high for California due to the wide variety of crops grown throughout the state. California has an increasingly complex agricultural system which includes multi-crops changing on an annual and even semiannual basis, long growing seasons, and complex and flexible irrigation schedules. Remotely sensed data from available satellites are used to more accurately classify crop types within the Madera and Merced Counties of California’s Central Valley. An initial classification approach utilizing a simplified decision tree for a data subset of the area considered is presented. In order to accommodate the larger dataset at hand, a computer based approach is applied using the Nearest Neighbor classification algorithm in the computer program eCognition. Iterative analyses were performed to consider a range of scenarios with varying spectral inputs. The results show the methods presented can be beneficial in discriminating 24 of the major crop types from multi-temporal spectral data

Mustang Daily, October 27, 1987

Student newspaper of California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, CA.https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/studentnewspaper/4707/thumbnail.jp

Suburban Condominium Development, Private Interests, And The Role Of Image Production In The Reorientation Of Urban Form In The Gta

For the better part of their modern existence, the municipalities comprising the Greater Toronto Area (“GTA”) have been characterized by low-density, auto-centric development and single-detached homes. For more than the past decade, however, the development of urban form in the GTA has shifted from a focus on horizontal sprawl to vertical growth, predicated by the introduction of protected greenbelt areas and planning policies dramatically restricting the amount of available greenfield land for development and shaping future land consumption. Coinciding with the policy push towards intensification was the emergence of a condominium boom in the City of Toronto that has permeated outwards Toronto’s neighbouring suburban municipalities. The urban forms of Mississauga, Vaughan and Markham have begun to undergo significant change guided by the notion that mid- and high-rise condominium towers are no longer solely a central-city building typology. Mid-rise and high-rise towers have been introduced as a new suburban built form typology integral to support suburban strategies of intensification. These ‘suburban’ municipalities have utilized different approaches with respect to the physical appearance of the built environment to support neoliberal urban development agendas to shift from once classical bedroom communities or towns into intensified, competitive major players in the metropolitan landscape both locally and globally. How have the policies of current land-use planning regimes, the actions of the local development industry and the perceptions of users of suburban space played a role in this shift in the built environment? Further, what do the city-building processes and image production practices employed reflect about the political, economic and social systems controlling development in the Toronto city-region? To answer these questions, this paper explores how changes in suburban form have been influenced by socially constructed imagery and values as communicated by planning policy and placemarketing strategies. It investigates why this imagery is created, how it is used by condominium developers to proliferate suburban built form, and how this imagery is received and consumed by individuals. Focusing on the commodification of housing form, this research explores the motivating factors exploited by the development industry to promote new built form typologies in the suburbs

Central Florida Future, Vol. 39 No. 67, February 28, 2007

https://stars.library.ucf.edu/centralfloridafuture/2982/thumbnail.jp

Chrysalis 1985-1986

https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/chrysalis-1980s/1003/thumbnail.jp