Wasted? Managing Decline and Marketing Difference in Third Tier Cities

Third-tier cities are neglected in the research literature. Global and second-tier cities provide the positive, proactive applications of city imaging and creative industries strategies. However, small cities - particularly those who reached their height and notoriety through the industrial revolution - reveal few strategies for stability, let alone growth. This study investigates an unusual third-tier city: Oshawa in Ontario Canada. Known as the home of General Motors, its recent economic and social development has been tethered to the arrival of a new institution of higher education: the University of Ontario Institute of Technology. Yet this article confirms that simply opening a university is not enough to commence regeneration or renewal, particularly if an institution is imposed on unwilling residents. Therefore, an alternative strategy - involving geosocial networking - offers a way for local businesses and organizations to attract customers and provide a digital medication to analogue injustice and decay

Financialization and development regime building in waterfront redevelopment in Chinese port cities under neoliberalism: A case study of Qingdao Olympic Sailing Centre

Post-industrial waterfront redevelopment refers to the transformation from the Keynesian-Fordist industrial landscape to the post-industrial service-based waterfront (Vormann, 2014). Neoliberal financial devolution has empowered local development coalitions to tap into local financial resources by leveraging private investment. Coalitions made up of city hall and private sector actors may be considered as urban development regimes that can utilize their institutional resources to make potent governing decisions (Stone, 1989).This research focuses on the financing of waterfront redevelopment projects in Chinese port cities under neoliberalism. The study examines Qingdao Olympic Sailing Centre as an example of how such urban development coalitions function to promote waterfront redevelopment projects, and by extension, to understand how post-industrial waterfront redevelopment is pursued in Chinese port cities. In addition to the Sailing Centre, the relocation of Beihai Shipyard exemplifies how post-industrial waterfront redevelopment, in conjunction with the effect of gentrification, shapes the neoliberal urban landscape. The financing story of the Qingdao Olympic Sailing Centre is explored as a case study of entrepreneurial urban redevelopment strategy, and this study uncovers the process to present how an urban development coalition extracts land value from entrepreneurial strategies amid the trend of neoliberalism. How the Chinese urban growth coalitions, made up of the local city halls and private developers, conduct city redevelopment projects in an entrepreneurial way via mobilizing market elements and land resources to avoid the conventional budget public financing has been missing in past literature. Hence, the discussion about the financing of the waterfront redevelopment projects in the second-tier Chinese port cities contributes to filling the literature gap of how the second-tier Chinese cities conduct great-mega projects through off-budget financial instruments

Against the Tide. A Critical Review by Scientists of How Physics and Astronomy Get Done

Nobody should have a monopoly of the truth in this universe. The censorship and suppression of challenging ideas against the tide of mainstream research, the blacklisting of scientists, for instance, is neither the best way to do and filter science, nor to promote progress in the human knowledge. The removal of good and novel ideas from the scientific stage is very detrimental to the pursuit of the truth. There are instances in which a mere unqualified belief can occasionally be converted into a generally accepted scientific theory through the screening action of refereed literature and meetings planned by the scientific organizing committees and through the distribution of funds controlled by "club opinions". It leads to unitary paradigms and unitary thinking not necessarily associated to the unique truth. This is the topic of this book: to critically analyze the problems of the official (and sometimes illicit) mechanisms under which current science (physics and astronomy in particular) is being administered and filtered today, along with the onerous consequences these mechanisms have on all of us.\ud \ud The authors, all of them professional researchers, reveal a pessimistic view of the miseries of the actual system, while a glimmer of hope remains in the "leitmotiv" claim towards the freedom in doing research and attaining an acceptable level of ethics in science

Development of in situ non destructive analytical methodologies for the conservation diagnosis of urban built heritage

226 p.Se desarrollan metodologías analíticas no destructivas para el diagnostico in situ del Patrimonio Construido afectado por factores ambientales. A lo largo del trabajo, la caracterización y severidad de daño sufrido por los materiales es evaluada en casos reales, prestando especial atención a establecer el origen y el proceso químico involucrado en las patologías, contribuyendo a la preservación. Además, para comprobar la efectividad de un innovativo método de conservación, se realiza su monitoreo a través de un enfoque multianalítico, evaluando su capacidad para reducir el deterioro así como, para determinar los requerimientos para su implementación.Las metas propuestas han sido logradas gracias al desarrollo de diferentes metodologías, destacando la utilidad de la espectroscopia Raman. Los hándicaps resultantes del análisis de campo han sido reducidos gracias a la implementación de DRIFT. Paralelamente, técnicas como SEM y XRF han sido propuestas para detectar la capacidad de penetración de los agentes de deterioro así como, IC para cuantificar la severidad del daño salino, de acuerdo a la legislación existente. A sí mismo, los datos cuantitativos son sometidos a estudios quimiométricos y termodinámicos con objeto de corroborar el análisis espectroscopico. Finalmente, dadas las diferencias observadas en los análisis por cambios estacionales, se llevo a cabo un estudio para describir el comportamiento del contenido salino bajo condiciones climáticas variables con objeto de seleccionar las acciones preventivas, evitando la necesidad de tomar decisiones solamente basadas en la experiencia del conservador

The Boom and Bust Patterns of Communities within the Energy Rich Region of West Virginia: A Case Study of Moundsville

The increasing worldwide demand for energy will provide Energy Rich Regions (ERRs) the opportunity to increase their wealth and quality of living. However, a reoccurring pattern of boom and bust cycles in ERRs suggests the need for more sustainable development strategies.;A mixed methods approach (case study) is employed to explore the wicked human problems occurring in one community, Moundsville, WV and to discover development patterns that might inform sustainable development strategies for the future.;This study explores briefly the distant past development patterns, and in greater detail the pre-boom and most current boom in natural gas. First, data will be derived from a conceptual Energy Rich Region Template that explores the sustainability of development from the inclusive wealth forms of natural, human, and physical capital. The qualitative data analysis software (MAXQDA) is used to systematically collect and organize data and information into a community-wide knowledge base (specifically the seven years of city council minutes).;This framework can assist future research dedicated to similar cases. Furthermore, this case may support communities and or policymakers in the development of a programming guide for converting the natural capital into other reproducible capital forms, thus avoiding the development cycle of boom and bust

Urban consumption of place : Maboneng as a case study

Read abstract in the documentMini Dissertation (MA Fine Arts)--University of Pretoria, 2018.Visual ArtsMA Fine ArtsUnrestricte

Powering Forward: A Vision for the Turners Falls Canal District

The goal of the Master of Regional Planning Studio is to develop a student’s techniques for collecting, analyzing, and synthesizing spatial and non-spatial data and then presenting that collective data in a manner (i.e., report, video, presentation, and charettes) that is understandable to academics, professionals, and the public. Planning Studio allows students to integrate knowledge from coursework and research, and apply such knowledge to resolving representative planning problems. At UMASS Amherst, these problems are found in neighborhood, rural, urban, and/or regional settings. In the fall of 2016, the Town of Montague’s Department of Planning and Conservation gave the Regional Planning Studio and the UMass Springfield Design Center six directives related to drafting a redevelopment strategy for the vacant mill along the privately owned power canal. The directives are as follows: Conduct interviews with property owners, abutters, and developers; Recommend a brand/identity for the District; Develop elements of a draft district plan; Identify key public infrastructure and investments; Create inspiring plan view and perspective visuals; and Provide recommendations and an implementation plan. Powering Forward: A Vision for the Turners Falls Canal District aims to reintegrate the District with Downtown Turners Falls, to connect people with the Connecticut River, and to honor the history of the mills

Oil Spaces

Oil Spaces traces petroleum’s impact through a range of territories from across the world, showing how industrially drilled petroleum and its refined products have played a major role in transforming the built environment in ways that are often not visible or recognized. Over the past century and a half, industrially drilled petroleum has powered factories, built cities, and sustained nation-states. It has fueled ways of life and visions of progress, modernity, and disaster. In detailed international case studies, the contributors consider petroleum’s role in the built environment and the imagination. They study how petroleum and its infrastructure have served as a source of military conflict and political and economic power, inspiring efforts to create territories and reshape geographies and national boundaries. The authors trace ruptures and continuities between colonial and postcolonial frameworks, in locations as diverse as Sumatra, northeast China, Brazil, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Kuwait as well as heritage sites including former power stations in Italy and the port of Dunkirk, once a prime gateway through which petroleum entered Europe. By revealing petroleum’s role in organizing and imagining space globally, this book takes up a key task in imagining the possibilities of a post-oil future. It will be invaluable reading to scholars and students of architectural and urban history, planning, and geography of sustainable urban environments

State Smart Growth Policies: A Cure for Dumb Urban Growth?

The purpose of this research is to investigate the effects of state initiated smart growth legislation on various aspects of the phenomenon known as urban sprawl. Sprawl is associated with a number of undesirable conditions including depletion of natural resources, increased traffic congestion, and loss of residents and businesses in inner city areas. In an attempt to alleviate and prevent these conditions, some states have implemented smart growth legislative programs. These programs vary in form from comprehensive in nature, or extending to all land use activities; to pertaining only to special areas, such as coastlines. In addition, state legislation varies according to the balance employed by the state between coercion and incentives used to obtain local government compliance. Utilizing a combination of existing classification systems for state smart growth legislation, I developed a model that incorporates the two elements described above. Based on the “proposed model”, I selected three cities in three states to evaluate. I selected Baltimore, MD to represent low-coercion/comprehensive general; Atlanta, GA to represent medium-coercion/comprehensive general; and Orlando, FL to represent high-coercion/comprehensive general. My rationale was that change could best be observed at the city level. I selected variables for testing within these cities based on the five primary objectives of smart growth. In each city, I evaluated whether or not there was a change in certain variables (air quality, for example) after implementation of the respective state program. I determined which city showed the most improvement in terms of the dependent variables, and then I extrapolated my findings to the state level. I reached a preliminary conclusion that the more coercive a state’s smart growth legislative program is, the more likely it will be effective at the local level. I based this on data results for the city of Orlando, FL, which were generally more in line with smart growth goals than those of Baltimore and Atlanta. In fact, Orlando was more successful with controlling population density, maintaining air quality, and minimizing roadway congestion. It also important to note that Atlanta, the test city with the next highest level of coercion, scored second best. These findings are of particular interest given that the trend for the last ten to 15 years has been for states to implement less coercive smart growth programs