The policing of ‘county lines’ in affected import towns: Exploring local responses to evolving heroin and crack markets

Across the UK, markets for heroin and crack cocaine in provincial towns are evolving. Due to the high-profile drug market development termed ‘County Lines’, retail supply in many areas is now seemingly dominated by ‘out of town’ dealers who have established ‘import’ markets often far from their native city. Associated with this are significant harms and implications for affected local areas. This thesis presents findings of an exploratory ethnographic study that investigated how County Lines was being understood and responded to at a local level. The research was undertaken in two phases. The first involved in-depth interviews with police officers tasked with responding to the County Lines ‘problem’ in their force area. The second phase consisted of a period of in-depth ethnographic fieldwork with a different police force, using participant observation and further interviewing with officers and those working for other agencies in affected provincial towns. Three narrative literature review chapters set the theoretical foundations for the thesis. Critical discussions are provided in relation to drug markets, the specific development of County Lines and the policing of drug markets. The subsequent empirical chapters build on this, contributing to gaps in knowledge regarding the nature of these evolving drug markets and how this market development is being understood and responded to at a local level. It is argued that much of the policing of County Lines, whether it be through new or traditional approaches, can be considered ‘symbolic’. A somewhat organic shift towards applying harm reduction principles to this market context is also noted, with the enduring challenges associated with such a policing approach also highlighted. In addition to empirically and theoretically developing these two extant drug policing perspectives, the thesis therefore contributes to the growing focus on County Lines, adding deep insight into how this burgeoning outreach drug supply model is specifically affecting local markets, their actors and those responding to it

MEGASTAR: The meaning of growth. An assessment of systems, technologies, and requirements

A methodology for the display and analysis of postulated energy futures for the United States is presented. A systems approach methodology including the methodology of technology assessment is used to examine three energy scenarios--the Westinghouse Nuclear Electric Economy, the Ford Technical Fix Base Case and a MEGASTAR generated Alternate to the Ford Technical Fix Base Case. The three scenarios represent different paths of energy consumption from the present to the year 2000. Associated with these paths are various mixes of fuels, conversion, distribution, conservation and end-use technologies. MEGASTAR presents the estimated times and unit requirements to supply the fuels, conversion and distribution systems for the postulated end uses for the three scenarios and then estimates the aggregate manpower, materials, and capital requirements needed to develop the energy system described by the particular scenario

Catastrophe and control : how technological disasters enhance democracy

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Science, Technology, and Society, 1994.Includes bibliographical references (p. 401-422).by Wade Edmund Roush.Ph.D

Exploring the appropriateness of Urban Underground Space (UUS) for sustainability improvement

Due to the dramatic rate of urbanisation worldwide, sustainability of global cities is called into question, and there is global agreement that making cities more sustainable is a key priority. Greater use of underground space is one such solution, hence wider adoption of Urban Underground Space (UUS) within the urban environment needs consideration. One way to measure the efficiency of these solutions within the urban environment is to provide sustainability credentials through sustainability indicators. However, a detailed review of the current ‘construction sector’ sustainability indicator systems (BREEAM, CEEQUAL, etc.) within this research shows that there is a substantial need for a sustainability indicator tool tailored toward UUS. Hence, a new tool, called USPeAR, is proposed, developed on the basis of the SPeAR® framework system revised and restructured for application on UUS projects. The USPeAR tool includes a series of indicators based on SPeAR®. They have been selected according to the materiality review method introduced by SPeAR® itself. In addition a panel of experts, who are experienced in terms of construction and sustainability, has been surveyed via a questionnaire to inform the development of an appropriate weighting system for the selected indicators. Lastly, a Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) method has been combined with USPeAR to identify the most cost-effective solution for the sustainability improvement of a UUS project. The application of the developed tool was demonstrated through two case studies

University of San Diego News Print Media Coverage 2003.05

Printed clippings housed in folders with a table of contents arranged by topic.https://digital.sandiego.edu/print-media/1004/thumbnail.jp

University of San Diego News Print Media Coverage 2003.08

Printed clippings housed in folders with a table of contents arranged by topic.https://digital.sandiego.edu/print-media/1007/thumbnail.jp

Southern Accent September 1989 - April 1990

Southern Adventist University\u27s newspaper, Southern Accent, for the academic year of 1989-1990.https://knowledge.e.southern.edu/southern_accent/1065/thumbnail.jp

The Conflicting Politics of Commoning – Property Relations and Political Practices of Community Gardens in East Harlem, NYC, in the Context of the Affordable Housing Plan

This dissertation examines the property relations and political practices of eight community gardens in East Harlem, New York City, that are threatened with eviction by “Housing New York,” a citywide affordable housing plan, leading to a contentious land use conflict. Property relations in community gardens take place among a broad set of actors, like gardeners, passers-by, and neighbours, but also developers, city officials, and city workers who all interact regularly and throughout the eviction process. These property relations consequently reveal how such urban spaces are contested. Keeping with Verdery (2001), Moore (2001), and Riles (2004), property relations – intertwined with power relations – point to the political practices to represent and assert their claims to a property in formal institutions and public review processes but also during daily interactions or direct actions. During the yearlong multi-sited ethnography I executed in 2016-2017, I examined the gardeners’ property relations to better understand the contention between the City’s formal legal ownership rights versus the gardeners’ embodied and moral sense of ownership of the same space, which are two competing and asymmetrical authorities pitted against each other. To do so, I inquired how gardeners negotiate normative conceptions of property aesthetics and liberal citizenship while also scrutinizing the City-led land use public review process. I argue property relations are a way of negotiating power, be they on private, collective or commons property. Negotiating power here means as much producing or maintaining power as it does mitigating it. As such, this dissertation illustrates how race has been and still is at the heart of American property (Bhandar, 2018; Roy, 2017; Harris, 1993). Community gardens have acted as spaces at the margins in the sense suggested by both Das (2004) and hooks (1989). Commoning gardens are community-led margins that act simultaneously as sites of resistance and repression and engage in partnerships with the State for self-creation and maintenance. Thus, community gardens as margins are an ideal vantage point from which to explore the inner workings of the State and the capitalist public-private production of the urban space