259 research outputs found
Green Urbanism and its Application to Singapore
Green urbanism has been applied to cities but not in Asia. Seven characteristics of green urbanism are outlined and then applied to Singapore. The Renewable City is not yet a concept for Singapore. The Carbon Neutral City is being developed for an island Palau Ubin and by some firms but not to significant sectors or parts of urban Singapore. The Distributed City is being developed around Singapore’s polycentric model but needs specific infrastructure plans similar to ones developed by Singapore for Tianjin Eco-City. The Biophillic City is being developed as a world first through its Skyrise Greenery initiative and urban landscaping. The Eco-Efficient City is also being demonstrated through Singapore closing the loop on their water and solid waste systems. The Place Based City is very evident in all its 22 sub centres. And the Sustainable Transport City is an Asian leader in integrated transport planning though there are signs of this becoming harder to achieve
A longitudinal study of Sin Nombre virus prevalence in rodents, southeastern Arizona.
We determined the prevalence of Sin Nombre virus antibodies in small mammals in southeastern Arizona. Of 1,234 rodents (from 13 species) captured each month from May through December 1995, only mice in the genus Peromyscus were seropositive. Antibody prevalence was 14.3% in 21 white-footed mice (P. leucopus), 13.3% in 98 brush mice (P. boylii), 0.8% in 118 cactus mice (P. eremicus), and 0% in 2 deer mice (P. maniculatus). Most antibody-positive mice were adult male Peromyscus captured close to one another early in the study. Population dynamics of brush mice suggest a correlation between population size and hantavirus-antibody prevalence
Just urban transitions: Toward a research agenda
While there are excellent policy and academic foundations for thinking about and making sense of urban climate action and questions of justice and climate change independently, there is less work that considers their intersection. The nature and dynamics of, and requirements for, a just urban transition (JUT)—the fusion of climate action and justice concerns at the urban scale—are not well understood. In this review article we seek to rectify this by first examining the different strains of justice scholarship (environmental, energy, climate, urban) that are informing and should inform JUT. We then turn to a discussion of just transitions in general, tracing the history of the term and current understandings in the literature. These two explorations provide a foundation for considering both scholarly and policy‐relevant JUT agendas. We identify what is still needed to know in order to recognize, study, and foster JUT.This article is categorized under:The Carbon Economy and Climate Mitigation > Benefits of MitigationClimate, Nature, and Ethics > Climate Change and Global JusticeJust urban transitions research and policy agendas center alternative urban futures: cities where the distribution of environmental risks and benefits do not disproportionately burden marginalized groups; where decision‐making is transparent, engaged, and democratic; and where policies seek to remedy structural inequalities and prior injustices.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/154981/1/wcc640_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/154981/2/wcc640.pd
The ‘Biophilic Organization’: An Integrative Metaphor for Corporate Sustainability
This paper proposes a new organizational metaphor, the ‘Biophilic Organization’, which aims to counter the bio-cultural disconnection of many organizations despite their espoused commitment to sustainability. This conceptual research draws on multiple disciplines such as evolutionary psychology and architecture to not only develop a diverse bio-cultural connection but to show how this connection tackles sustainability, in a holistic and systemic sense. Moreover, the paper takes an integrative view of sustainability, which effectively means that it embraces the different emergent tensions. Three specific tensions are explored: efficiency versus resilience, organizational versus personal agendas and isomorphism versus institutional change. In order to illustrate how the Biophilic Organization could potentially provide a synthesis strategy for such tensions, healthcare examples are drawn from the emerging fields of Biophilic Design in Singapore and Generative Design in the U.S.A. Finally, an example is provided which highlights how a Taoist cultural context has impacted on a business leader in China, to illustrative the significance of a transcendent belief system to such a bio-cultural narrative
Community action: value or instrument? An ethics and planning critical review
The community concept has maintained a constant and growing interest in urban studies and many related fields. The
origin of this continuing interest seems to derive from the importance of the concept of community within diverse forms of political
language and interpretations within different planning practices. In this contribution, through the analysis of different ethical and
planning theories, we want to provide an update framework on community action. According to this objective, the argumentation
will proceed through a literature review on four ethics theories and three key aspects related to spatial planning, as well as matching this theoretical analysis with exemplifying practices. The final objective is to provide an original analysis on drivers and outcomesof different forms of community, raising general issues that refer to spatial planning, social organization and regulation
“Positive parochialism”, local belonging and ecological concerns: Revisiting Common Ground's Parish Maps project
Scepticism about the value of parochialism and local belonging has been a persistent feature of geographical scholarship, which has advocated a relational account of place and a cosmopolitan worldview. This paper revisits the Parish Maps project that was instigated in 1987 by UK arts and environment charity Common Ground, which led to the creation of thousands of maps across the UK and beyond, and was appraised in 1996 by Crouch and Matless in this journal. Drawing on archival materials and in‐depth interviews, we examine the legacy of the project. We argue that Common Ground's vision for Parish Maps represents a “positive parochialism” that confidently asserts the validity of the parish without retreating towards insularity. We complicate this by revealing diverse ways that communities took up Common Ground's vision. We conclude by arguing that the view of parochialism manifest by Parish Maps offers a foundation for ecological concern that remains relevant today, with places offering the potential for solidarities that bring together local and incomer. This “positive parochialism” disturbs assumptions that local attachments are necessarily exclusive and indicates the unresolved challenge of finding ways to realise the value of affect and creative environmental engagement in wider policy and land‐use planning
Strategic green infrastructure planning in Germany and the UK: a transnational evaluation of the evolution of urban greening policy and practice
The evolution of Green Infrastructure (GI) planning has varied dramatically between nations. Although a grounded set of principles are recognized globally, there is increasing variance in how these are implemented at a national and sub-national level. To investigate this the following paper
presents an evaluation of how green infrastructure has been planned for in England and Germany illustrating how national policy structures facilitate variance in application. Adopting an evaluative framework linked to the identification of GI, its development and monitoring/
feedback the paper questions the impacts on delivery of intersecting factors including terminology, spatial distribution and functionality on effective GI investment. This process reviews how changing policy structures have influenced the framing of green infrastructure policy,
and subsequent impact this has on the delivery of green infrastructure projects
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