17,988 research outputs found

    Water Supply and Pollution Control Aspects of Urbanization

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    The Parched Earth of Cooperation: How to Solve the Tragedy of the Commons in International Environmental Governance

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    This article proposes a way to strengthen international environmental agreements, such as the Paris Agreement and the Kyoto Protocol. Multilateral environmental agreements such as these are extremely fragile. At the heart of the problem is what is known as the tragedy of the commonsā€”a unique dynamic that viciously sabotages cooperation. The cause of this tragedy is that no one can trust that other actors will conserve the common resource, which triggers a race to the bottomā€”a race to deplete. Global warming and our inability to halt it is perhaps the ultimate example of a tragedy of the commons on a truly massive scale. On a domestic level, the tragedy of the commons is easily solved through regulation. However, on a supranational level, where there is no overarching authority, governance mechanisms tend to collapse. The hard truth is that without robust enforcement of some kind, international cooperation is extremely difficult to maintain. This article proposes the following idea: governments joining (or already party to) an agreement, contribute an upfront deposit to an international regulatory body (the Commons Management Fund (ā€œCMFā€)) with the understanding that their contribution will be forfeited if they fail to honor their treaty commitments. The idea, while ostensibly simple, is deceptively complex. The focus is not the penalty, but rather the ability of governments to credibly signal commitment. In game theory, credible signaling can prevent a tragedy of the commons by generating confidence that everyone will stick to their commitments. The CMF is designed to exploit this effect. Now, more than ever, a solution to the tragedy of the commons on a supranational level is desperately neededā€”the CMF is such a solution

    School leadership and the civic nationalist turn: Towards a typology of leadership styles employed by head teachers in their enactment of the Prevent Duty and the promotion of fundamental British values

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    British schools are teeming with cultural richness and have long been at the heart of a celebration of heritage. However, the riots in the north of England in 2001 exposed fractures in community cohesion, a loss of economic opportunity for marginalised groups and a rise in far-right activity. The London bombings of 2005 revealed deep fault lines across communities and by 2012 the government had implemented the ā€˜Hostile Environmentā€™ and Immigration Laws of 2014 and 2016 which saw citizens assume the mantle of ā€˜border enforcer.ā€™ The Windrush scandal of 2017 was an expression of this environment, and coupled with a resurgent nationalism, the UK voted to leave the EU. Schools, nested within diverse communities across the country, negotiate societal issues and tensions in the quotidian spaces of the school day and head teachers, charged with ensuring the Prevent Duty is enacted and British values promoted, determine the ethos and approach of their respective schools. Drawing on literature from school leadership, this research engages with head teachers in schools in England to explore the leadership styles they employ when enacting the requirements of the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015 (Home Office, 2015) and the Teachersā€™ Standards (DfE, 2012) and navigating the civic nationalist turn

    Investor Rationality: Evidence from UK Property Capitalization Rates

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    Recent analyses have suggested the irrationality of investors in Australian and U.S. office properties. More specifically, investors have failed to raise capitalization rates sufficiently at rental cyclical peaks to account for the obvious mean reversion in real rents and thus have significantly overvalued properties. In this paper we analyze the determination of UK office and retail capitalization rates and provide evidence that these rates reflect rational expectations of mean reversion in future real cash flows. Moreover, these rates are linked to capitalization rates (dividend/price ratio) and expected dividend earnings growth as expected.

    Investor Rationality: An Analysis of NCREIF Commercial Property Data

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    The concept of a peak in value or a "100% location" is so well established in real estate that there is no reference to the term in recent real estate principles and appraisal texts. However, the land value section in appraisals of a regional shopping center did not apply the concept when adjusting comparables for location, which resulted in a substantial underestimation of site value. A regression model that included a distance variable to control for location produced a value estimate that was more than double the values in the appraisals. The empirical results illustrate that the subject site represented a distinct peak in land value as well as reemphasizing the importance of making careful location adjustments in situations where there is a distinct peak in land value.

    Exploratory Analysis of the Airspace Throughput and Sensitivities of an Urban Air Mobility System

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    The use of small, vertical-takeoff and landing aircraft to provide efficient, high-speed, ondemand passenger transportation within a metropolitan area (e.g. intra-city transportation) is a topic of increasing interest and investment within the aerospace and transportation communities. Preliminary, mostly vehicle-level analysis suggests that passenger-carrying Urban Air Mobility has the potential to provide meaningful door-to-door trip time savings compared to identical trips taken solely by automobile, even for relatively short trips of a few tens of miles. Subsequent analysis has shown that if such trips can be conducted at costs competitive with ground transportation, the demand for such flight operations, not surprisingly, becomes unprecedented by historical airspace operations counts, raising fundamental questions regarding feasibility, practicality, capacity and basic system attributes such as separation criteria. In this paper, we conduct a preliminary assessment of vertipad requirements and en route separation minima relative to the feasibility of large-scale urban aviation operations. This analysis is acknowledged as being far from comprehensive and is intended to help define the initial boundaries of an airspace system compatible with enabling high-volume operations
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