Sustainable urbanism in the age of Photoshop: Images, experiences and the role of learning through inhabiting the international travels of a planning model

Learning is one of the critical processes in enabling the international mobility of urban planning and policy ideas. A particularly effective form of learning in this context is an immersive, sensory approach we can describe as 'inhabiting'. This article illustrates the role that inhabiting plays in facilitating the mobility of the planning model of sustainable urbanism. To do so, it draws on research carried out in the industry of international private sector architects, planners and engineering consultants, sometimes called the Global Intelligence Corps (GIC). In the article, I illustrate how the GIC use inhabiting, drawing on visual media and personal experience to encourage their clients to incorporate sustainable urban planning and design proposals into large urban development projects. These explorations demonstrate the value of research methodologies that focus on the everyday practices and social interactions through which people mobilize ideas

Utopian visions and real estate dreams: The eco-city past, present and future

This article traces the evolution of the eco-city as a concept and an urban planning model over the last 40 years, outlining the various definitions, applications and critiques of the term historically and today. What distinguishes the eco-city from work on sustainable urbanism more broadly, the article argues, is its attempt to create a comprehensive and transferable model of sustainable urban development. Over the years, the eco-city, in both theory and application, has evolved along with broader trends in environmental thought. The idea of the eco-city originally emerged out of counterculture movements of the 1960s and 1970s as an approach to urban development that would respect environmental limits. Contemporary eco-city projects attempt to transcend these limits and are often driven as much by economic objectives as environmental ones. Although many eco-city projects market themselves as models for future urban development, the article argues that they are better seen as sites of experimentation and innovation, helping drive broader socio-technical transitions. The article concludes that the ability of eco-cities to achieve their utopian ambitions may be limited by the realities of operating within a profit-driven, entrepreneurial planning environment. However, they can still play a valuable role, providing a place to test new ideas and an ideal to aspire to

Globalising sustainable urbanism: the role of international masterplanners

How do you design a sustainable urban area from scratch? A growing number of urban development projects, marketing themselves as sustainable or ‘eco’ cities, claim to have the answer. This paper focuses on the companies who create the masterplans that guide the development of such sustainable urban projects. While these projects are appearing in a diverse array of locations around the world, they are largely conceived and designed by a small, elite group of international architecture, engineering and planning firms based in North America and Europe sometimes referred to as the global intelligence corps (GIC). Drawing on research into these firms, the paper examines the contemporary drivers of internationalisation in sustainable urban planning and design. These include enhanced professional reputations and satisfaction for designers and branding benefits for clients with a desire to be seen as modern and ‘global’. The paper then considers the role of international masterplanners in the global dissemination of ideas in this area, concluding that the GIC and the plans they develop are playing a significant role in the development of an international model of sustainable urbanism. However, the way in which this model is actually expressed in material form is strongly influenced by the demands and priorities of the GIC's international clients. The paper concludes by reflecting on what this research demonstrates about what it means for a planning model to be both relational and territorial

Unique bid auctions: Equilibrium solutions and experimental evidence

Two types of auction were introduced on the Internet a few years ago and have rapidly been gaining widespread popularity. In both auctions, players compete for an exogenously determined prize by independently choosing an integer in some finite and common strategy space specified by the auctioneer. In the unique lowest (highest) bid auction, the winner of the prize is the player who submits the lowest (highest) bid, provided that it is unique. We construct the symmetric mixed-strategy equilibrium solutions to the two auctions, and then test them in a sequence of experiments that vary the number of bidders and size of the strategy space. Our results show that the aggregate bids, but only a minority of the individual bidders, are accounted for quite accurately by the equilibrium solutions.

Unique bid auctions: Equilibrium solutions and experimental evidence

Two types of auction were introduced on the Internet a few years ago and have rapidly been gaining widespread popularity. In both auctions, players compete for an exogenously determined prize by independently choosing an integer in some finite and common strategy space specified by the auctioneer. In the unique lowest (highest) bid auction, the winner of the prize is the player who submits the lowest (highest) bid, provided that it is unique. We construct the symmetric mixed-strategy equilibrium solutions to the two auctions, and then test them in a sequence of experiments that vary the number of bidders and size of the strategy space. Our results show that the aggregate bids, but only a minority of the individual bidders, are accounted for quite accurately by the equilibrium solutions.unique bid auctions; equilibrium analysis; experiment

Potential Maximization and Coalition Government Formation

A model of coalition government formation is presented in which inefficient, non-minimal winning coalitions may form in Nash equilibrium. Predictions for five games are presented and tested experimentally. The experimental data support potential maximization as a refinement of Nash equilibrium. In particular, the data support the prediction that non-minimal winning coalitions occur when the distance between policy positions of the parties is small relative to the value of forming the government. These conditions hold in games 1, 3, 4 and 5, where subjects played their unique potential-maximizing strategies 91, 52, 82 and 84 percent of the time, respectively. In the remaining game (Game 2) experimental data support the prediction of a minimal winning coalition. Players A and B played their unique potential-maximizing strategies 84 and 86 percent of the time, respectively, and the predicted minimal-winning government formed 92 percent of the time (all strategy choices for player C conform with potential maximization in Game 2). In Games 1, 2, 4 and 5 over 98 percent of the observed Nash equilibrium outcomes were those predicted by potential maximization. Other solution concepts including iterated elimination of dominated strategies and strong/coalition proof Nash equilibrium are also tested.Coalition formation, Potential maximization, Nash equilibrium refinements, Experimental study, Minimal winning

Affine Deligne-Lusztig varieties in affine flag varieties

This paper studies affine Deligne-Lusztig varieties in the affine flag manifold of a split group. Among other things, it proves emptiness for certain of these varieties, relates some of them to those for Levi subgroups, extends previous conjectures concerning their dimensions, and generalizes the superset method.Comment: 44 pages, 4 figures. Minor changes to font, references, and acknowledgments. Improved introduction, other improvements in exposition, and two new figures added, for a total of

Controlling cluster synchronization by adapting the topology

We suggest an adaptive control scheme for the control of zero-lag and cluster synchronization in delay-coupled networks. Based on the speed-gradient method, our scheme adapts the topology of a network such that the target state is realized. It is robust towards different initial condition as well as changes in the coupling parameters. The emerging topology is characterized by a delicate interplay of excitatory and inhibitory links leading to the stabilization of the desired cluster state. As a crucial parameter determining this interplay we identify the delay time. Furthermore, we show how to construct networks such that they exhibit not only a given cluster state but also with a given oscillation frequency. We apply our method to coupled Stuart-Landau oscillators, a paradigmatic normal form that naturally arises in an expansion of systems close to a Hopf bifurcation. The successful and robust control of this generic model opens up possible applications in a wide range of systems in physics, chemistry, technology, and life science

Two-Photon 2s<->1s Transitions during Recombination of Hydrogen in the Universe

Based on the standard cosmological model, we calculate the correction to the rate of two-photon 2s1s transitions in the hydrogen atom under primordial hydrogen plasma recombination conditions that arises when the induced transitions under equilibrium background radiation with a blackbody spectrum and plasma recombination radiation are taken into account.Comment: 20 pages, 9 figure

Non-ergodicity of the motion in three dimensional steep repelling dispersing potentials

It is demonstrated numerically that smooth three degrees of freedom Hamiltonian systems which are arbitrarily close to three dimensional strictly dispersing billiards (Sinai billiards) have islands of effective stability, and hence are non-ergodic. The mechanism for creating the islands are corners of the billiard domain.Comment: 6 pages, 8 figures, submitted to Chao