Economic Development and Public Transit: Making the Most of the Washington Growth Management Act

Rapid and unplanned urban growth in the urbanizing and rural fringe areas of the United States has led to numerous problems for state, local, and regional governments. In particular, six crises are readily identifiable, each of which threatens to undermine quality of life and local competitive economic advantage. These crises include the following: (1) deterioration of central cities, first-ring suburbs, and closer-in neighborhoods, resulting in depopulation and abandonment of housing and the employment base; (2) spiraling suburban sprawl, creating massive infrastructure as well as energy costs; (3) loss of prime agricultural lands; (4) environmental crises and threats to open space, air and water quality, environmentally sensitive lands, and natural resources; (5) transportation congestion and resultant loss of quality of life; and (6) inflating cost of housing and its effect on affordable housing. These problems do not lend themselves to facile solutions or quick fixes; they must be addressed through the development and application of comprehensive state and regional growth management plans. This Article explores the history and development of growth management and delineates how growth management planning for the Washington Puget Sound region can be effectively implemented to provide a comprehensive system for attaining environmental and transit objectives

Economic Development and Public Transit: Making the Most of the Washington Growth Management Act

Rapid and unplanned urban growth in the urbanizing and rural fringe areas of the United States has led to numerous problems for state, local, and regional governments. In particular, six crises are readily identifiable, each of which threatens to undermine quality of life and local competitive economic advantage. These crises include the following: (1) deterioration of central cities, first-ring suburbs, and closer-in neighborhoods, resulting in depopulation and abandonment of housing and the employment base; (2) spiraling suburban sprawl, creating massive infrastructure as well as energy costs; (3) loss of prime agricultural lands; (4) environmental crises and threats to open space, air and water quality, environmentally sensitive lands, and natural resources; (5) transportation congestion and resultant loss of quality of life; and (6) inflating cost of housing and its effect on affordable housing. These problems do not lend themselves to facile solutions or quick fixes; they must be addressed through the development and application of comprehensive state and regional growth management plans. This Article explores the history and development of growth management and delineates how growth management planning for the Washington Puget Sound region can be effectively implemented to provide a comprehensive system for attaining environmental and transit objectives

An optical technique for the measurement of longshore currents

We present an optical method (optical current meter) to measure the longshore component of nearshore surface currents by measuring the alongshore drift of persistent sea foam in the surf zone. The method uses short time series of video data collected from an alongshore array of pixels. These space-time data are first Fourier transformed to a frequency-wave number spectrum and, finally, to a velocity spectrum. A model of the velocity spectrum is fit to the observed spectrum to estimate the foam drift velocity. Confidence intervals and other measures of the input and output data quality are calculated. Field test comparisons were made against an in situ bidirectional electromagnetic current meter on the basis of 1 month of video data from the 1997 Sandy Duck field experiment. The root mean square error between the two approaches was 0.10 m/s. Linear regression analysis showed the gain between the two instruments to not be statistically different from one. Differences between the surface and interior measurements were compared to forcing mechanisms that may cause surface velocity shear. Velocity offsets and alongshore wind stress were well correlated for cases when waves and wind were not aligned to within ±45°, when wind- and wave-forced currents are reasonably separable. Calculated wind-dependent surface current shear, modeled as a surface boundary layer, correlated well with the observed velocity offsets for observations of nonalignment between wind and waves. This technique can be applied to study large-scale coastal behavior

Model Subdivision Regulations 2nd Edition

xvi, 375 hlm., bibl., 25 c