Environmentally-sensitive river management : assessment and mitigation of impacts on urban rivers

Includes bibliographies.Urban development and engineering works have resulted in the majority of rivers that drain urban areas being severely degraded, both ecologically and in terms of their potential amenity value. This dissertation explores the reasons for this "spiral of degradation" and it describes the ecological and social impacts on rivers caused by urban development, channelisation and canalisation. It then suggests possible measures to mitigate the impacts at the levels of the catchment, floodplain and river channel. The present cycle of degradation of urban rivers in the Cape Metropolitan Area (and elsewhere) can be halted. In addition, where degradation has already occurred, mitigation and rehabilitation are possible and could restore some of the lost conservation and ecological values, as well as the potential amenity, recreation and education functions. Early colonisation of Cape Town by Europeans inflicted severe impacts on the rivers surrounding and passing through the city. These included: catchment degradation, water abstraction, the disposal of unpurified sewage and industrial effluents, removal of riparian forests, clearing of instream vegetation and the draining of wetlands. During the 20111 century, many urban rivers have been "improved" by straightening or confining within rectangular concrete-lined canals in order to protect urban development in flood-prone areas. The unquestioning faith in technology during this period and the attitude that human ingenuity could "improve nature" are now regarded by the scientific community, together with some local and regional authorities and informed members of the public, as mistakes that resulted in ecological and environmental degradation. These technical solutions merely treated the symptoms of the problem without recognising, let alone attempting to treat, the causes, that is poor catchment and floodplain management. However, there is still a public demand for canalisation of the remaining "natural" rivers in the greater Cape Town area and beyond. At the same time, there has been an increase in environmental awareness, as well as a growing appreciation of the value of holistic and multi-objective planning in the engineering and planning professions. This dissertation aims to assess the impacts of urbanisation, channelisation and canalisation on the aquatic ecosystem and socio-economic environment of urban rivers, and to develop possible measures to mitigate these impacts

Research (Science)Parks as Public Investment A Critical Assessment

Series: IIR-Discussion Paper

Determinants of Foreign Plant Start-ups in the United States: Lessons for Policymakers in the Southeast

This article examines the elasticity of DFI in relation to these promotional activities. It also analyzes the effect that agglomeration economies, urbanization economies, and labor market conditions have on DFI. Its specific focus is upon the effect that those four determinants had on new plant start-ups in three separate industries: drug manufacturing, industrial machinery, and motor vehicle production over the 1979-1983 period. (Those industries have been given standard industrial classification (SIC) numbers of 283, 355 + 356, and 371, respectively, by the U.S. Department of Commerce.) The industries are considered separately in order to test the hypothesis that the importance of the four determinants varies according to specific business needs. Other recent contributions to the industrial location literature also consider three-digit industries separately for the same reason. The study uses state-level data and employs a multinomial logit procedure. The article is divided into six further sections. Section II discusses the magnitude and variance of states\u27 efforts to attract foreign businesses. Section III reviews industrial location theory, particularly as it pertains to foreign firms in the United States. Section IV presents an empirical model. Section V discusses the data used in the estimation. Section VI details the estimation results. Section VII concludes the article by highlighting certain implications for public policy and noting some limitations of the empirical work

Re-Imaging of Industrial Cities

Die 1970er und 1980er Jahre stellten viele Industriestädte vor neue Herausforderungen. Industrielle Produktion verlor an Relevanz, was nicht nur große ökonomische und soziale Einschnitte und Probleme nach sich zog, sondern auch das Image und die Wahrnehmung von Städten maßgeblich beeinflusste. Gleichzeitig zwang die Globalisierung und der damit einhergehende weltweite Wettbewerb zwischen Städten urbane Entscheidungsträger, sich mit den neuen Konzepten wie Standortimage und Städtemarketing auseinander zu setzen. In dieser Masterarbeit analysiere ich die Marketingstrategien zweier Städte – Linz und Bilbao –, die sich in den vergangenen 20 Jahren klar verändert haben. Dabei werde ich theoretische Ansätze zu Promotion, Marketing und Branding, sowie zu narrativer und ikonischer Kommunkation behandeln, Zudem evaluiere ich mittels qualitativer und quantitativer Inhaltsanalyse der Berichterstattung internationaler Nachrichtenmedien (The Guardian, The Observer, guardian.co.uk) die Auswirkungen der Imagemaßnahmen der Fallbeispiel-Städte. Die Forschungsfragen behandeln das Zustandekommen eines Stadt-Images, die Rolle von Massenmedien dabei, sowie die Strategien, die Städte anwenden um ihr Image zu beeinflussen, und wie Massenmedien die physischen und Image-bezogenen Veränderungen von Städten reflektieren.Many industrial cities found themselves in a difficult situation in the course of the 1970s and 1980s. The decline of the industrial sector with all its consequences not only caused economic and social problems but also severely affected the image and perception of urban areas. At the same time a globalising economy forced cities to compete with each other on a worldwide scale and concepts of place image and place marketing gained importance. In this paper I analyse the marketing strategies of two case study cities that significantly changed over the last two decades – Linz and Bilbao – based on theoretical approaches to promotion, marketing and branding as well as to narrative and iconic communication. To evaluate the impact of the cities' marketing measures I present a qualitative and quantitative news media content analysis based on the coverage of the international newspapers The Guardian, The Observer and the online source guardian.co.uk of the case study cities. Key questions include how the image of a city is formed, what role the media play, which strategies cities use to influence their image, and how the media reflect the physical and perceptional transformation of cities

Playing the legal card: using ideation cards to raise data protection issues within the design process

The regulatory climate is in a process of change. Design, having been implicated for some time, is now explicitly linked to law. This paper recognises the heightened role of designers in the regulation of ambient interactive technologies. Taking account of incumbent legal requirements is difficult. Legal rules are convoluted, uncertain, and not geared towards operationalisable heuristics or development guidelines for system designers. Privacy and data protection are a particular moral, social and legal concern for technologies. This paper seeks to understand how to make emerging European data protection regulation more accessible to our community. Our approach develops and tests a series of data protection ideation cards with teams of designers. We find that, whilst wishing to protect users, regulation is viewed as a compliance issue. Subsequently we argue for the use of instruments, such as our cards, as a means to engage designers in leading a human-centered approach to regulation

Allergy for a Lifetime?

ABSTRACTAs the key molecule of type-I-hypersensitivity, IgE provides specificity for the allergen and links it to the allergic effector functions. Antibodies are secreted by plasma cells and their precursors, the plasma blasts. The fate of plasma cells is a subject of controversy, with respect to their lifetime and persistence in the absence of allergen. In general, plasma cells were for a long time considered as short-lived end products of B-cell differentiation, and many of them are short-lived, although already for more than 20 years evidence has been provided that IgE-secreting plasma cells can persist over months. Today long-lived, "memory" plasma cells are considered to represent a distinct cellular entity of immunological memory, with considerable therapeutic relevance. Long-lived plasma cells resist current therapeutic and experimental approaches such as immunosuppression, e.g. cyclophosphamide, steroids, X-ray irradiation, anti-CD20 antibodies and anti-inflammatory drugs, while the chronic generation of short-lived plasma cells is sensitive to conventional immunosuppression. The seasonal variation in pollen-specific IgE can be suppressed by immunotherapy, indicating that component of the IgE response, which is stimulated with pollen allergen is susceptible to suppression. Targeting of the remaining long-lived, allergen-specific plasma cells, providing the stable IgE-titers, represents a therapeutic challenge.Here we discuss recent evidence suggesting, why current protocols for the treatment of IgE-mediated allergies fail: Memory plasma cells generated by inhalation of the allergen become long-lived and are maintained preferentially in the bone marrow. They do not proliferate, and are refractory to conventional therapies. Current concepts target plasma cells for depletion, e.g. the proteasome inhibitor bortezomib, BAFF and APRIL antagonists and autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation

Kinder und Jugendliche in der Pandemie brauchen Begleitung externer Fachkräfte

Distanzunterricht, digitale Geräte und Formate fordern die Schulen massiv. Doch neben IT-Kenntnissen brauchen Kinder und Jugendliche auch analoge und digitale Unterstützung bei Medienkompetenz, Sucht- und Gewaltprävention, die angesichts der aktuellen Schulsituation unterbelichtet bleiben.Distance teaching, digital devices and formats place massive demands on schools. But in addition to IT knowledge, children and young people also need analogue and digital support with media skills, addiction and violence prevention, which remain underexposed in view of the current school situation

Regulatory Costs: Who Pays in the End? Residential Developers' 'Rule of Thumb' and the Incidence of Regulatory Costs

Since the turn of the century, governments have placed restrictions on the location and characteristics of new buildings, the primary reason being the recognition that new construction created negative side-effects for surrounding residents.' Consequently, it is difficult for most housing analysts to advocate eliminating all government regulations relating to housing production. However, there is disagreement among housing policy observers about what level of regulations is socially desirable. The key task of researchers is to establish the costs of regulation so that the benefits of these regulations, which accrue both to the home buyer and residents of the larger neighborhood, can be compared to the costs incurred by housing consumers. Therefore, proper measurement of regulation costs is an essential element of any policy debate surrounding regulatory reform of the housing development process