Towards sustainable urban development: the social acceptability of high-rise buildings in a Ghanaian city

Over the years, many city managers, policy makers and academics alike have turned to high-rise buildings as pathway to sustainable urban development. However, the sustainability of such types of development in various geographical contexts, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, is a subject less explored. Amidst the promotion of high-rise development in a rapidly urbanizing metropolis in Ghana, Kumasi, the research empirically examined the social acceptability of high-rise residential facilities and the institutional capacity for their effective management. By conducting face-to-face interviews with sampled households, and critical public service providers in the metropolis, the study uncovered that, contrary to the evidence from many Asian cities, there is generally low social acceptability of high-rise developments, and a weak institutional capacity for effective service delivery. The research concludes that, whilst it is tempting to embrace high-rise buildings as sustainable development pathway, it is crucial they are pursued with much circumspection. In addition to their design being tailored to the local needs of the people for whom they are built, the promotion of high-rise development should recognize the importance of effective service delivery, and general social acceptability

Vitruvius on architecture

Robert Tavernor wrote the Introduction (pp. i-xxxviii). R. V. Schofield wrote the translators note (xxxix-xliv) and is responsible for the translation, notes, glossary and index (pp. 1- 440). The idea behind the translation was to try and take account, in so far as this is possible in a popular series usually without notes, of the researches on the text included in the Einaudi Vitruvius (Gros, Corso, Romano) and the Budé editions, of which the last volume has just appeared. The aim was not to comment on the text of Vitruvius (the Italian and French commentaries are vast) but to provide English readers with a translation written in clear and contemporary but not anachronistic English; a recent American edition (1999) is noteable for the abundant drawings but also for its sometimes impenetrable and latinate English

Comparison of the effects of moclobemide and selegiline on tyramine-evoked mydriasis in man

Set-membership identification of single-input single-output linear parameter varying models is considered in the paper under the assumption that both the output and the scheduling parameter measurements are affected by bounded noise. First, we show that the problem of computing the parameter uncertainty intervals requires the solutions to a number of nonconvex optimization problems. Then, on the basis of the analysis of the regressor structure, we present some ad hoc convex relaxation schemes to compute parameter bounds by means of semidefinite optimization. Advantages of the new techniques with respect to previously published results are discussed both theoretically and by means of simulations