Study of thermal performance of extensive rooftop greenery systems in the tropical climate

Singapore is a Garden City. On the other hand, with increasing population and limited territory, the government had to adopt a high-density and high-rise residential strategy. The high concentration of buildings in cities has resulted in many environmental issues, such as the Urban Heat Island effect. The rising ecological concerns for building design attempt to create harmony between buildings and their surroundings through mitigating their negative impact on the environment. The greening of buildings is essentially one of the ecological measures. The National Parks Board (NParks) launched a skyrise greenery approach/programme recently to promote the greening of buildings.     

A History of Territories,Movements and Borders: Politics of Inhabitation

If the city is as much about culture as nature, then a cultural understanding of the shaping of the urban is as essential as a scientific one. Here, architect and critic Marina Lathouri , who directs the graduate programme in History and Critical Thinking at the Architectural Association (AA) School of Architecture in London, describes how the concept of planning in the 19th century became intrinsically linked to notions of territory, borders and spatial organisation. She questions whether this might now be tested, and new design technologies used, to expose underlying emerging patterns of disruptive flows beckoning the possibility of the logic of a new social disposition.     

人员密集场所消防监督检查要点探究

近年来,我国城市规模迅速扩张,城市人口数量激增,城市化水平实现了质的飞跃,但是在此过程中却出现了人口密度增长过快的问题,这导致当前城市消防工作形势更加严峻。从整体上来看,人口密集的经营场所数量不断增加,人口流量大、密度大、难以控制的问题埋下了严重的消防隐患,一旦出现大型火灾事故,在场人员难以迅速疏散,出现重大伤亡。因此,为降低消防事故发生的可能性,文章将对如何在人员密集的经营场所开展消防安全监督检查工作进行深入探讨,并提出相关解决方案以供参考。     

The post-suburban era comes to Richmond: City decline, suburban transition, and exurban growth

The Richmond, Virginia region is an example of a metropolitan area that has entered the post-suburban era. We define the post-suburban era in terms of inner suburban population loss and relative income decline, suburban employment increase, suburban outcommuting reduction, exurban population and income increase, and farmland conversion.The post-suburban era involves the maturing of many suburbs. Maturing suburbs usually increase employment within their borders. The necessity for suburbanites to commute to central cities declines. However suburban maturity also is associated with diminished capacities. Relative income decline in numerous suburbs is the most prominent feature of diminished suburban capacities. Ironically, the stage for relative suburban income decline is set by suburban job increases which expand the commuting zone 20 or 30 more miles into rural territory, greatly enlarging the zone of exurban population growth.     

The effect of the Spanish Reconquest on Iberian cities

This paper studies the effect of the Spanish Reconquest, a military campaign against the Muslims in the medieval Iberian Peninsula that ended up with the expulsion or extermination of most of the Muslim population from this territory. We use this major historical event to study the persistence of population shocks at the city level. We find that the Reconquest had an average significant negative effect on the relative and log-scale population of the main Iberian cities even after controlling for a large set of country- and city-specific geographical and economic indicators, as well as city-specific time trends. Nevertheless, our results show that this negative shock was relatively short-lived, vanishing on average within the first one hundred years after the onset of the Reconquest. These results suggest that the locational fundamentals that determined the size of Iberian cities before the Reconquest were more important determinants of the fate of these cities than the direct negative impact that the Reconquest may have had on their population. Our findings can also be interpreted as weak evidence on the negative effect that war and conflict can have on urban population.     

The Ten‐Year Plan for the port of Antwerp (1956–1965): a linear city along the river

The Ten‐Year Plan for the port of Antwerp (1956–1965) funded the expansion of the port’s infrastructure over a 10‐year period. Strictly, a national government‐funded infrastructure programme for the construction of a set of canal docks, the programme laid the basis for a broader urbanization of the north‐eastern Antwerp metropolitan region. The importance of the operation lies primarily in its role as an instrument of urbanization rather than in the improvement of the transport and transshipment capacity of the port because it opened up a large territory to industrial settlement. The linear layout of the project along the Scheldt River led planners to conceive the further urbanization of the adjacent region on a linear city model, with satellite communities attached to the industrial and infrastructural strip. Compared with the contemporary Europoort plan for the port of Rotterdam, where several planning agencies implemented conflicting plans for functionally distinct infrastructures and the construction of a new town, the success of the Antwerp approach resides in the flexible and strategic implementation of the project as a co‐production between various authorities and private parties.     

Penang Tropical City,Penang, Malaysia OMA

A mixed-use programme for Penang in Malaysia with the potential to accommodate a resident population of 27,000 required OMA to operate at a planning level, while providing architectural definition. João Bravo da Costa describes how this led to a strategy that focused on types rather than objects, and specifically a typological distribution of programme across the site.     

Water Resources and Management in the Republic of Ireland

Ireland is well-endowed with water resources and has one of the higher rates of water availability in Europe. However, regional variations in rainfall and population distribution give much less favourable conditions in the east of the country compared to other areas. Pollution of waters to date has been generally localized and moderate in intensity, although there is a trend towards eutrophication of the river systems. Piped water supplies, either from public or private schemes, are now available to nearly all dwellings in the state, both urban and rural. The same position holds for sewerage facilities in the urban areas, but nearly 25% of the rural population is still unserviced in this regard. Future development of services will place more emphasis on sewerage facilities, as outlined in the recently issued national action programme on the environment.     

论中国西部旅游的生态环境与文物保护策略

实施中国西部大开发战略,令世人瞩目,西部地区地域辽阔,拥有中国2／3的土地和近1／4的人口,还有2万km以上漫长的内陆边境线,文章认为,西部有丰富的自然资源,有五彩缤纷的旅游资源以及重要的世界文化遗产,因此,开发大西部应全面综合减灾思路下的安全保护策略,促进西部文化的,历史的,风情的旅游资源的开发,保证健康有序地经济腾飞。     

韩国雪岳山国立公园

雪岳山国立公园是韩国有代表性的国立公园之一,被指定为生物圈保护区,现在自然资源的保存状况良好,但由于韩国国土面积小,人口众多,雪岳山承受的观光开发的压力很大.主要论述雪岳山目前的管理状况及解决问题的方法.     

论城市化发展的影响因素——从经济增长到社会和谐发展的考量

中国地域辽阔、人口众多,地区经济社会发展很不平衡,反映在城市的规模、城市化水平等方面,也必然表现出很大的区域差异和不均衡的特征。因此,仅从总量上研究我国的城市化发展问题,并不能深入揭示我国不同地区城市化发展的内在规律。城市化既是一种经济现象,同时也是一种复杂的社会现象,影响城市化发展的因素错综复杂,因而不应局限于经济增长的测度和分析。从城市化质量入手,对我国各地区的城市化水平与社会发展的和谐度因素的相关性进行实证研究,进而揭示在城市化进程中重视社会和谐发展的积极意义。     

The Seaton Carew Sewerage Scheme: Design Features and Contractual Arrangements

Northumbrian Water Limited has thirty-four bathing waters and a substantial investment programme to ensure that these waters meet EC standards by 1995. One project within this overall programme is the Seaton Carew Sewerage Scheme. Seaton Carew lies on the southern edge of Hartlepool which has a population of 95000. The scheme will combine existing flows into new foul and storm-sewage outfalls. The headworks will incorporate screening, grit removal and pumping stations with substantial measures for odour control. Hydraulic operating regimes using active pump control and passive flume control have been investigated to ensure efficient treatment for a wide range of flows. The onerous design, manufacture and construction programme has required the development of new approaches to procuring the work, whilst maintaining a substantial element of competition. The various programmes have been substantially overlapped to ensure that the scheme is completed by April 1993.     

The history and modern condition of the brown bear (Ursus arctos L., 1758) of the West Siberian plain

Abstract

Ursus arctos is a large carnivore and a common species for Western Siberia. The earliest traces of it date back to the Middle Pleistocene. During the Holocene, its population grew and its range significantly extended northwards. The modern West Siberian habitat lies between 55° and 67°N, and its dynamics are being affected by human activity and climate change. The beginning of the twenty-first century has been marked by the growth of the population of the brown bear and its occurrence in unusual habitats. Earlier studies of the population genetic structure prove the existence of a Pleistocene refugium on this territory. The body size of the West Siberian brown bear is the largest for U. arctos subscpecies within its range.     

Nuclear power: the case for a long term policy

The present rapid expansion of the nuclear power programme is based largely on slightly enriched thermal reactor types with poor plutonium production, and could exhaust the rich uranium reserves well before the end of the century, whilst producing an inadequate plutonium inventory for a future fast breeder programme. A more gradual expansion of the thermal reactor programme based on “near‐breeder” reactors would extend the rich reserves to the year 2000 and build up an adequate plutonium inventory for a significant fast breeder programme, with the possibility of introducing the thorium fuel cycle early in the 21st century.     

1990年代北京市人口空间分布的最新变化

运用第五次人口普查数据 ,通过与 1 980年代情况的对比 ,剖析了 1 990年代以来北京市总人口、常住户籍人口和外来人口在市域、各圈层地域、各区县等不同地域层次上的分布及最新变化趋势 ,以求对新时期北京的城市规划和管理工作有所裨益。文章最后还综合了对北京、上海和杭州的最新研究成果 ,讨论了 1 990年代中国大城市郊区化的发展趋势     

Internal migration in a developing country: A panel data analysis of Ecuador (1982–2010)

In this paper, we examine determinants of internal migration flows between the 21 provinces of Ecuador from 1982 to 2010. Using specifications based on the gravity model, we identified push and pull factors. We considered multilateral resistance to migration by using various monadic and dyadic fixed effects structures. The study confirmed the concentration of the population in the two provinces that contain the country's main cities. However, in recent years, this trend has weakened, to the extent that the provinces with the greatest influx of migrants are not necessarily the most populated. This indicates that growth has become more balanced throughout the territory, and that small and medium‐sized cities are increasingly important.     

Adaptive programme management through a balanced performance/strategy oriented focus

This paper explores how programme management (as opposed to project management) can contribute to the effective design and delivery of megaprojects. Traditionally, project management is considered to be performance focused and task oriented, whilst programme management entails a more strategic focus. The programme management literature suggests that this can result in tensions between the management of the projects and the programme as a whole. This paper uses the findings of the €2.4 billion Room for the River flood protection programme in the Netherlands as a case study, because indicators about its budget, time, quality and stakeholder satisfaction suggest high programme management performance upon completion of the planning and design stage of its 39 river widening projects. Based on a literature review, document analysis and 55 face-to-face interviews, we have analysed how the programme management of the programme contributed to this result. Six attributes for effective programme management that are identified from the project and programme management literature are used to structure the research data. Consecutively, the interactions between project and programme management are analysed. The analysis of Room for the River reveals a combined strategic/performance focus at the level of both programme and project management that enables a collaborative approach between programme and project management. This particularly enables effective stakeholder collaboration, coordination and adaptation of the programme to contextual changes, newly acquired insights and the changing needs of consecutive planning stages, which positively contributes to the performance of the programme as a whole.     

The Environment in Successive Regional Development Plans for Israel's Periphery

The Negev, Israel's southern region, is mostly an arid desert and constitutes more than 60% of the country's territory. As in other dryland regions, population size is relatively small, comprising only 9% of Israel's total population. Planning policies in Israel for the past 60 years rarely express a bottom-up approach, but rather a centralized approach to development, derived from national ideology and the needs of a nascent state. This paper describes the place of the environment and sustainability criteria over three eras of planning the development of the Negev region. This region is one of the most challenging areas in Israel in terms of socio-economic conditions, its multi-cultural population, as well as its geographically and ecologically diverse environments. Here we illustrate a transition in relation to the planning bureaucracy to the environment: from obliviousness to rational planning to pseudo-sustainability. Thus, there is a clear tendency of the official planning institutions as well as the out-sourced governmental initiatives to increasingly pursue a more sustainable approach that seeks to integrate environmental consideration within planning processes. At the same time, however, we show the degree to which these processes are still deficient in their lack of a coherent environmental strategy and implementation by the government and its agents, and in the lack of conceptual and material resources for an integrated treatment of the Negev's social, economic and environmental problems.     

基于领土景观肌理的城郊边缘空间整合——解读巴黎杜舍曼公园

领土景观是地域性景观设计中的重要概念之一,可以从自然与人文两个方面来解析。领土景观的自然肌理与人文肌理在景观设计中都具有重要的意义。巴黎杜舍曼公园即是一个通过恰当把握领土景观肌理,来解决公园现存问题的典型城郊边缘地区公园。其基于领土的设计理念为21世纪城郊边缘地区的公园建设提供了很好的借鉴。     

Geography and the costs of local telephone networks

This paper expands past research on the cost structure of local telephone networks by considering the cost effects of geographical factors, such as service territory size, land uses, street patterns, population density, soil types, slopes, and the spatial partitioning of a company into local exchanges. A translog cost function is estimated using data on 41 telephone companies operating within the New York State, together with GIS-derived geographical data. The results confirm the importance of geography as a determinant of local telephone costs, and suggest that earlier estimates of size thresholds between economies and diseconomies of scale may be too low. The trade-offs between geographical factors in shaping the frontier between economies and diseconomies of scale are assessed. The implication for public policy on competition at the local level is that natural monopoly may be more prevalent than previously assumed. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 50th Annual North American Meeting of the Regional Science Association International, 20–22 November 2003, Philadelphia, PA.