scholarly journals In the Eye of the Beholder: The Case of the Minnetonka Lawn Ordinance

1994 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 304-310
Author(s):  
Anne M. Hanchek

In 1991, a suburban city in Minnesota found its lawn and nuisance weed ordinance the center of controversy as a citizen sought to develop a naturalized landscape that contrasted greatly with her neighbors' mowed lawns. This decision case study presents that situation as faced by the city policymakers and, when presented in a class setting, provides an opportunity to explore real options in a real issue of today. The case objectives are to prepare policymakers to deal with similar issues, and to broaden the outlook of students based in plant and environmental sciences to include the social factors of people-plant interactions. Group problem-solving skills also can be enhanced by this exercise. The abridged teaching note provides guidance for classroom and extension use.

Urban Studies ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 004209802097265
Author(s):  
Matthew Thompson ◽  
Alan Southern ◽  
Helen Heap

This article revisits debates on the contribution of the social economy to urban economic development, specifically focusing on the scale of the city region. It presents a novel tripartite definition – empirical, essentialist, holistic – as a useful frame for future research into urban social economies. Findings from an in-depth case study of the scale, scope and value of the Liverpool City Region’s social economy are presented through this framing. This research suggests that the social economy has the potential to build a workable alternative to neoliberal economic development if given sufficient tailored institutional support and if seen as a holistic integrated city-regional system, with anchor institutions and community anchor organisations playing key roles.


2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (7) ◽  
pp. 186
Author(s):  
Osman Nabay ◽  
Abdul R. Conteh ◽  
Alusaine E. Samura ◽  
Emmanuel S. Hinckley ◽  
Mohamed S. Kamara

The paper examined and brought to the fore the typical characteristic of urban and peri-urban farmers in Freetown and Bo communities which serves as major source of supply of agricultural products into the cities’ markets. The social and environmental aspect and perception of producers involved in urban and peri-urban agriculture was examined. Descriptive statistics and pictograms were used to analyze and present the data. Results indicate that 56.34% never went to formal school and mostly dominated by women, showing that farming became the alternative means of livelihood support for those groups. Crops grown are purely influenced by market orientation—demand and cost, as is evident in Gloucester (lettuce, cabbage and spring onions). Potato leaves were commonly grown in almost all communities, reason being that it serves as common/major sauce/vegetable cooked in every household in Sierra Leone. Maize and rice were featured in Ogoo farm—government supervised land set aside purposely for growing crops to supply the city. Findings also revealed that majority of the farmers are resource poor, judging from calculation about their monthly income earning and available household assets and amenities. About 70.4% of the lands the farmers grow their crops on is leased for production. Except for Gloucester community, when costs of production will be summed, minimal benefit seem to be realized from the farming activities. Even though some of these farmers are engaged in organization, many have limited access to micro financial organization that would probably loan them money to upscale production.


2018 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-15
Author(s):  
Yu Xiaohui ◽  
Yang Ruhui ◽  
Liu Bo

Urban spatial form influences the social, economic, and ecological development modes of the city. The spatial form during the urbanization of Hanjiang River Basin in Southern Shaanxi needs to be studied. In this study, research methodologies on urban spatial form in China and abroad were summarized. The concept of ecology background was applied, and the research framework for urban spatial form, which integrated the background, framework, core, axis, cluster, and skin, was established. Valley cities in the Hanjiang River Basin in Southern Shaanxi were classified into wide valley, narrow valley, and canyon cities. The spatial form characteristics of these three types of valley cities were discussed. A case study based on a typical city-Yang County-was conducted to discuss the characteristics of the aforementioned six elements of urban spatial form. Finally, spatial form characteristics were summarized. These characteristics provide a basis for the study of the small valley urban spatial form in the Hanjiang River Basin in Southern Shaanxi.


1978 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 236-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael B. Whiteford

It is the contention of this author that, for women in particular the process of migration is a liberating, or freeing process. Specifically, this paper examines the changes which take place in the social environment of women as a result of rural-urban migrations. The focus of the investigation is female migrants who have moved to the city of Popayán, Columbia. The discussion is based on data gathered in Barrio Tulcán.


2014 ◽  
Vol 31 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 137-161 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ash Amin

This paper examines the social life and sociality of urban infrastructure. Drawing on a case study of land occupations and informal settlements in the city of Belo Horizonte in Brazil, where the staples of life such as water, electricity, shelter and sanitation are co-constructed by the poor, the paper argues that infrastructures – visible and invisible – are deeply implicated in not only the making and unmaking of individual lives, but also in the experience of community, solidarity and struggle for recognition. Infrastructure is proposed as a gathering force and political intermediary of considerable significance in shaping the rights of the poor to the city and their capacity to claim those rights.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Oebel ◽  
Dr. Tobias Gaugler

<p><strong>Keywords:</strong> External costs, mobility, environmental costs, social costs, monetarization</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Purpose: </strong>This study provides a methodology to evaluate the environmental and social costs, which arise from traffic in the German city of Augsburg. Social costs are driven by air pollutants such as nitric oxides or particulate matter, causing health damages. Environmental follow-up costs are driven by the emission of greenhouse gases. Furthermore, approaches for a successful transformation towards a car-free city are shown.</p> <p><strong>Method: </strong>Based on traffic data from the Augsburg Civil Engineering Office, as well as traffic shares from the German Federal Motor Transport Authority, the average emission factors of vehicles on Augsburg´s streets and, subsequently, the total traffic emissions on municipal roads in the city are quantified. The environmental as well as the social consequences are monetarized using the cost rates by Matthey and Bünger (2019) and van Essen et al. (2019). Social costs are additionally assessed using to the DALY approach. Therefore the DALYs lost due to air pollutants are determined and costs per DALY are calculated using the willingness to pay-approach by Cropper and Khanna (2014) and Spengler (2004) additionally to a method by Daroudi et al. (2019) assessing health care expenditures.</p> <p><strong>Results:</strong> Applying this framework to the case study of Augsburg, results show, that environmental costs of 140.6 Million € arise from traffic in the city per year. These costs are entirely attributable to car traffic (77.7%), truck traffic (19.8%) and motorcycle traffic (1.9%), as public transport in Augsburg is climate neutral. Further, traffic on municipal roads in Augsburg causes a loss of 212.3 DALYs per year, which equals to annual social costs of 27.2 Million €. Cars account for 63.2% of those, trucks for 33.8%, motorcycles for 2.3% and buses for 0.2%, respectively. With a proportion of passenger kilometers of 90.4% from cars, 6.1% from motorcycles and 3.6% from buses, it is evident that cars contribute disproportionately to the environmental and social costs of Augsburg's traffic.</p> <p><strong>Conclusion:</strong> The social and economic follow-up costs of transport in the city of Augsburg are currently not borne by the polluter. Their great amount encourages measures, such as reinforcing the use of bicycles or public transport, eventually facilitating a change towards sustainable traffic in Augsburg.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>References</strong></p> <p>Cropper, Maureen; Khanna, Shefali (2014): How Should the World Bank Estimate Air Pollution Damages? In Resources for the Future Discussion Paper, pp. 14–30.</p> <p>Daroudi, Rajabali; Faramarzi, Ahmad; Akbari Sari, Ali; Nahvijou, Azin (2019): Cost Per Daly Averted in Low, Middle and High Income Countries: Evidence from Global Burden of Disease Study to Estimate the Cost Effectiveness Thresholds. In SSRN Journal.</p> <p>Matthey, Astrid; Bünger, Björn (2019): Methodenkonvention 3.0 zur Ermittlung von Umweltkosten – Kostensätze. Edited by Umweltbundesamt. Available online at https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/medien/1410/publikationen/2019-02-11_methodenkonvention-3-0_kostensaetze_korr.pdf, checked on 10/29/2020.</p> <p>Spengler, Hannes (2004): Kompensatorische Lohndifferenziale und der Wert eines statistischen Lebens in Deutschland. In Zeitschrift für ArbeitsmarktForschung-Journal for Labour Market Research 37 (3), pp. 269–305.</p> <p>van Essen, Huib; van Wijngaarden, Lisanne, Schroten, Arno; Sutter, Daniel; Bieler, Cuno; Maffii, Silvia; Brambilla, Marco et al. (2019): Handbook on the external costs of transport. Edited by CE Delft. Available online at https://ec.europa.eu/transport/sites/transport/files/studies/internalisation-handbook-isbn-978-92-79-96917-1.pdf, checked on 10/29/2020.</p>


2013 ◽  
pp. 9-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Adam Perdue

Populations in contemporary cities are being measured, analyzed, or represented in less than optimal ways. Conventional methods of measuring density of populations in cities rely on calculating the number of people living within a bounded surface space. This approach fails to account for the multiple floor residential patterns of the contemporary urban landscape and exposes the vertical space problem in population analytics. To create an accurate representation of people in contemporary urban spaces, a move beyond the conventional conception of density is needed. This research aims to find a more appropriate solution to mapping humans in cities by employing a dasymetric method to represent the distribution of people in a city of vertical residential structures. The methodology creates an index to classify the amount of floor space for each person across the extent of the city, a metric called the personal space measure. The personal space measure is juxtaposed with the conventional population density measurements to provide a unique perspective on how population is concentrated across the urban space. The personal space metric demonstrates how improved metrics can be employed to better understand the social and structural landscape of cities. Chicago, with a large population and a high vertical extent, makes an ideal case study to develop a methodology to capture the phenomena of urban living in the 21st century and to explain alternative approaches to accurately and intelligently analyze the contemporary urban space.


Author(s):  
Rodolfo Alfonso Torregrosa Jiménez ◽  
Norhys Torregrosa Jiménez

ABSTRACTaccess problems and dysfunctions of the judiciary, in all societies there are communal forms of conflict resolution. Community and institutional mechanisms for conflict resolution can provide the ability to handle conflict from the values, habits and customs of the communities and not from the mere formality of state justice inaccessible to the masses. Thus, the Settlement in Equity is one of the alternatives through which the popular sectors can get for themselves and through community leaders, a righteousness that is in accordance with the needs and responsibilities of the direct stakeholders of the community. Thus, the purpose of the research is to investigate the social representations (RS) of the concepts of fairness, justice and coexistence Community Ratings equity conciliation of a town in the city of Bogotá, Colombia. In addition, as we are interested in identifying the point of view of these users, ie, their opinions, attitudes and information, is that the theoretical and methodological approach used RS. So, be described by methods and with the support of the theoretical framework, the cognitive dimension of the RS user. Such representations are interpreted through formalization that conform segmenting in graphic forms (codes), the corpus of semi-structured interviews applied to users, considered as a continuation of separate occurrences among themselves, delimited by several characters. These occurrences are analyzed, both quantitatively and qualitatively.RESUMENPor problemas de acceso y disfunciones del aparato judicial, en todas las sociedades existen formas comunitarias de resolución de conflictos. Los mecanismos comunitarios e institucionales de solución de conflictos pueden brindar la posibilidad de tramitar los conflictos a partir de los valores, los usos y las costumbres de las comunidades y no desde la mera formalidad de la justicia estatal inaccesible para los sectores populares. Así, la Conciliación en Equidad es una de las alternativas a través de la cual los sectores populares pueden obtener por ellos mismos y a través de líderes comunitarios, una justicia que esté de acuerdo con las necesidades y responsabilidades de los actores directos de la comunidad. De este modo, el propósito de la investigación es indagar sobre las representaciones sociales (RS) de los conceptos de equidad, justicia comunitaria y convivencia de los usuarios de la conciliación en equidad de una Localidad en la ciudad de Bogotá-Colombia. Y como lo que interesa es identificar el punto de vista de estos usuarios, es decir, sus opiniones, actitudes e información, es que se usa el enfoque teórico-metodológico de las RS. Así, se describirá, a través de métodos y con el apoyo de los referentes teóricos, la dimensión cognitiva de las RS de los usuarios. Dichas representaciones son interpretadas a través de formalizaciones que se conforman segmentando en formas gráficas (códigos), el corpus de entrevistas semi-dirigidas aplicadas a los usuarios, considerado como una continuación de ocurrencias separadas, entre sí, mediante varios caracteres delimitados. Estas ocurrencias son analizadas, tanto desde el punto de vista cuantitativo como cualitativo.


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